"A Crime Against Art" is a film based on a trial. A trial that begins with the assumption that a crime has been committed. Yet the nature of this crime is unclear. The evidence is allusive. No victims have come forward. 

During their research for Emotional Architecture, Nida Ghouse and Malak Helmy met with the auditor of institutional ethics. For this event at Beirut, they revisit Hila Peleg's "A Crime Against Art" and invite the auditor to attend the discussion that follows and share his accounts. 

Conceived as an exercise in addressing the social and intellectual legacies of entering and leaving collaborations, Emotional Architecture is a project that started in the summer of 2012 and is on going.

About the film:

A Crime Against Art by Hila Peleg

"A Crime Against Art" is a film based on the trial staged at an art fair in Madrid in February 2007 organized by Anton Vidokle and Tirdad Zolghadr. Inspired by the mock trials organized by André Breton in the 1920s and 30s, it playfully raises a number of polemical issues in the world of contemporary art: collusion with the "new bourgeoisie," instrumentalization of art and its institutions, the future possibility of artistic agency, as well as other pertinent topics. Set as a television courtroom drama and filmed by four camera crews, the film serial presents a condensed 100 minutes version of the trial, which was produced by unitednationsplaza studios, Berlin, 2007.