Tarek Elhaik

In my work I straddle the conceptual, sensorial and disciplinary borders of documentary film studies, visual studies, and the anthropology of contemporary art worlds. My interest in cinema and experimental media is informed by archival research on Mexican and Latin American avant-garde film and my ethnography of curatorial laboratories in Mexico City. I'm currently working on a manuscript titled The Incurable Image: Repetition & Curation on a Tri-Continental Scene where I explore a couple of things. First, the etymological register of the clinical term 'curare.' Second, the curatorial transmission of political modernism and (neo) avant-garde aesthetics between Latin America, North Africa, and Southern Europe from the 1920s onward. I curated several experimental film programs from Latin America and Middle East at the Pacific Film Archive, Ruhr Trienale, San Francisco Cinematheque, Tangiers Cinematheque, De Young Museum, Rice University, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.