This research project investigates the art practices of The Laab - a Beirut-based group of cultural practitioners working in media and the arts and concerned with the relationships artistic and cultural endeavors bear to politics.

Building on the participants’ conceptualization of their own work as a medium through which politics can be enacted and practiced, this project proposes a critical self-reflective research method. The investigators here are the practitioners themselves and the subject of their research is their fields of practice and their status within the current sociopolitical, economic, cultural, historical, communication and artistic conjunctures in Lebanon.

'Artistic Action' will involve media studies, driven by critical theory and a number of cultural studies, auto-ethnographical works, and the analysis of specific case studies, in an attempt to produce outputs that are relevant, accessible, engaging, and starting points for future research and conversations.

The adopted methodology brings together thought, practice and action, and considers both theory and practical experimentation as means to investigate and reach critical and creative research findings. Also, the collective approach is inter-disciplinary and involves practitioners from visual arts, philosophy, performance, graphic design, urban studies, and more. The research will allow for public workshops and debates engaging different actors in the fields of arts, culture, and politics in the region, with the aim of enlarging both the group and the scope of work.