Beyrouth

Joshua Mosley’s stunning, often cryptic work, which involves a labor-intensive combination of drawing, high-definition video, photography, and sculpted stop-motion figures, has redirected the leading edge of animation technology away from its origins in collective production models and commercial applications, and into the visionary realm of the individual artist and the fine-art short film.
In Beyrouth, Mosley depicts an imaginary philosophical debate between his Lebanese grandfather, represented by a twelve-year-old boy in braids, and his great-grandfather, portrayed as a white donkey. The piece has its origins in a libretto that was inspired by the artist’s conversations with his grandfather, an etching by Francisco de Goya featuring a donkey, and English translations of short stories by the Argentine writer Julio Cortázar. Mosley wrote his libretto in English, translated it into Spanish, back into English, and finally into Arabic. Like much of his work, including A Vue and dread, Beyrouth explores the behavioral rules of conversation and the structure of dialogue. In this case, the libretto developed into an operatic soundtrack created in collaboration with composer Toufic Farroukh and inserted within the enigmatic, dreamlike film.