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The Derivative is a bi-annual online publication launched in October 2020, in the midst of unprecedented political, social, economic, and environmental collapse in Lebanon. It is an attempt at building collective vocabularies, registers, and practices able to account for and run against the systemic onslaught we are faced with.

The Derivative is a student of the uprising of Oct 17, 2019; it is first and foremost a rhizomatic object around which to mobilize a diversity of praxes. Experimenting with collective editorial models, each issue is above all an excuse to think and make together and a way to expand and strengthen networks of friends and allies through divergent modes of address, thought, and action.

Every issue of The Derivative starts with three guest editors, each assigned a theme in the form of a three-letter root word (جذر) in Arabic. Each editor then collaborates with five contributors to help unfold the various facets of each theme, as well as an artist contribution responding to each text.

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Gud Decided to Leave

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Translation: Tom Abi Samra Today is the day to say my goodbyes. I packed my bag with the gift Saja, my wife, had given me. It was a print of my drawing dry mounted on board. A creature half water buffalo half human. I called it “Gud,” it was neither Good nor God… It was […]

 Refrigerator

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An excerpt from the novel Sweetmeats, or: Who Killed Issam Sukkar? by Alexandra Chreiteh A Note on the Text:          In the following excerpt, Nafiseh steps into her sister’s basement in a small Lebanese town on the Syrian border and discovers a body hidden in the fridge. Who is this person, and who put him […]

through their mouths came their lasting virtue

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still concave movement sunken tens no less burdened threefold deliverance unless convergence and then nightly grit and suffused in sand until it glistened laid bare for us to witness beheld,       no objection in the desire line a reflex is     a green crescendo and it exerts its movement felled again inside circular logic spun at the […]

S/he Said

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Click here (PDF) for an optimal view. She Said There was this beautiful, beautiful riverA very dangerous riverWith swift currentsA very dangerous placeVery deep water They were very politically awareThey felt they were living under a repressive regimeThey were all part of an underground movementThey were very optimisticIt was wonderfulThe hope and the promiseAnd then […]

The Place Is Not the Place

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This text emerged from a conversation that started informally nearly ten years ago over many days and nights in Beirut, but that took place formally in May of 2022 from outside Beirut, between myself in Berlin, Germany, and Beza Girma in Hawassa, Ethiopia. Inspired by the theme of ‘b-sh-r’,[1] we discussed Beirut’s multiple cities and […]

“Villainy” Excerpts for The Derivative

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You fuck me with your entire hand in a room full of the dead. The dead are inside boxes behind glass. You fuck me so we can feel for one second that our friends are not dead. That they are living inside of us. A security guard approaches & you stop. I pull you up […]

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DISCLAIMER

The editors have made every effort to contact all copyright holders of the images used in this publication. If you claim copyright of any of the images presented here and have not been properly identified, please contact the editors with sufficient proof that you are the copyright holder. They will update the publication with a formal acknowledgment of your copyright.

MANAGING EDITOR

Haig Aivazian

Resident Editor

Lori Kharpoutlian

Arabic Editor

Rida Hariri

VISUAL CONCEPT AND DESIGN

Studio Zumra

WEB DEVELOPMENT

Jazilan

FONTS

29LT Azer by 29Letters and WorkSans by Wei Huang

Publisher

Beirut-Art-center_Logo_Final-white

beirutartcenter.org

© 2020–2023 The Derivative • المشتق. All Rights Reserved. Beirut Art Center Association.