December 02 - 16, 2007
„Newsletter: Hôtels dans la guerre – The Hotel Lobbies“ – exhibition by Paola Yacoub and Michel Lasserre

The Newsletter Project is exploring the existence of images when belief in information collapses.

The folders
At present, the Newsletter is constituted of 5 folders. Tamils Tigers and Tsunami are images on cataclysms occurring when information on history and nature can not be distinguished. With Hotel Lobbies one will never know what really happened in those hotels ponderated by history. Face grafts when randomness is in portraits. Peenemünde looks at ruins of the American space exploration now that the Nasa had lost its memory as well as its moon photographic shots. Screen scenes is concerned with the anthropological usage of flat screens in public spaces broadcasting news images aggregated to songs, dance and leisure.

Newsletter events
Presentation: ROM, in collaboration with OCA International Studio Program, Oslo, 2005; C/O Berlin - The Cultural Forum for Photography, 2006
exhibition: Biennale Gwangju, South Korea, 2006; BildMuseet Umea Universitet, Umea, Sweden, 2007; Centre pour l’image contemporaine Saint-Gervais, Genf, 2007; MARS, Berlin till December 15, 2007 (www.marsinberlin.com).

Hotel lobbies are often crossed by events, negotiations, kidnappings that change their aspects, ponderate their image and their name in history. These hotels enter in collision with a contingent event. Only the aspect of the hotel changes.
One can see these buildings as hotels or as wild monuments. This additional aspect weakens our agreements on the images.
Hotels in war are part of a long-term project entitled Newsletter of affinities in which we explore from a sceptic position the mode of existence of images when our agreements becomes dubious.

The Kempinski Bristol Hotel, Berlin
During the cold war the Kempinski Bristol Hotel in Berlin hosted most of its political leaders such as Fidel Castro, Konrad Adenauer, J.F. Kennedy, Ludwig Erhard, Willy Brandt, Walter Scheel, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan and Michail Gorbatschow. One can see the Kempinski Bristol Hotel either like a luxurious hotel, or as an emblematic cold war hotel in Berlin.

Le Quartier des hôtels, Beirut
Le Quartier des hôtels in Beirut gathers the Holiday Inn Hotel, the Phoenicia Hotel and the Saint-Georges Hotel among others. This district had contracted a series of the Lebanese war events. In 1975, the first battles were conducted in the Holiday Inn and in 2005 the Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated in front of the Saint-Georges Hotel. But the series continues. Very recently, the parliament deputies were hiding in the Phoenicia Hotel while waiting for the Presidential election.

Supported by Medienteam der Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart