Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck
Chronoscope, 1951, 11pm (still), 2009-2011
In collaboration with Media Farzin
No doubt in deference to local sensitivities after the Arab Spring, it was noticeable that art about geopolitics was not very much in evidence. A quiet and brilliant exception was Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck’s photo-work Chronoscope (2009–11), a static reworking of footage from the 1950s CBS current-affairs talkshow of the same name. Bow-tied pundits discuss oil trouble between the West and the Arab world – uncanny echoes from the past that revealed how little (bar the absence of communists) has changed in the West’s preoccupation with this part of the world.