News

Both the Tunisian pavilion at the Venice Biennale and the fourth edition of the Tunisian cultural programme Jaou, created by Lina Lazaar and supported by the Kamel Lazaar Foundation, focussed on migration this year. 'Migrant Nation', which included a two-day conference, an exhibition of new commissions called 'My-great-shun' and numerous other talks and events, explored the complex and controversial issue of migration from the 'safe space' of art and culture and from the geographically significant position of Tunisia. The lingering question remained: "How do we manage to highlight the issue of migration with empathy rather than exoticise it as a 'hot topic'?"

Dar El-Nimer for Arts and Culture is pleased to announce the launch of its first exhibition, curated from El-Nimer Collection. Midad: The Public and Intimate Lives of Arabic Calligraphy is concerned with the development and significance of Arabic script from the eighth to the twentieth centuries, and runs from April until October 2017.

This month, Ibraaz publishes two new essays, by Doa Aly on the work of Rana ElNemr, and by Sasha Ussef, who examines an ambitious curatorial project to bring contemporary artworks into the Lebanese daily press. In addition, we feature new interviews with Walid Siti, Hajra Waheed, and Alya Sebti; reviews from London; and exclusive channel content by Bouchra Khalili, Aikaterini Gegisian and Fatma Çiftçi, and works by Basir Mahmood, Ritu Sarin & Tenzing Sonam and Filipa César and Louis Henderson from the Contour Biennale 8.

Ibraaz celebrated the launch of Future Imperfect: Contemporary Art Practices and Cultural Institutions in the Middle East on Wednesday 22 February at Delfina Foundation. Volume 03 in the Contemporary Visual Culture in the Middle East series, Future Imperfect critically examines the role played by cultural institutions in producing present-day and future contexts for the production, dissemination and reception of contemporary art in the Middle East and North Africa.

This month, Ibraaz features new essays and interviews by Mohamed Beshir, on the work of Maha Maamoun, Haig Aivazian in conversation with Rayya Badran, Yael Bartana with Clelia Coussonnet, and Moreshin Allahyari, who also presents the project HUMA, alongside the project Doppelgänging by Basma Alsharif. We present a reflections and responses to the online exhibition catalogues for Qalandiya International 2016: This Sea is Mine, and FIELD MEETING Take 4: Thinking Practice, as well as reviews from Turin, Istanbul, Paris, Cairo, and Marseille.

We close 2016 with a recap of the top 10 most viewed artists' works from Ibraaz Projects. This round-up features work by Larissa Sansour and Soren Lind, Lara  Khaldi & Yazan Khalili, Seth Ayyaz, and Marwa Arsanios.

Ibraaz closes the year with a recap of the top 10 most viewed interviews from 2016. This round-up features conversations with artists and curators that include Nida Sinnokrot, Hrair Sarkissian, Raed Yassin, Coco Fusco, and Reem Fadda.

Ibraaz closes 2016 with a recap of the top 10 most viewed items from the Ibraaz Channel. This round-up features work by Sondos Shabayek, Oreet Ashery, Larissa Sansour, Vikram Divecha, and Videobrasil.

Ibraaz closes 2016 with a recap of the top 10 most read articles from Ibraaz Reviews. This round-up features write-ups of exhibitions from Beirut, Marseille, London, and of the Berlin Biennale.

Ibraaz closes the year with a recap of the top 10 most read essays from 2016. This round-up features writings by Ibraaz Editor-in-Chief Anthony Downey, Lara Baladi, Heba Y. Amin, Ahmad Makia, and Monira Al Qadiri.

Ibraaz is pleased to present an exclusive online screening of Larissa Sansour's science fiction trilogy, which includes A Space Exodus (2008), Nation Estate (2012), and In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain (2016). Under the common themes of loss, belonging, heritage and national identity, the three films each explore different aspects of the political turmoil in the Middle East. They are viewable to watch on Ibraaz from 22 December 2016 to 5 January 2017.

Now it in its fourth year, Jaou Tunis endeavours to further the cause of self and life expression in the MENA region. This edition of Jaou will engage a variety of public spaces, inspiring participants to partake in a pilgrimage of their own.  Attendees will be welcomed to a series of discussions, forums, gallery viewings, and the opening of a unique show titled 'My-Great-Shun'.

Future Imperfect: Contemporary Art Practices and Cultural Institutions in the Middle East critically examines the role played by cultural institutions in producing present-day and future contexts for the production, dissemination and reception of contemporary art in the Middle East and North Africa.

This month, Ibraaz features new essays and projects by Hamid Dabashi, Navine G. Khan-Dossos, and Kamal Aljafari, conversations with MADRASSA Collective, Younes Bouadi, Rifat Chadirji, Balkis Sharara, and Amin Alsaden, exclusive Channel videos from Heba Y. Amin, Farah Saleh, and Sama Alshaibi, as well as reviews from Beirut, Berlin, and London. We are also pleased to present an expanded text version of the closing remarks delivered as a summary for FIELD MEETING Take 4: Thinking Practice, which took place in New York in November 2016.

This month, Ibraaz features new essays and interviews by Khalid Abdalla, Navine G. Khan-Dossos, Farah Al-Nakib, and Farah Saleh, and a project by Setareh Shahbazi. In Ibraaz Channel, Iranian photographer and film director Galareh Kiazad presents a tribute to the late Abbas Kiarostami, we present online exhibition catalogues for Qalandiya International 2016: This Sea is Mine, and FIELD MEETING Take 4: Thinking Practice, which will take place in New York in November 2016, and two reviews from the United Arab Emirates.

Asia Society hosts the signature program of Asia Contemporary Art Week 2016, FIELD MEETING Take 4: Thinking Practice, on November 12. With more than 30 U.S.- and Asia-based artists and arts professionals staging newly-conceived performances and lecture-performances, and generating lively discussions for an audience of 300 U.S.-based curators, scholars, and museum professionals, this two-day art forum emulates the experience of a studio visit on a larger, communal scale.

This month, Ibraaz features new essays, interviews and projects by Shiva Balaghi, Anahita Razmi, Sama Alshaibi, Saad, Amira Hanafi, and Mohssin Harraki, as well as reviews and reports from New York, London, and Salzburg.

Göksu Kunak reports from the Global Academy? conference at Salzburger Kunstverein, which took place between 5­ and 6 August 2016. A year-and-a-half in the making, the conference was initiated with the question of 'how other institutions in the world deal with contemporary art education and what kind of exchange is possible between these new models'. Invited platforms and organizations were asked to consider various international perspectives from alternative cultural perspectives.

'The idea that the present is trapped in a tension between a lost past and an anticipated future,' writes Rawan Sharaf, 'forms the conceptual frame for the group exhibition Chapter 31: An Odd Piece of Research on the Many Virtues of Oriental Imagination,' at P21 Gallery, London, which was curated by Sarha collective, an interdisciplinary platform by Nadia Jaglom, a visual anthropologist, and philosopher Mai Kanaaneh.

Ibraaz launches September with a series of reviews from Amman and London; an interview with Rasha Salti, curator of the SAFAR Film Festival (running from 14 to 18 September 2016); an essay on Beirut by Natasha Marie Llorens, and a selection of the most viewed items from Platform 010. 

The Videobrasil Collection in Context #1 exhibition was staged in Sao Paulo in February 2016, at Galpão VB | Associação Cultural Videobrasil. The exhibition showcased the first edition of the artist residency project, Videobrasil in Context, spearheaded by Videobrasil and held in partnership with the Delfina Foundation (London) and Casa Tomada (São Paulo).

For this inaugural edition, Videobrasil invited two artists, Cláudio Bueno and Mahmoud Khaled to create new artworks for the Videobrasil Collection. The results of their residency are presented here exclusively on Ibraaz Channel until 31 October 2016.

This month's newsletter includes essays by Sarah-Neel Smith, Heba Y. Amin, and Lara Baladi; interviews with Koyo Kouoh, Fadi Bardawil, Zeynep Oz, Natasha Hoare and Hamza Halloubi; projects by Lara Baladi and Dena Al-Adeeb; and reviews and reports from Beirut, Berlin, Cologne, Florence, Istanbul, and New York. In Channel, we present a specially curated online screening by Jim Quilty in collaboration with the Beirut Art Center, featuring works by Vartan Avakian, Mounira Al Solh, Yto Barrada, Wissam Charaf, and Jalal Toufic.

Written in the wake of Great Britain's recent EU referendum result, Federica Bueti poses a number of questions about cultural identity, including what kind of story do we want to tell, who's going to tell it, who will be allowed to speak, and in what terms? She also questions what role art and exhibition making can play in re-articulating existing and sidelined narratives. Bueti resolves to address these questions in examining two projects that took place recently in Cologne: the exhibition Between One Time and Another at Temporary Gallery, and the Pluriversale festival.

