what we do
Temporary Art Platform (TAP) is a context-responsive curatorial platform founded on para-institutional modes of operation responding critically within shifting and dynamic situations. We are concerned with the development of social practice in Lebanon, the region, and the Global South through modes of participation, multi-disciplinary formats and decentralized locations. We have been actively working on small-scale pilot projects advocating for administrative reforms and a cultural policy in Lebanon through knowledge production on social practice, public art, and administrative and legal frameworks.
When TAP was founded in 2014, it positioned itself as a curatorial platform that actively responds to the needs of the different social and spatial contexts it operates within, through formats that best inform its practice. We identify a topic, a need, a site, a community, a theme, a question that we want to put at the core of our investigation, and then we define the format of the project and its methodology. The public sphere is an ever-widening concept and our interventions take these transformations into consideration. Forging partnerships with public and private institutions outside the art world and re-asserting collaborations at the core of our processes have been defining principles to all our endeavors.
The formats we use:
Artist residencies: artist residencies allow us to engage larger audiences in the participation and creation of social artworks as well as de-centralize art practice by going outside of Beirut (where most of the art scene happens) and into communities that don’t have access to contemporary art.
Public art commissions: TAP aims to create production opportunities for artists in Lebanon and ask them to take the space in which they are responding as a site of exploration.
Research projects: we are eager to contribute to the development of a cultural policy in Lebanon through knowledge production on social practice, public art and legal and administrative frameworks. Since 2015, we have organized a public round table, closed-door discussions / interviews, and published an online tool-guide on the production of public art in Lebanon.