The impetus and original material for the making of Peeping Tom's Digest#3: Beirut is a list of 46 declarations, gleaned by Peeping Tom collective during their residency in Lebanon in the fall of 2011 (“the sudden and relatively recent presence and interest of curators, journalists
and editors in/for the Middle East is annoying and suspect,” “Beirut has the most active art scene in the Middle East,” “the war as a subject of continual scrutiny seems to be a comfort zone for many young artists here / it appears, at times to be a response to an expectation from the market abroad,” etc.).
Through a filmed roundtable conversation (a film to watch online co-produced by Anna Sanders Films) and 22 texts—essays, interviews, fictions and beyond—, local and international art figures (artists, curators, art venues directors, writers, editors, filmmakers,
Visual contributions by
Etel Adnan,
Aftal Ahdath,
Gheith Al-Amine,
Dana Aljouder,
Ziad Antar,
Antranik Anouchian,
Vartan Avakian,
George Awde,
Charbel-Joseph H. Boutros,
Patric Chiha,
Saloua Raouda Choucair,
Roy Dib,
Basile Ghosn,
Lawrence Abu Hamdan,
Yasmina Haddad,
Kinda Hassan,
Azza Hussein,
Nesrine Khodr,
Mark Lewis,
Bassem Mansour,
Randa Mirza,
Adrien Missika,
Siska,
Karine Wehbé,
Raed Yassin.
Peeping Tom's Digest is an experimental and subjective publication dedicated to contemporary art. Each issue focuses on trends and movements of a particular geographic area and highlights the artists and initiatives represented within it. The point of departure for each edition is a residency of the Peeping Tom collective lasting several months in the chosen city, region or country. Deliberately empirical, without critical, theoretical or historical pretensions, its approach allows them to veer off the beaten path. Not only sharing the work, the artists, and the artistic and cultural efforts they encountered, each volume also aims to reveal the specificity of a depicted art scene: the curatorial process and the structure of the magazine (graphic design, format, number of pages and so on) varies from issue to issue reflecting the characteristics and stakes of each locale. The genealogy of the experiment and its numerous protagonists are showcased in the publication as an inserted poster.
Peeping Tom is also a publishing structure for monographs and artists' books (see the publishers page).