Emma Harper examines the story and work of Armenian-German scientist Johannes Manissadjian through the prism of two exhibitions in Istanbul, and uncovers a parallel narrative of the Armenian story in the first half of the twentieth century, describing one exhibition 'as much about the living as it was about the dead'.

This special, mid-month reader announces the launch of Figures Upon Landscape, a series of films programmed exclusively for Ibraaz Channel by Jim Quilty, in partnership with the Beirut Art Center. Today we release five short films by Mounira Al Solh, Yto Barrada, Jalal Toufic, Vartan Avakian and Wissam Charaf.

We are pleased to celebrate our 5th Anniversary with the release of newly commissioned content for Platform 010, including essays by Patricia Triki and Christine Bruckbauer, projects by Maya Chami and Ahmed Badry, interviews with Nora Razian, Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, Mario Rizzi, Louis Henderson, and Kim Beamish, a series of channel videos from the Warehouse Project Talks, staged by Vikrem Divecha, alongside reviews from shows in Limerick, London, and Tehran. Ibraaz's Editor-in-Chief Anthony Downey has also contributed an essay concerning developments in our research and publishing remit since 2011 and, perhaps more importantly, the all too imminent challenges faced by cultural producers across the region today.

This month Ibraaz celebrates its fifth year of production, having launched in June 2011 as an online platform for producing critical forms of knowledge about visual cultures relating to and emanating from North Africa and the Middle East. To celebrate, we are pleased to publish a one-off anniversary reader featuring our most read content from June 2011 to June 2016.

In June Ibraaz celebrates its fifth year of production, having launched in 2011 at the 54th Venice Biennale. To commemorate our anniversary, we begin with a dedicated reader presenting a series of Platform 010 responses by Talinn Grigor, Alex Dika Seggerman, Octavian Esanu, Iftikhar Dadi, Burcu Pelvanoğlu, and Sabrina DeTurk,  alongside a selection of essays, projects, and channel videos produced exclusively for Ibraaz by artists participating in the one-month Ras Masqa Artist Residency (RMAR). Organized by Temporary. Art. Platform as part of The Museum in the Making project, the residency was overseen by Amanda Abi Khalil and Roy Dib, and took place between 18 March and 18 April 2016 at the village of Ras Masqa.

Ibraaz is pleased to announce the launch Platform 010, which marks our fifth year in production, and which is framed around the following question: What can the regional politics of cultural production across North Africa and the Middle East tell us about the politics of global cultural production today? Underwriting these enquiries are broader concerns, including claims of relevance based on art's increasingly overt engagement with sociopolitical and historical realities, the complicity of cultural production in the accumulation of capital – be it cultural, private, economic, social, or political. and how we might explore the potential for productive cultural alliances.

In the final reader of Platform 009, which has explored the genealogies of performance art in North Africa and the Middle East, Ibraaz presents a series of essays, interviews, and projects, including  texts by Shuruq Harb, Samine Tabatabaei, Cristiana de Marchi; conversations between Sohrab Kashani and Taus Makhacheva, Amal Khalaf and Zoukak Theatre Company, and further projects by Kashani and Zoukak.

In Channel, we present, among other videos, Tania El Khoury's performance Maybe If You Choreograph Me, You Will Feel Better. We also publish reports and reviews from Brussels, Cairo, Cologne, Dubai, Doha, and Sharjah.

Stephanie Bailey reports from the 2016 March Meeting, organized by the Sharjah Art Foundation, and themed around education, engagement, and participation.

Reema Salha Fadda reports from Art Dubai's Global Art Forum 10, positioned under the title 'The Future Was', a speculative arena for thinking about the future from different vantage points: past and present, abstract and concrete. Ultimately though, Fadda asks the question of whether "...the spectre of sponsorship, and the affiliation with a commercial, globalized art fair, mute[s] the possibility of pushing the neoliberal critique of the arts industry?"

"We can consider art as 'a catalyst for economic growth and development, […] as a driver for tourism, and also as a mechanism for nation, city, and even corporate branding," says Achilles Tsaltas, vice president of New York Times Conferences. Ibraaz Editorial Coordinator Aimee Dawson reports on the 'Art for Tomorrow' conference and asks, if we focus on the commercial then what about the art?

Continuing with our ongoing Platform 009 research theme, Ibraaz is pleased to present newly commissioned content on the genealogies of performance in the Middle East and North Africa. Contributions include essays by Salma Abdel Salam and Monira Al Qadiri, interviews with Sussan Deyhim and Meriem Bennani, and projects by Bennani, Yazan Khalili and Lara Khaldi. In Channel, we present a number of videos featuring work by, among others, Christodoulos Panayiotou and Khaled Kaddal, the latter being one of the recipients of the Sharjah Art Foundation's Production Grant, presented during the 2016 March Meeting. 

As part of Platform 009, Ibraaz is pleased to present essays by Ahmad Makia and Kate Sutton, conversations featuring Suzy Halajian, Adham Hafez, Hrair Sarkissian, Raed Yassin, Abdullah Al-Mutairi and Sarah Abu Abdallah, a project by Marwa Arsanios, and reviews from Dubai and Marseille.

In this report from Ankara, Turkey's capital, Missy Weimar describes 'what many [saw] as the city's first ever public performance art piece.' She examines the piece, The Art of Disagreement by Istanbul-based artist Işıl Eğrikavuk, and situates its relevance in relation to both traditional Turkish folk culture and the tools of international diplomacy used by Turkey's present-day politicians.

As part of our ongoing research into the genealogies of performance art in North Africa and the Middle East, Ibraaz is pleased to present a series of essays, interviews and projects responding to Platform 009. These include an essay on photographer Bruno Boudjelal, conversations with Magdi Mostafa and Coco Fusco, and an extensive interview with Seth Ayyaz. The latter interview is accompanied by channel documentation of Ayyaz's performance in addition to an exclusive project by the artist.

Elsewhere on Ibraaz channel, we publish a work by Nancy Atakan, and a condensed screening programme featuring Katia Kameli, Atef Berredjem, Neïl Beloufa, Taysir Batniji and Negar Behbahani, the latter of which was organized as part of Visible/Invisible, Art & Politics, which will be presented at the Media Lounge in collaboration with the 104th International College Art Association Conference.

For Ibraaz Platform 010, which will mark our fifth year of production, we are inviting contributors to reflect upon what they consider to be the urgent urging issues affecting cultural production in North Africa and the Middle East. In a more formal sense, we want to enquire into what, if anything, the current politics of cultural production across the region can tell us about the politics of the global art world in general.

Ibraaz is pleased to announce a series of new appointments in 2016. We present some recent contributions by our new editorial team below. Find out more about everyone on the About Us page, here.

To round off 2015, Ibraaz is pleased to present a selection of the most viewed videos on Ibraaz Channel, presented as part of Platform 009, which explores the genealogies of performance art in North Africa and the Middle East.

In the first of our December Readers, Ibraaz offers a selection of the most viewed essays, interviews, and projects of Platform 009, which explores the genealogies of performance art across North Africa and the Middle East. Contributors to Platform 009 so far have included: Reza Aramesh, Doa Aly, Nujoom Al Ghanem, Marwa Arsanios, Wafaa Bilal, Fari Bradley, Tania El Khoury, Adham Faramawy, Samah Hijawi, Hasan Hujairi, Helene Kazan, Yazan Khalili and Lara Khaldi, Hassan Khan, Todd Reisz, Sondos Shabayek, Hassan Sharif, Urok Shirhan, and Stephen Sheehi.

We also present reports and reviews from New York, Tunis, Beirut, and Athens, while in Channel, we feature documentation of Corbeaux, a performance by Bouchra Ouizguen filmed during Home Works 7.

Stephanie Bailey visits Home Works 7 in Beirut and the Athens Biennale, and remarks on how a critique of the market's impact on cultural production in the contexts of Beirut and Athens is an issue when considering the work being done on the ground.

Over three days (26–28 November, 2015) at the American University in Cairo, 23 presentations sought to offer a range of uncovered histories of the Egyptian Surrealists adn the Art and Freedom Group, a cohort of artists and writers assembled by Georges Henein in Cairo in 1938. Alexandra Stock reports from AUC, and discovers precisely how '...it became clear how surrealism offered a way of seeing the absurdity and uncanny beauty inherent in everyday life: a toolkit for disrupting reigning political, artistic and social norms, and a conceptual passport into a global discourse.'

How do curatorial practices adapt to social and political change? What does it mean, in practice, to work on cultural programming in a state of permanent precarity? On 6 October 2015, London's Serpentine Galleries director Hans Ulrich Obrist hosted a talk with William Wells, founder of Cairo's Townhouse Gallery. Ibraaz Contributing Editor Laura Cugusi reports.

