Do I Know You?

In her lecture performance, Lina Majdalanie, explores the origins as well as the political, social and ethical implications inherent in prosopagnosia – the inability to recognise and remember faces. On the basis of her own experiences, she questions the meaning of this phenomenon with a look at a society that is closely entwined with the metaphors and narrations of the face in its political and historical legacy: In the Lebanese declaration of independence from the year 1943, the nation is proclaimed a land with an “Arabian countenance”. Only later, during the post-war era, will Lebanon be declared an “Arabian country”. In “Do I Know You?”, the author, director and actress Lina Majdalanie discusses the question on what grounds strategies of identification, categorisation and acceptance emerge and how they are employed.

Duration: 50 min. / in French and German with English subtitles