We chose to call this text an Epilogue rather than an Introduction to acknowledge a conundrum the project encountered toward its end. Beyond Orientalism(s) began as a collaboration between two educational art institutions situated in markedly different cultural and political contexts: Berlin and Leipzig in Germany, and Beirut in Lebanon. It was initiated under one set of circumstances and concluded under very different ones.

 

In some ways, this conundrum can be understood in both spatial and temporal terms. Spatially, the organizers sought to engage a historically charged geopolitical landscape by building a cultural bridge between two politically diverse regions: Western Europe and Southwest Asia. Temporally, the challenge lay in reconciling the conditions under which the project began in 2022 with those in which it ended in 2025, when not only the relationship between the regions had changed, but the world itself appeared to have been turned upside down. The Hamas attack in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, Israel’s cross-border attacks and bombardments in Lebanon, and the genocidal warfare in Gaza—carried out with the tacit approval of Western governments—profoundly altered the foundations of this inter-regional exchange, its scholarly-curatorial intentions and the formats initially conceived.

 

Beyond Orientalism(s) was launched during a period of renewed sociability and cautious optimism following the COVID-19 pandemic. Its primary objective was to foster collaboration between art and curatorial students and faculty at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon and Academy of Fine Arts (HGB) Leipzig in Germany. The impetus for these collaborations lay in the volatile political and cultural shifts that had unfolded at the intersection of these two regions over the past decade.

 

On one side of this history, the protracted civil war in Syria resulted in several waves of refugees arriving in Germany, with the peak occurring in 2015. Lebanon, by contrast, experienced relative stability throughout the 2010s, which enabled a period of dynamic cultural exchange with Western Europe. Many artists, curators, and intellectuals from Lebanon traveled to Europe—particularly to Germany and Berlin—while European artists and scholars visited Beirut to participate in international events or university-based exchange programs. By the end of the decade, however, Lebanon’s economic collapse radically altered these conditions.

 

On the other side, the 2020s witnessed escalating tensions between German- and Arabic-speaking contexts, expressed through sweeping accusations of anti-Semitism, anti-Arabism, and racism. Although the debate surrounding documenta fifteen—curated by the Indonesian collective ruangrupa in Kassel in 2022—served as the most visible catalyst for this shift in discourse, these developments had already been emerging in Germany since the late 2010s. Censorship and self-censorship, disinvitations, and event cancellations began to erode, if not render impossible, the trust required for genuine exchange, while the reduction of complex arguments into slogans reshaped the culture of debate.

 

These were the main premises that formed the political and cultural backdrop for bringing together two international groups: faculty and students from the Cultures of the Curatorial MA program at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig (HGB Leipzig), and equally international faculty and students from the Art History and Curating MA program at the American University of Beirut. The groups hoped to build on the experience of the previous decade while reviving the spirit of cultural collaboration by extending the dialogue into academic contexts.

 

Over the course of two years, participants attempted to navigate differences and build trust through joint cultural activities, some of which are documented on this website. Broadly speaking, the project pursued two types of goals: long-term symbolic or historical ones and short-term, more immediate and practical ones. The title Beyond Orientalism(s) – Towards New Infrastructures reflects the project’s long-term goals and signals a willingness to engage with some of the major historical contradictions inherent in the concept. It was clear from the outset that we could not hope to resolve the vast range of conflicts and injustices embodied by Orientalism, nor could we meaningfully intervene in the long-standing tensions that have defined relations between the two regions—tensions often framed through historically situated dichotomies such as West/East, North/South, Occident/Orient, modern/traditional, developed/developing, and the so-called First/Third Worlds. Instead, our aim was to intervene in the debate by contributing a tangible form of collective international action.

 

On a short-term, more immediate level, the exchange—generously supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)—resulted in mutual student and faculty visits, artist and curator travel, the establishment of online and offline platforms and conversations, small-scale collaborations, co-organized exhibitions, the coordination of speakers and talks, and the planning of future, larger partnerships. Despite the rapidly shifting political landscape, its initial ambition to become a bridge has, in many respects, been realized.

 

 

The collaboration unfolded within another chapter of a long and unresolved history of mistrust, built on a century of fractured relations between the regions. What had seemed like the promise of a shared horizon at the end of the 2010s was quickly overshadowed by a descent into geopolitical rupture, severed ties, and grief without contour. In the face of such entanglements, language falters. No vocabulary seems adequate to name the weight of the past that pressed into the present of this collaboration.