Continuing our 009 theme on the genealogies of performance art in the Middle East, Ibraaz is pleased to publish an essay on Hassan Khan's recent exhibition at Frankfurt's Museum für Moderne Kunst. Khan has also produced an online presentation of 17 and AUC in Projects. We are also showcasing an original commission by Hasan Hujairi, alongside a personal response from the artist to our Platform 009 theme. In Interviews, we publish conversations with Oreet Ashery, Eric Baudelaire, and Gülsün Karamustafa, whilst on our Channel, we present videos from Wafaa Bilal and The Dictaphone Group.

Ibraaz and the Kamel Lazaar Foundation are pleased to host the launch of Gulf Labor's first book publication published by OR Books. 

The Gulf: High Culture/Hard Labor is a compelling chronicle of a campaign at the forefront of a new wave of worldwide cultural activism, edited by Andrew Ross (for Gulf Labor), with a foreword by Sarah Leah Whitson, Human Rights Watch. The book will launch in London on Thursday 19 November 2015, at Rivington Place.

This month, Ibraaz is pleased to publish content surrounding the theme of Platform 009, which explores the genealogies of performance art in North Africa and the Middle East, including an essay by Nahrain Al-Mousawi on the practice of Bouchra Ouizguen, a reflection on the performance of self-censorship by Director of BuSSy Sondos Shabayek, interviews with Reza Aramesh, Yazan Khalili and Lara Khaldi, and projects by Joe Namy, and Helene Kazan.

Ibraaz is pleased to publish interviews with Hiwa K, Kristine Khouri & Rasha Salti, and Lina Majdalanie (previously known as Lina Saneh), with projects by Samah Hijawi and Amau Menlibayeva. Elsewhere we publish an essay by Todd Reisz on Dubai's Aladdin City, reviews from Sharjah, Thessaloniki and the Venice Biennale and, on the Ibraaz Channel, we present an exclusive video with the Delfina Foundation's Aaron Cezar, alongside video performances by Wael Shawky and Doa Aly.

'I have been a participant/student/artist – in that order – at the Home Workspace Program (HWP) since October 2014. The nine-month platform, which ends in early July 2015, offers an alternative system to degree-granting graduate and postgraduate courses, with a focus on the region of the Middle East and North Africa,' writes Merve Unsal. 'The framework of this year's programme was Setups, Situations, Institutions. Resident professors who each tackled this framework, in chronological order, were: Khalil Rabah, Walid Raad, Kader Attia, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Gregory Sholette, and What, How, & for Whom / WHW.'

Kazakhstani-born Almagul Menlibayeva is one of two artists taking part in the project The Union of Fire and Water (2015), a collateral event of the 56th Venice Biennale, together with Rashad Alakbarov. The project, commissioned by YARAT and curated by Suad Garayeva, explores the historical and cultural links between Baku and Venice using the Palazzo Barbaro as one of the project's main contextual frames. The building was the former residence of Giosafat Barbaro, a Venetian ambassador who travelled to Azerbaijani cities and wrote extensively about these and the court of Shah Uzun Hassan in the late 1400s. In this interview, Basak Senova talks with Menlibayeva about the project.

Following the launch of Platform 009 in May, a yearlong research project into the genealogies of performance art in North Africa and the Middle East, Ibraaz has published essays, interviews, projects and videos. We also produced two online publications for exhibitions at the Hayward Gallery and Delfina Foundation, and released a number of Platform 009 Responses by Hassan Darsi, Nezaket Ekici, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Joe Namy, Farah Khelil, Adel Abidin and Timo & Nadia Kaabi-Linke, which we present here.

A Prologue to the Past and Present State of Things launches Staging Histories, a new research and commissioning platform for performance art. Through archival research and new commissions, Staging Histories traces seminal moments of performance mapping shared histories and contemporary global concerns.  The first stage of the project explores performance art from and in relation to the Arab world.

The exhibition presents a constellation of key performative works, photographs, video documentation and archival materials from the last three decades. The thematic connections cross the Arab world but relate to global politics, economics and cultural shifts. The selected artworks can therefore be understood as a preface, consequence or echo of major developments during this period.

Ibraaz is pleased to announce the opening of Echoes & Reverberations at Hayward Gallery Project Space, an exhibition that features Jumana Emil Abboud, Basma Alsharif, Samah Hijawi, Anas Al-Shaikh, Magdi Mostafa and Joe Namy. Echoes & Reverberations launches Staging Histories, Delfina Foundation's long-term project to document the history of performance art from and in relation to the Arab region through archival research and new commissions.

Ibraaz is pleased to announce Platform 009, which will address the following question:

What are the genealogies of performance art in North Africa and the Middle East?

Driven by artists and cultural practitioners who are working across diverse media, Platform 009 will explore both the formal and informal histories that define the development of performance art in the Arab world. For the duration of this platform, we will map the historical range of practices and theories associated with the labels 'performance', 'performance art' and 'performativity

Visual Culture in an Age of Global Conflict

The Kamel Lazaar Foundation is pleased to announce that it will stage a two-day conference at the National Museum of Bardo from the 28–29 May, 2015. This will be the 3rd iteration of the JAOU initiative to be held there and the first international conference at the Museum since the terrorist attacks on Wednesday, 18 March 2015. A full programme is included here.

In this final installment of Platform 008, which considers the historical and contemporary relations between North Africa, the Middle East and the Global South, Ibraaz is pleased to publish essays by Lara Khaldi, Franco 'Bifo' Berardi and Timothy PA Cooper, interviews with Vangelis Vlahos, November Paynter and Didem Pekün, projects by Vlahos and Eric Baudelaire, and a review of Sharjah Biennial 12.

Following recent events in Tunis, Ibraaz is republishing an open letter from the Kamel Lazaar Foundation that announces its unequivocal support for the National Museum of Bardo, Tunis, and denounces the act of terrorism that targeted it on Wednesday, 18 March 2015. The Foundation and its initiatives, including Ibraaz, will be going ahead with plans to hold its annual JAOU conference there in May (see below), following on from successful symposia already held there in 2014 and 2013. This month, Ibraaz is also publishing essays around our Platform 008 theme by Tirdad Zolghadr and Suzanne Gauch, interviews with Jonas Staal and Taus Makhacheva, projects by Makhacheva, Malak Helmy, and Santiago Mostyn, as well as reviews from Barcelona and Bologna.

Tuesday, 24 March 2015.

Attack on the National Museum of Bardo – Culture against Terrorism.

The Kamel Lazaar Foundation offers its unequivocal support to the National Museum of Bardo, Tunis, and denounces the act of terrorism that targeted it on Wednesday, 18 March 2015. This letter is published here in English, French, and Arabic.

This month, Ibraaz publishes more Platform 008 content, focusing specifically on the historical and contemporary relationships that exist between North Africa, the Middle East and the  Global South. We present essays by Monira Al Qadiri, Natasha Ginwala and Hakan Topal, interviews with Aikaterini Gegisian and Sumesh Sharma, and projects by Basma Alsharif, Yogesh Barve & Clark House Initiative, Simohammed Fettaka & Basak Senova, and Nikolaj Bendix Sykum Larsen. We are also pleased to publish reports on Renzo Martens at the ICA (London) and Parviz Tanavoli at the Davis Museum (Massachusetts).

In this report, Tom Snow reflects on a talk by Renzo Martens at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London, in December 2014. The Dutch artist presented and discussed a series of slides depicting sculptural self-portraits by artists from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and were exhibited internationally thereafter. Martens argues that each sculpture, made from chocolate as digital 3D prints, is a reflection on the European demand for luxury commodities and presents damning insight into the art market.

In this report, Iranian artist Parviz Tanavoli discusses his first comprehensive US museum retrospective, Parviz Tanavoli at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, with one of the exhibit's curators, Dr. Shiva Balaghi.

JAOU Tunis 2015

28th–31st May

The Kamel Lazaar Foundation is pleased to announce the third annual celebration of arts and culture, JAOU Tunis 2015.

As part of Platform 008, which was launched in November 2014 and will run to April 2015, Ibraaz is inviting cultural practitioners to articulate critical views on how we might productively map the historical and contemporary relationships that exist between the regions of the Middle East and the Global South. This month, we publish essays by Mahmoud Abu Hashhash, Gilles Kepel and Adrian Dannatt on the work of, respectively, Basma Alsharif, Romuald Karmakar and Nikolaj Skyum Bendix Larsen. We are also pleased to publish interviews with Nav Haq and Youmna Chlala, who is also featured in the projects section alongside Rosana Palazyan and Ariel Hassan.

Following the launch of Platform 008, Ibraaz is pleased to present Platform responses from Pio Abad, Clare Davies, Kurchi Dasgupta, Jeannette Ehlers, Embroiderers of Actuality, Anthony Gardner, Farida El Gazzar, Nida Ghouse, Maryam Jafri and Daria Kirsanova, all of whom reflect on the following question: How do we productively map the historical and contemporary relationships that exist between North Africa, the Middle East and the Global South?

