Mazen KerbajMazen Kerbaj

Mazen Kerbaj was born in 1975 in Beirut and has lived there since. His main activities are comics, painting and music. In March 2000 he published Journal 1999, a diary in graphic format. Since then he has self-published eight other books and many short stories. Also in 2000, he played his first concert, in the Strike's pub in Beirut. This concert, a duo with Lebanese sax player Christine Sehnaoui, was probably the first improvised music concert in the Middle East. In 2001, together with guitarist Sharif Sehnaoui , he created the MILL association, which curates IRTIJAL, an annual international festival for free music in Beirut, as well as various concerts and events. In August 2002, together with Sharif Sehnaoui and double bass player Raed Yassine, he recorded the album A, published by La CD-Thèque, Beirut. After meeting Franz Hautzinger by chance in Lebanon in February 2003, they played in duo in Beirut and in Paris and in trio with Japanese laptop player Taku Unami at the IRTIJAL 2003 festival. Then they were joined by Sharif Sehnaoui and Helge Hinteregger to form Oriental Space, a quartet that played in Nickelsdorf, Berlin, Vienna and Klagenfurt. A recording of this group is avilable on the Austrian label aRtonal, and Abu Tarek, a recording of the duo Hautzinger/Kerbaj, is available on the Portugese label Creative Sources. In 2005, Kerbaj released two new albums on the new Lebanese label Al Maslakh (The Slaughterhouse), one solo and the other with the Rouba3i quartet. From 2000 to the present, Mazen Kerbaj has played solo and in various groups in venues in Lebanon, Syria, France, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, UK, and the USA. His website is www.kerbaj.com.

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Mazen Kerbaj was born in 1975 in Beirut and has lived there since. His main activities are comics, painting and music. In March 2000 he published Journal 1999, a diary in graphic format. Since then he has self-published eight other books and many short stories. Also in 2000, he played his first concert, in the Strike's pub in Beirut. This concert, a duo with Lebanese sax player Christine Sehnaoui, was probably the first improvised music concert in the Middle East. In 2001, together with guitarist Sharif Sehnaoui , he created the MILL association, which curates IRTIJAL, an annual international festival for free music in Beirut, as well as various concerts and events. In August 2002, together with Sharif Sehnaoui and double bass player Raed Yassine, he recorded the album A, published by La CD-Thèque, Beirut. After meeting Franz Hautzinger by chance in Lebanon in February 2003, they played in duo in Beirut and in Paris and in trio with Japanese laptop player Taku Unami at the IRTIJAL 2003 festival. Then they were joined by Sharif Sehnaoui and Helge Hinteregger to form Oriental Space, a quartet that played in Nickelsdorf, Berlin, Vienna and Klagenfurt. A recording of this group is avilable on the Austrian label aRtonal, and Abu Tarek, a recording of the duo Hautzinger/Kerbaj, is available on the Portugese label Creative Sources. In 2005, Kerbaj released two new albums on the new Lebanese label Al Maslakh (The Slaughterhouse), one solo and the other with the Rouba3i quartet. From 2000 to the present, Mazen Kerbaj has played solo and in various groups in venues in Lebanon, Syria, France, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, UK, and the USA. His website is www.kerbaj.com.

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Ahmad Gharbieh is Associate Creative Director at the design and communication agency Mind the Gap and teaches in the Department of Architecture and Graphic Design at the American University of Beirut, specializing in mapping design and theory. His work explores mapping as a method of research, analysis, and representation of sociospatial phenomena. He is a founding member of Kharita, a collaborative initiative focusing on the production and dissemination of advocacy maps on conflicts in the Middle East. His work has been exhibited in Barcelona, Berlin, Paris, Rotterdam, and Sharjah. He is coeditor of Beirut: Mapping Security, a publication and project initiated for the Fourth International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam and recently translated and published in Arabic. He is on the design committee of Samandal, a multilingual comics platform based in Beirut.

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