In this report of the seventh iteration of The Jerusalem Show, entitled Fractures, Reema Salha Fadda and Nour K Sacranie examine the complex questions thrown up in participating in the exhibition, either as artists or spectators, and explore the notion of accessibility to culture in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Ibraaz is pleased to announce the launch of Platform 008, which will investigate the expanded geographies embedded in the following question:  

How do we productively map the historical and contemporary relationships that exist between North Africa, the Middle East and the Global South?

Ibraaz is pleased to announce the opening of THE JERUSALEM SHOW VII: FRACTURES. Curated by Basak Senova and organized by Al-Ma'mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, Jerusalem, this year's show runs from 24 October to 7 November 2014, and is presented in the framework of the second Qalandiya International (Qi), ARCHIVES, LIVED AND SHARED, which will take place from 22 October to 15 November.

From May until October 2014, Platform 007 has critically examined the role played by artists, institutions and audiences in producing future contexts for the production, dissemination and reception of art as a practice. We are pleased to announce the final newsletter for this platform and the publication of essays by Burak Delier, Tina Sherwell, and George Katodrytis, all of which examine the role art practices play in developing institutions and audiences. The content from Platform 007, alongside newly commissioned essays and projects,will be published in volume 03 of our Visual Culture series, Future Imperfect: Building Institutions through Practice across the Middle East (forthcoming, 2015).

Edge of Arabia sets off through America on an ambitious road trip aimed at diversifying the dialogue between people in the USA and those in the Middle East.

As Platform 007 draws to a close next month, Ibraaz is pleased to publish an extensive introduction to Yemen's art infrastructures by Anahi Alviso-Marino, alongside an essay on militarization and cultural production in Palestine by Reema Fadda.

Continuing our examination of arts infrastructures Redha Moali, founder of Dar Al-Ma'mûn, offers an extended response to the question of how art practices can map critical realities and educate future institutions. Further expanding on our Platform 007 theme are interviews with Foundland and Raed Yassin, and a project by Isak Berbic. 

Elsa Despiney visits Erriadh, a village on the island of Djerba, on the occassion of Djerbahood, an exhibition organised by Mehdi Ben Cheikh and the founder of Galerie Itinerrance. This exhibition brought together over 100 street artists from over 30 countries, and they arrived with one mission: to use the village to express their creative sparks.

This month, Ibraaz is pleased to publish interviews, essays and projects that continue to address the future of arts infrastructures and audiences in North Africa and the Middle East, the latter being the ongoing theme of Platform 007. Essays by Toleen Touq and Oraib Toukan are published here for the first time, alongside projects by Caline Aoun and Mohamed Abdelkarim. We are also publishing an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, and reviews and reports from London, New York, Berlin and Tunis.

Forming part of Delfina Foundation's The Public Domain programme of artistic research and production, a recent Tate Modern panel discussion among Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency (DAAR: founding members Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti and Eyal Weizman), historian and political scientist Ilan Pappé, and curator and critic Okwui Enwezor, raised a broad spectrum of pertinent issues surrounding the state of Palestinian refugee camps and the status of ex-territorialized refugees. These included the politics of space, civil and human rights, and the notion of post-nationalism.

We are pleased to announce that the research question for Ibraaz's Platform 008, to be launched on November 6, 2014, is as follows:

How do we effectively map the historical and contemporary relationships that exist between North Africa, the Middle East and the Global South?

Ibraaz is pleased to present a further tranche of Platform 007 responses to the following question:

What is the future of arts infrastructures and audiences across North Africa and the Middle East?

These include responses from Youmna Chlala, Sirine Fattouh, Sherri Wasserman, Nora Razian, Stéphanie Dadour, Judith Greer, Burak Arikan, and Asunción Molinos Gordo.

We also present an interview with the Directorate of Art in Sharjah, Hisham Al-Madhloum, alongside video interviews with Shiva Balaghi and Oscar Guardiola-Rivera. A review of Lina Saneh and Rabih Mroué's performance of 33 rpm and a few seconds in New York, and a review of Burak Delier's exhibition at INIVA in London, are also included.

Future Imperfect (Part II): Building Institutions Through Practice.

Ibraaz is pleased to announce the launch of Platform 007, which will offer a comprehensive analysis of the following question from a variety of perspectives:

What is the future of arts infrastructures and audiences across North Africa and the Middle East?

Full details of the second edition of Jaou Tunis, taking place between 09–11 May at the Museé National du Bardo, Tunis, and various venues throughout the city.

Ibraaz is pleased to present the concluding interview for Platform 006, which examined the role of the archive in cultural production. In this interview, Lamia Joreige discusses her work with Anthony Downey and explores how it negotiates the legacy and apparent veracity of archives.

This month, we also present video interviews with Slavs and Tatars, Adam Szymczyk, Farah Al-Nakib and John Akomfrah on the newly-launched Ibraaz Channel, as well as reviews and reports from London and Sharjah.

In the build up to the launch of Platform 007 in May, Ibraaz is pleased to present an essay on Algeria's artistic landscape by Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi and an interview with artist Ayşe Erkmen, both of which relate to 007's focus on the future of arts infrastructures and audiences in North Africa and the Middle East. As part of our ongoing 006 platform on the archive, we are also pleased to present content with and by Hela Ammar, Parastou Forouhar, Wafaa Bilal, Adelita Husni-Bey, Hicham Khalidi and Georgia Kotretsos, as well as reviews from London, Bristol and Beirut.

Ibraaz is pleased to publish interviews with Wael Shawky, Global Art Forum Commissioner Shumon Basar and Co-Directors Ala Younis and Omar Berrada, Elif Öner and Fulya Erdemci, curator of the 13th Istanbul Biennial, as well as a conversation between Walter D. Mignolo and Nevin Aladag. We are also pleased to present a project commissioned especially for Platform 006 by Elif Öner and Vincent Rozenberg: historicalfuturemuseum.org, and reviews from Rabat, Berlin and London.

Ibraaz/Kamel Lazaar Foundation are pleased to announce their role as online partner of the Global Art Forum 8 at Art Dubai 2014. Ibraaz will be streaming the forum live from Art Dubai, and publishing exclusive video interviews and individual panel discussions thereafter.

Titled Meanwhile...History*, Global Art Forum 8 will explore a timeline of turning points in history – significant decades, years, days, minutes or seconds that shifted an understanding of the world. Co-directed by curator-translator Omar Berrada of Dar al-Ma'mun and artist Ala Younis, and commissioned by writer Shumon Basar, the forum will also reflect on the philosophy and fiction of making history matter.

Ibraaz is pleased to release the remit for Platform 007, which addresses the main question:

What is the future of arts infrastructures and audiences across North Africa and the Middle East?

Confirmed participants in this platform include: Monira Al Qadiri, Amar Kanwar, Larissa Sansour, Bouchra Khalili, Ayse Erkmen, Khalid Abdalla, Ola Khalidi, Basma El Husseiny, Tarek El Ariss, Bassam El Baroni, Ashkan Sephavand, Hadia Gana, Toleen Touq, AMBS Architects, Laura Metzler, Iman Issa, Tony Chakar, Malak Helmy, Asuncion Molinos, Caline Aoun, Medrar.tv, GCC, Sirine Fattouh, Sandra Iche, Nora Razian, Meriç Algün Ringborg, Stephen Stapleton, Dr Myriam Ababsa, Youmna Chlala, and others.

Following on from the launch of Platform 006, Ibraaz is pleased to publish an extensive essay by Rona Sela examining the role of the archive in zones of conflict. Our content this month also includes conversations with Joe Namy and Akram Zataari, and artist projects by Setareh Shahbazi and Lawrence Abu Hamdan. We also publish reviews from Hamburg and Amman and release video documentation from our recent conference held at Tate Modern, Future Imperfect, including presentations by, amongst others, Douglas Coupland, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Tony Chakar, Bassam El Baroni, Tarek El Ariss, and Todd Reisz.

Newly released and critically acclaimed documentary The Square (2013), directed by Jehane Noujaim, presents an extraordinary account of the ongoing Egyptian Revolution that focuses on three very different Egyptian activists:  Magdy Ashour, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood for twenty five years; Khalid Abdalla, a well­-known British-Egyptian actor whose father and grandfather had previously been jailed in Egypt for political reasons; and Ahmed Hassan, a charismatic, young political activist and artist.

On behalf of the Kamel Lazaar Foundation and Ibraaz, we would like to wish all of our readers and supporters our best wishes for 2014.

This month, Ibraaz features further responses to our Platform 006 question, which addressed the role of the archive in developing and sustaining a critical and culturally located art history.

We are also pleased to publish a report of the symposium Future Imperfect, organized by Ibraaz in collaboration with Tate Modern and the Kamel Lazaar Foundation (www.kamellazaarfoundation.org), alongside an edited video featuring Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Tony Chakar, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Zineb Sedira, Tarek El Ariss, Todd Reisz, Abdelkader Damani, Omar Berrada, Lina Lazaar, Bassam El Baroni, and Douglas Coupland. We also publish an interview with curatorial collective, What, How & for Whom/WHW, on Meeting Points 7.

Though the world seems caught in a complicated political, economic, and indeed, ideological crisis, the question of the day is simple: what does the future hold? This question underscored the discussions that took place at 'Future Imperfect', a symposium organized by Ibraaz in collaboration with Tate Modern and the Kamel Lazaar Foundation on 9 November 2013. The conference included a range of speakers, opening with a performance lecture by Shuddhabrata Sengupta of Raqs Media Collective, followed by a keynote lecture by Douglas Coupland.

Ibraaz is pleased to announce the launch of Platform 006, which explores the following question:

What role can the archive play in developing and sustaining a critical and culturally located art history?

This month, Ibraaz published Ibraaz Talks with Trevor Paglen, Köken Ergun, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, and Karen Mirza and Brad Butler, staged at 13th Istanbul Biennial venue, SALT Beyoğlu.  In addition, there are reviews of the 4th Thessaloniki Biennale and exhibitions at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York and the Delfina Foundation, London, as well as the second instalment of The One That Got Away, an ongoing project by Shuruq Harb.

How can we define the notion of 'public space' and its utility in the civic and urban contexts today? At the recent 2013 'Future City' conference, such questions were explored in a two-day programme of discussion and expeditions that took place in Liverpool in September 2013. A collaborative project between the Liverpool Biennial and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art (Mathaf) in association with Tate Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University, 'Future City' brought together international thinkers and practitioners in the arts, urban development, architectural and visual culture fields to share ideas and visions for future cities.

This month, Ibraaz is also pleased to publish reviews and reports from Tunisia, Ramallah, Istanbul, London and New York, as well as two conversations from the latest series of Ibraaz Talks, staged at 13th Istanbul Biennial venue, SALT Beyoğlu, featuring Burak Arikan, Basak Senova, and Basim Magdy.

The Kamel Lazaar Foundation convened the second forum of Maghreb des Arts on May 10th at the Bardo Museum in Tunis. The theme in question was the future of the arts in the contemporary Maghreb. The forum followed up on questions posed last year about coordination issues, archiving, and theoretical research in Maghrebi visual arts. The forum was organized by Rachida Triki, who invited key players and theoreticians from the Maghrebi art scene to participate in the debate.

Future Imperfect brings together an international line-up of artists, writers and cultural practitioners to consider ways in which artistic practices can help inform and shape collective futures. Through performances, interviews, panel discussions and a screening programme, contributors will highlight how present histories and institutions are being shaped through propositional speculations on the future. 

During the opening of the 13th Istanbul Biennial, Anne Ben Barbar Mıyım? or Mom, Am I Barbarian?, (14th September – 20th October 2013), Ibraaz will be collaborating with SALT in producing a series of discussions with artists Basim Magdy, Burak Arikan, Trevor Paglen, Köken Ergun, Karen Mirza and Brad Butler, Lawrence Abu Hamdan and curator Basak Senova.

This month, Ibraaz is pleased to publish the first installment in a series of stories written by Shuruq Harb collectively titled 'The One that Got Away', and a selection of edited recordings from the radio series 'Our Lines are Now Open: On the Poetics and Politics of Language', produced by 98weeks, Lawrence Abu Hamdan and Nora Razian for Home Works 6.

In Essays, we publish 'Recalling the Future' by Daria Kirsanova and 'The Crisis of Art in Tunisia' by Farah Makni Hendaoui. In Reviews, we present insights into Tarek El-Ariss's Trials of Arab Modernity, the 55th Venice Biennale, and an overview of three exhibitions at Tate Modern in London of work by Saloua Raouda Choucair, Ibrahim El-Salahi and Meschac Gaba.

It was on the occasion of Slavs and Tatars's latest exhibition, Long Legged Linguistics (27 July-10 October 2013) at Art Space Pythagorion in Samos, an island that sits on the border between Greece amd Turkey (separated by the Aegean sea), that a lively panel discussion moderated by curator Marina Fokidis took place on 6th August. Ilker Aytürk, Political Science Professor at Bilkent University, Ankara, Konstantinos Tsitselikis, Professor of Human Rights and International Law at Macedonia University and Adnan Yildiz, Artistic Director of the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, had been invited to talk with Payam Sharifi of Slavs and Tatars so as to, in Fokidis's words, 'raise new questions, matters and concerns' while facing 'unaddressed issues.'

What role can the archive play in developing and sustaining a critical and culturally located art history?

Ibraaz will publish Platform 006 responses on the 2nd November 2013, and publicise these further at our upcoming Critical Art Forum at Tate Modern on 9th November 2013. We will also publish a selection of responses in our upcoming print volume in partnership with I. B. Tauris (2014).

The two-day conference 'Regional vis-à-vis Global Discourses: Contemporary Art from the Middle East' (6th-7th July 2013) was held at the Brunei Gallery at the School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London and was convened by Dr. Hamid Keshmirshekan. The conference was organised by the London Middle East Institute (in partnership with, amongst others, Ibraaz), and gathered an array of distinguished participants to examine the state and future of modern and contemporary art from the Middle East from a pedagogical, historical, regional and global perspective.

This month Ibraaz presents part two of an online version of The Incidental Insurgents, a project by Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme (currently showing in Points of Departure at the Institute of Contemporary Art, ICA, in London). We also publish conversations with Randa Mirza and Mounira Al Solh alongside two Ibraaz Talks featuring Wafaa Bilal and Slavs and Tatars, the latter recorded at '10 Years On: Art and Everday Life in Iraq and Iran'. In Reviews, we present critical angles on exhibitions from Cairo, Beirut, London and Venice. Ibraaz is also pleased to announce the publication of two texts in Essays in collaboration with Creative Time Reports.

In partnership with Winchester Centre for Global Futures in Art, Design and Media, Ibraaz hosted a two-day conference (7th-8th June 2013) '10 Years On: Art and Everyday Life in Iraq and Iran' exploring civil society, art practices, culture and everyday life in Iraq and Iran 10 years after the US-lead invasion of Iraq. Artists, academics and media professionals gathered at London's The Mosaic Rooms for stimulating discussions on pertinent contemporary issues.

5th-6th July 2013, 9am-7pm

Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre, Brunei Gallery

In partnership with the London Middle East Institute, Ibraaz is pleased to present a two-day conference, Regional Vis-à-vis Global Discourses: Contemporary Art from the Middle East.

The conference will examine the state and future of contemporary Middle Eastern art history and discuss the development of modern and contemporary art in an extended historical and global perspective. One of the objectives of this conference is to reflect upon the methodologies of art history and cultural studies and how they could be applied to the study of contemporary art from the Middle East. The conference will also investigate how contemporary, so-called global, theories impact on the production of art within the region.

Following on from the launch of Platform 005, Ibraaz is pleased to publish a multi-part interview with Tamara Chalabi, Reem Shather-Kubba and Jonathan Watkins on the Iraq Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, alongside discussions with Jeremy Hutchison, Nadia Ayari, and Adelita Husni-Bey, whose video, Alwan (2013), is presented in Projects.

In our May issue, Yasmin Khan provides a commentary on the contemporary art scene in Amman and Amy Charlesworth revisits Europlex, a 2003 work by Ursula Biemann and Angela Sanders. In Projects, Basak Senova introduces a series of images from Zeren Göktan's Counter (2013), whilst in Reviews, Daniella Rose King discusses the Birds Eye View Festival.

Wednesday, 22nd May, 6-8pm

The Institute for Human Activities has located its settlement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, eight hundred kilometers upstream from Kinshasa on the river Congo. Here, in one of the most burdened yet promising regions in the world, the Institute for Human Activities will launch its five-year Gentrification Program and, in an in vitro testing ground, mobilize the modalities of art production.

The talk will be followed by a roundtable discussion between Renzo Martens, TJ Demos, Anthony Downey (chair), and Sarah James.

In partnership with Winchester Centre for Global Futures in Art, Design & Media, Ibraaz presents a two-day public forum entitled '10 Years On: Art and Everyday Life in Iraq and Iran.' Panel discussions, keynote speeches and performances will explore issues about civil society, culture and everyday life in both countries.

Bringing together specialists and professionals in mass media, visual and performing arts, cultural and social studies and history, the forum will examine representations of Iraq and Iran. Specifically, the forum will offer diverse alternative accounts of life in Iraq and Iran today as seen through the prism of visual cultures. The event brings together artists, journalists, writers and practitioners from across the region including the Iraqi-American artist Wafaa Bilal, BBC news journalist Rageh Omaar, Slavs and Tatars, Professor Jonathan Harris, Jananne Al-Ani, Adel Abidin, Dr. Anthony Downey, Rijin Sahakian, Dr. Kathy Battista, Reem Alasadi, Omar Kholeif, Jamal Penjweny, Shirley Elghanian, Noor Kadhim, Daniel McClean, The Freaks, Siba Aldabbagh, Shireen Walton, Daria Kirsanova, and many others.

Ibraaz is pleased to announce the launch of Platform 005, which explores the following question:

How has a globalised cultural economy affected the production of contemporary visual culture in North Africa and the Middle East?

In response to this question, we publish essays, interviews, projects and responses by a number of figures, including Gulf Labor, Walter D. Mignolo, Hans Haacke, Raed Yassin, Nadia Mounajjed, Sophia Al-Maria, Shuruq Harb, Ala Younis, Hanan Toukan, Haig Aivazian, Visualizing Palestine, Ahmad Zatari, Sheikha Hoor Al-Qasimi, Yuko Hasegawa, Mario Rizzi, Cynthia Zaven, Lasse Lau, Simone Fattal, Mirene Arsanios, HG Masters, Adelita Husni-Bey and Anahita Razmi.

This April Ibraaz officially launches its reviews section, with critical reflections on exhibitions in Dubai, Beirut, Sharjah, London, Hong Kong and New York by writers including Malu Halasa, Fawz Kabra, Nat Muller, and Sheyma Buali. In interviews, we are pleased to publish a conversation with Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian on the occasion of her survey exhibition in Dubai and, in a follow on from our Ibraaz Talks series launched at Art Dubai in 2013, a video interview between Omar Kholeif and Guy Mannes-Abott on drone fiction.

This March, Ibraaz is pleased to publish the first interviews in a video series produced at Art Dubai. Ibraaz's Senior Editor Omar Kholeif talks to curator and critic Murtaza Vali and artist Basim Magdy about the subject of domesticity and science fiction respectively. Further conversations, with Sophia Al-Maria, Shuruq Harb, Ala Younis and Guy Mannes-Abott, will be uploaded in April.

Battles of Images, (2nd, 5th, 12th and 13th March 2013), was a series of talks and screenings this month at the Contemporary Image Collective in Cairo. It was the final program initiated by outgoing director Mia Jankowicz and was curated by artist Shuruq Harb. Thinking of news images as a major export of the region, the series examined, 'the visual culture resulting from shifts in photojournalism towards systems of aid', and it attracted a large audience.

Ibraaz is pleased to announce an interview with, and a short film produced by, Caveh Zahedi (The Sheik and I, 2012). In Projects, we present the instruction manual to Tom Bogaert's Minecraft Mausoleum, a project that presents an interactive model of a mausoleum for Syria's president Bashar al-Assad. Elsewhere, readers will find an essay by Anthony Downey published in collaboration with ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe, an essay by Amal Khalaf on Bahrain's Pearl Roundabout, and a conversation between Elisabeth Jacquette and Hady Kamar, Taha Belal and Jenifer Evans, the latter trio being the founders of Nile Sunset Annex, an artist-run gallery space in Cairo.

In a globalised cultural economy, how have the demands of news media, journalism, cultural diplomacy and international market integration influenced and developed contemporary visual culture in North Africa and the Middle East?

Enter a building on the Nile Corniche, walk up four flights of stairs, ring the doorbell of the apartment on your right, walk through the living room, and you will find yourself at Nile Sunset Annex – the newest gallery in a wave of new independent art spaces founded in Egypt in 2012. Nile Sunset Annex is a self-funded, experimental artist-run space founded by Hady Kamar, Taha Belal and Jenifer Evans. It hosts local and international artists for month-long exhibitions and runs a parallel program of publications and discussions.

This month Ibraaz commences the commissioning cycle for Platform 005, which will examine issues around globalisation and contemporary art. The question in full is as follows:

In a globalised cultural economy, how have the demands of news media, journalism, cultural diplomacy, and international market integration influenced and developed contemporary visual culture in North Africa and the Middle East?

There has been, according to the Egyptian philantropist and investor, Shafiq Gabr, a gradual erosion in understanding between the so-called 'East' and the 'West' that has resulted in a series of dangerous caricatures ossifying into facts. To counter, or at least foster a better level of understanding, and thus ameliorate these caricatures, in part at least, Gabr has given over his Foundation to what has been seen by many to be a ground-breaking initiative, namely, East-West: The Art Of Dialogue, launched with panel discussions at the Dorchester Hotel on 15th November 2012.

Ibraaz is pleased to announce that Uncommon Grounds: New Media and Contemporary Art Practice in North Africa and the Middle East will be jointly published by I.B. Tauris and Ibraaz in October 2013.

The theme draws on the historical contexts of new media in artistic practices and considers how social media has emerged through those discourses in the last decade. Edited by Anthony Downey, this will be the first volume in a publication series examining artistic practices across North Africa and the Middle East.

How do you educate displaced people and for that matter, who is displaced in the twenty-first century? For artist Ahmet Ögüt, the project is simple: with the cooperation of the Delfina Foundation and Tate Modern, Southwark Refugee Forum, Migrant Resource Centre, The Silent University, a knowledge and skill-sharing platform, was started in 2012 in collaboration with refugees and asylum seekers in London. It was a similar story for Occupy London's School of Ideas or The Public School, a project initiated in Los Angeles in the basement of Telic Arts Exchange in 2007, though both examples stem from more localised issues, namely, the public education system and rising tuition fees. In all of these cases, so-called 'alternative' education projects are started in response to a system's failure to respond to the educational needs of either a migrant or particular population.

How can an arts agency engage or intervene with the politics of conflict and post-conflict situations? This is a question that I have wrestled with since I was first introduced to Culture+Conflict's mission during an informal conversation in 2010. The question of whether it 'should' or 'could' connect with such spheres was an initial reaction.

Following the publication of Ibraaz's Platform 004, November saw the launch of our partnership with the book publisher I.B Tauris. At an event hosted by the Delfina Foundation, we announced that a selection of essays from Platform 004 and other commissioned material will be published by I.B. Tauris in 2013 under the title Uncommon Grounds: New Media and Visual Art in North Africa and the Middle East (I.B. Tauris/Ibraaz Publishing, 2013). This volume will be edited by Anthony Downey and will be the first in an ongoing series of books published over the coming years.

Nestled between the slopes of Honolulu and Hawaii's famed Diamond Head, amidst the brilliant blues of the Pacific Ocean, sits Shangri La, the late American heiress, philanthropist and art collector Doris Duke's custom-designed sanctuary for Islamic art opened to the public in November 2002, nearly a decade after Duke's passing. Born in New York City, Duke was the only child of James Buchanan Duke, a founder of the American Tobacco Company and Duke Energy Company. An avid traveller deeply impressed by the Islamic cultures she encountered on her journeys, the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art (DDFIA) is one of three operating foundations supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, which is based in New York. The DDFIA maintains Shangri La, a residence and collection in Hawaii that is accessible to scholars, artists and the public, thanks to the help of Building Bridges, a national grants programme supporting projects that increase the understanding of Muslim societies through the arts and media. Since 2004, the DDFIA has invited scholars and since 2005, artists, to participate in a residency program at Shangri La, enabling the creation of work that complements the collection whilst dually advancing the study and understanding of Islamic art and culture. Speaking with Shangri La Executive Director Deborah Pope and Program Manager Carol Khewhok, Isabella Ellaheh Hughes learns about the programme, upcoming exhibitions and who will be the next artists to participate in their residency programme.

Lost in Paradise at Loft Sévigné (14­–25 November, 2012) brings together five contemporary artists of differing cultural and religious backgrounds to explore the role of spirituality in their practices. Organized by A&E projects, which specialises in contemporary art from China, India and Iran, curators Arianne Levene and Églantine de Ganay invite audiences to read deeper meanings into works, some of which have never been previously seen in France. On the choice of artists - Reza Aramesh, Shezad Dawood, Idris Khan, Ariandhitya Pramuhendra and Michal Rovner - De Ganay stressed the importance of giving a platform to lesser known practitioners, wishing to move away from what the curators call 'simplistic' views of art from Asia and the Middle East.

The revolution in Syria has brought both danger and new possibilities for the little recognised Syrian art scene. According to the German art historian Charlotte Bank, who lived for 12 years between Damascus and Berlin and is an expert on the artistic scene there: 'Because of the lack of opportunities to show at home, there was never an art scene as there is in Beirut and in Cairo. The Syrian art scene had a lack of exposure that was quite dramatic.'

Ibraaz is pleased to announce the launch of Platform 004 alongside the re-launch of its online publishing forum. Ibraaz Version 2.0 has been designed to reflect the significant amount of content on our site and encourage the use of our ever-expanding archive. New features such as the 'Related Content' and 'Most Viewed' sidebars will also allow visitors to explore the expanding web of material according to artist, author and region of interest. All galleries have been redesigned to ensure the quality of images and easy access to them.

Ibraaz is pleased to announce it is hosting a lecture-performance by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige at Rivington Place in London on the 11th of October, in conjunction with the Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva) and Frieze VIP events.

The lecture-performance Aida, Save Me relates the tale of an incredible adventure through the often unstable and oscillating meanings associated with images, representations, fictions and documents in the Middle East today. Addressing the urgency and constraints that emerge in the use of certain images, it will be followed by a Q&A session chaired by Anthony Downey.

In conjunction with Frieze VIP event­s, Ibraaz and Iniva are pleased to present a lecture-performance by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige. The performance will be followed by a Q&A session chaired by Anthony Downey (Editor, Ibraaz).

The lecture-performance Aida, Save Me explores the urgency and constraints that emerge in the use of imagery within the context of the Middle East today. In April 2006, during the Beirut premiere of Hadjithomas and Joreige's second feature film A Perfect Day, an extraordinary incident not only disrupted the film's release but continues to resonate throughout their work. A series of disappearances followed and the lecture-performance measures the distance between recognition and representation, and in turn recounts an adventure whereby fiction takes on the appearance of a document.

The Arab British Centre's Safar: A Journey through Popular Arab Cinema, started on Friday the 21st of September at the ICA with an afternoon-long, three-session forum. It was a lively debate among Arab film scholars, directors, critics and programmers based in different parts of the world, and represented different spectrums of the industry not necessarily agreeing on, among other things, differences between art house and commercial cinema, fluctuating movie-going trends, censorship and distribution.

With the benefit of hindsight, what role does new media play in artistic practices, activism, and as a tool for social change in the Middle East and North Africa today?

On Thursday, the 23rd of August, Syrian filmmaker and co-founder of DoxBox Film Festival Orwa Nyrabia disappeared on his way to Cairo from Damascus. A statement to international press and film organisations was promptly released by his wife, Syrian filmmaker Diana al Jeiroudi: 'Syrian film producer Orwa Nyrabia disappeared on his way heading to Cairo at 5:00 pm, on August 23, 2012. I lost contact with him soon after his arrival at Damascus International Airport. According to Egyptian Airlines, he did not board the plane, which indicates that he was arrested by the Syrian authorities at the airport,' she said. Over a week later, there has been no any update on Nyrabia's whereabouts.

For August, Ibraaz has published two videos by the anonymous Syrian group Masasit Mati, a collective of actors and artists who have been voicing their criticisms of the Assad regime with videos of puppet shows uploaded to YouTube entitled Top Goon: Diaries of a Little Dictator. These video works are accompanied by an account from the group's masked director Jameel, both in English and Arabic, with an introductory text by curator Amira Gad.

Apart from its traditional location in Kassel, dOCUMENTA (13) occupies three more 'platforms' – in Kabul, Banff  and Alexandria respectively. Conceptually, it is unclear why exactly these locations were chosen to hold dOCUMENTA's seminars, other than geopolitical determinants or the desire to extend geographically. During 'The Cairo Seminar: The Seminar', from the 1st till the 8th of July in Alexandria, the Artistic Director of dOCUMENTA (13) Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev unequivocally declared: 'Without Alexandria, Kassel is obscene. Without Kabul, Kassel is obscene. Kabul and Alexandria are what make Kassel bearable'.

'I had something of an epiphany after visiting the British Museum's Word Into Art exhibition in 2006, witnessing the curatorial trajectory that curator Venetia Porter had followed in curating works from modern and contemporary Middle Eastern epoch', explained Linda Komaroff, Los Angeles County Museum of Art's curator of Islamic Art, in a conversation with me in July. Komaroff, an accomplished scholar on Iran and Central Asia, has been in the post at LACMA since 1995 and is the author of several books and curatorial projects, which include Letters in Gold: Ottoman Calligraphy from the Sakip Sabanci Collection, Istanbul (1999) (as a curator), The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia, 1256-1353 (2003) and most recently Gifts of the Sultan: The Arts of Giving at the Islamic Courts (2011), which toured to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2011/12) and made its third stop at the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha (2012). Her mission is to expand the contemporary collection of works from the Middle East as part of the LACMA Art of the Middle East (AME) department.

For the past ten years, the exhibition Printemps des Arts has brought together a number of modern and contemporary artists in the heart of the Palais Abdellia in La Marsa, the northern suburb of Tunis. The organisational committee of this meeting of artists and the general public invites gallerists and independent artists to present recent work; a prize is awarded on each occasion, and homage is paid to one of the artists chosen by the organisers.

Ibraaz is pleased to announce the question for its upcoming Platform 004, to be published in November 2012, is as follows:

'With the benefit of hindsight, what role does new and emerging media play in artistic practices, activism and as a tool for social change in the Middle East and North Africa today?'

In addressing this question, Platform 004 is seeking to explore a number of issues, not least what is meant by the term 'new media' and the status of emerging media in relation to art practices across the region, new technology, social media, and social change.

The video programme Virtual Agoras, presented at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art as part of the Berlin Biennale, is the result of ongoing research into creative and artistic online activism related to the uprising in Syria.

Following the closure of the country to foreign journalists, and the restrictions in place even before that, ordinary Syrians have taken it upon themselves to document, inform and comment on unfolding events, developing what might be termed  an 'informal news channel', by uploading their videos onto platforms such as YouTube and Facebook. Besides videos documenting the protests and escalating violence, a great number of creative videos have been made and distributed that comment on events and their representation in official Syrian media, as well as the helplessness of the international community.

It was through a number of conversations with international artists in the last few years that the artist Zineb Sedira – who was born in France to Algerian parents – came to identify an interest in Algerian history and culture but at the same time a lack of knowledge and accessibility to the country. After years of thinking and planning a platform to produce and exhibit art in Algeria, a year of pilot residencies has been launched to encourage cross-cultural exchange and collaboration between the north African country and the rest of the world.

Can historical rupture and continuity ever be thought apart from one another? Is rupture not the very thing that allows for continuity (except when an imposed narrative of continuity serves some power or purpose), and the sometimes stagnant waters of continuity what open the way for radical breaks or less radical shifts? When attempting to write a retroactive history of a date, mustn't the present and future, however inaccessible, also be written into the account for that account to be substantial and just?

In conjunction with artist Sama Alshaibi's public speaking tour of the UAE, supported by the US Embassy to the UAE as part of its cultural diplomacy initiatives, and in partnership with Traffic, the latter a non-commercial arts and creative hub in Dubai, I was invited to moderate the panel 'Where do we go from here? Women in Contemporary Arab Art'.

In our interview for June, Palestinian artist Taysir Batniji discusses his recent video Ma mère, David et moi, 2012, which premiered at the Cinéma du Réel festival at the Centre Pompidou this past March, with independent curator Silke Schmickl. Composed of videos, photographic images, and TV recordings, alongside images from YouTube and Google, Ma mère, David et moi explores the memory of absence and the narrative strategies for reconstituting the elisions of the past and present. In addition, Schmickl and Batniji discuss the recent series of drawings commissioned by the Abraaj Capital Art Prize,To my brother, 2012, which refers to the loss of Batniji's brother, who was killed by a sniper in the First Palestinian Intifada (1987-1993).

In Hayden White's essay 'The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality', he writes: 'Narrative might well be considered a solution to a problem of general human concern, namely, the problem of how to translate knowing into telling, the problem of fashioning human experience into a form assimilable to structures of meaning that are generally human rather than culture-specific'. White explains how narrativity and storytelling help us to understand culture, however exotic. It leads one to ask the question: when an artwork utilises the telling of narratives to convey a very specific and complex history, how can information be conveyed and new knowledge produced?

Founded by Vera Tamari, the original idea behind Cities Exhibition was to draw attention to a variety of relationships between people, place and time, highlighting the cadences and uniqueness of each city through the narrative of time. Cities Exhibition, which will take place at Birzeit University Museum, tries to look beyond the typical representations of nostalgia and folklore in Palestine, juxtaposing past and contemporary visual and cultural evidence, not only to affirm the uniqueness of cities such as Jericho, but also to challenge issues of memory, identity and change.

Yazid Anani, the curator of this year's edition of Cities Exhibition, re-explores this concept in the city of Jericho by using an unconventional curatorial approach: in his call for entries, the curator invited artists from all over the world to explore Jericho via a series of 'trails' in an attempt to reestablish the lost connection between man and the cosmos through interventions, research and art practice, with exploration as a key theme.

Established in 1973, The British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) is the leading umbrella organisation for Middle Eastern and North African Studies in the UK. Partnering with London School of Economics' Middle East Centre, this year's BRISMES graduate conference, entitled Change and Continuity in the Middle East, invited Master's students and PhD candidates to submit papers concerned with 'Rethinking West Asia, North Africa and the Gulf after 2011'. The culmination was a range of over 50 papers spanning a wide area of study from economics and politics to history and culture.

We are pleased to announce that Ibraaz platform 003 was by far our most successful to date, attracting readers from across the world and almost doubling our readership since our launch. Whilst this was testament to the quality of our contributors and the overwhelming response to our platform 003 question, it was also testament to the power of social media. For the first time since our launch in June 2011, Ibraaz focused resources on social media networking, which in turn saw our presence on Facebook (13,150 likes as of the 29th of May, 2012) and Twitter grow exponentially.

The city of Carthage is a tale of multiculturalism and globalisation before these terms had currency in post-colonial studies and the free market rhetoric of neo-liberal expansionism. The name of the city has roots in Latin, Aramaic, Hebrew, Phoenician, Etruscan, Arabic, and Ancient Greek terminology. It has also been populated by Phoenicians, Romans and Arabs over a history that reaches back to the 1st millennium BC and was a significant locus of international trade until recently. Amongst its present-day ruins, tourists flock to see not only the extant remains of the Roman Forum that once stood there but the view from the hill of Byrsa, a purview of influence over a crucial Mediterranean route that once made Carthage one of the most important pre-industrial cities in the world (perhaps second only to Alexandria during the Hellenistic period). Today, however, Carthage is a suburb of Tunis with a population of no more than 25,000 people. As with all great cities, Carthage has indeed seen better days.

This year's Palestine Film Festival in London celebrated 100 years of filmmaking in Palestine with the finest repertoire of films seen since the festival's inception in 1998.

The festival opened with Man Without a Cell Phone (2010) a 'generational comedy', which was followed by a question and answer session with the Cannes award-winning director Sameh Zoabi. Rarely-seen archival footage documenting British colonial rule of Palestine was a highlight of the festival, with commentary given by Francis Gooding of the Colonial Film project and Ilan Pappe, academic and author of the highly acclaimed The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

Initiated by the Kamel Lazaar Foundation in 2011, Ibraaz has reached its first year of production since launching at the Venice Biennale last year. With the launch of Platform 003, Ibraaz will have published over 200 contributors in less than 12 months, with material ranging from platform responses to essays to interviews and artists’ projects.

For Platform 003, we formulated a question that explored how art as a practice engages with institutional contexts, public space and the ideal of civil society today. We are very pleased to announce that we received a significant number of informed and engaging responses and Platform 003 will include texts, images and videos from, amongst others, Larissa Sansour, William Wells, Tessa Jackson, Aaron Cezar, Angela Harutyunyan, Beral Madra, Ergin Cavusoglu, Brian Kuan Wood, Laura U. Marks, Barrak Alzaid, Amira Gad, Shumon Basar, Hanan Toukan, Khaled Alhamzah, Houcine Tlili, Sandra Teitge, Charlotte Bank, and Alice Planel. We would like to formally thank all those who have contributed to this and previous platforms.

This symposium, The New Arab: Art and Culture in the ‘Imagined’ Arab World, accompanied the show Subversion at Manchester’s Cornerhouse Gallery and was chaired by its curator Omar Kholeif. Opening the discussion with an introduction into the initial thoughts and ideas behind the exhibition, Kholeif cited a ‘catalytic conversation’ between artists, curators and writers working in and on the Middle East about the reconstruction and re-conception of Arab identity.

In an exclusive video interview, Nat Muller, curator of the 2012 Abraaj Capital Art Prize (ACAP), talks to recipient artist Raed Yassin about the manipulation of popular culture in his work and his barbed interpretations of historical narratives. In a conversation with Angela Harutyunyan, Jasmina Metwaly discusses the ambivalence of artistic production in the context of ongoing unrest and responds to what it means to be an artist working with the grammar of activism against the backdrop of post-revolutionary Egypt. Upcoming content  includes an interview between Slavs and Tatars and Franz Thalmair, and a conversation with Ziad Antar and Ibraaz's Editor Anthony Downey.

This is a video recording of the book launch held at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art (Rotterdam, the Netherlands) on the 30th of January, 2012. The event included introductions by Director of Witte de With Defne Ayas, former Head of Publications Monika Szewczyk (2008 – February 2012), and a discussion between Tariq Ramadan, Willem Schinkel and respondent Wendelien van Oldenborgh. The book launch was preceded by a projection of Van Oldenborgh’s slide work Supposing I love you. And you also love me. (2011), featuring Tariq Ramadan.

The 5th Annual March Meeting, organised by the Sharjah Art Foundation (SAF), chose this year to focus on issues pertaining to residencies and commissions, particularly with regard to artists and audiences, and especially when this takes place in the MENASA (Middle East, North Africa & South Asia) region. In SAF President Sheikha Hoor Al-Qasimi’s opening statement, she summarised the recent explosion of interest in these two strands of contemporary programming, the Foundation’s commitment to hosting artist residencies and supporting the production of new work, and how the Meeting hoped to expand upon and diversify some of the discussions surrounding these two areas. The three-day event saw 80 individuals from across the globe contributing to 11 panel discussions, 16 presentations, four in-conversations and six break-out sessions. It was accompanied by two exhibitions, one performance and the Middle East premiere of a recent film commission.

In a recently pulished video interview, Shezad Dawood speaks to Ibraaz's Contributing Editor Sara Raza about his multi-faceted practice encompassing film, textiles, prints and sculpture through which he explores ideas of mutability and hybridity. In addition, Syrian-born poet Adonis speaks to Ibraaz's Laura Allsop about his origins as a poet, his interest in Sufism, his experiences of exile and how he is finding new expression in visual art-making. In News, Ibraaz has published a report on the Art & Patronage Summit, held in London over the 12th to 13th January 2012, and Amira Gad reports on the Power Cut Middle East programme at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.  

Ibraaz would like to announce its upcoming Platform 003 Question:

Can artistic practices offer insights into and simultaneously negotiate the demands of cultural institutions, the politics of public space, and the ideal of civil society in the MENA region?

For the first time, Ibraaz is opening its platform question up to the public and would like to invite considered responses. Contributions can be submitted via text, image, video or sound.

Over two days in early January, through four keynote lectures, six panel discussions, a performance, a film screening and numerous coffee breaks, the first Art & Patronage Summit aimed to inspire a commitment through knowledge to benefit artists and develop and support arts institutions in the Middle East. Opening the first day at the British Museum in London, Art & Patronage Director and Founder and self-proclaimed troublemaker Hossein Amirsadeghi called for creative thinking and straight talking, and declared that if you bring enough dedicated people together, great change can be achieved in a short period of time. Looking at institutions, funding models, collections, education, risk and power, the Summit instigated debate and consistently drew attention to the numerous elephants filling the room.

Ibraaz's Contributing Editor Amira Gad reports on Power Cut Middle East, a themed program within the International Film Festival Rotterdam’s main Signals section, which took place between the 25th of January and the 2nd of February, 2012. Power Cut Middle East presented films and visual artworks from the region, with a focus on Syria and Egypt, and consisted of short films, documentaries, feature films and visual art installations guided by discussions, lectures and artist talks.

On the occasion of Rabih Mroué's US debut at PS122's COIL Festival in New York, Ibraaz publishes an exclusive interview with the Beirut-based artist about his new 'lecture-performance' The Pixelated Revolution. 

Ibraaz has also published the third installment of Libyan artist and ceramicist Hadia Gana's diary, which she has been keeping since the revolution in Libya began in 2011. Upcoming content includes an interview with Shezad Dawood in anticipation of his show at Modern Art Oxford this spring, and a conversation with Christine Tohme, discussing the launch of Homeworks in Beirut. 

In an exclusive video interview, artist Nadia Kaabi-Linke discusses her practice with Ibraaz's Associate Editor Lina Lazaar, explorating the artist's interests in tracing elided histories and submerged voices. 

Recently published is a video documenting Reza Aramesh's recent exhibition, Them Who Dwell on the Earth, at One Marylebone, London, which includes images of source material for Aramesh's work and extensive footage of his show in London, and the latest instalment of Libyan artist and ceramicist Hadia Gana’s diary, which she kept throughout the recent conflict in Libya. 

Originally launched as part of the 54th Venice Bienniale in June 2011, and in conjunction with its first publication The Future of a Promise, Ibraaz has since expanded its remit to include Interviews and Projects, alongside its Essays and Platform sections. For Platform 002, we posed the relatively open question:

What relationship does visual culture have to the world we live in?

Ibraaz would like to congratulate Coline Milliard on her position as UK Editor for Louise Blouin Media and introduce new Managing Editor Laura Allsop, alongside the Contributing Editors Amira Gad, Sara Raza, Ghalya Saadawi, Rachida Triki and Murtaza Vali. 

Ibraaz's launch at the 54th Venice Biennale on 1 June 2011 was met with an overwhelming response. Coinciding with the opening of The Future of a Promise (curated by Ibraaz's Associate Editor Lina Lazaar), we launched our web research forum and first publication, the latter being the eponymous catalogue for the show.