Ziad Antar, Foujaira, from the series Portrait of a Territory, 2010, c-print. Commissioned and produced by Sharjah Art Foundation. Courtesy of the artist.

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.

The current platform responses and others can be read at www.ibraaz.org/platforms, and the fully searchable archive is available at www.ibraaz.org.

INTERVIEWS

L-R: Tarzan & Arab, Posters from the Gazawood Project, 2010, installation view, Subversion, Cornerhouse, Manchester, 2012. Photograph by WeAreTAPE.com. Courtesy and © the artists and Cornerhouse, Manchester; Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, A Letter Can Always Reach its Destination, 2012, video still. Courtesy of the artists and Abraaj Capital Art Prize; Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Aural Contract: The Freedom of Speech Itself, 2012, installation view, The Showroom, London. Courtesy of the artist and The Showroom, London.

Platform 003 will also see the publication of interviews with the 2012 Abraaj Capital Art Prize winners Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Christine Tohme, Mohanad Yaqubi, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Ziad Antar, Tarzan and Arab, Jack Persekian, Michket Krifa, Slavs and Tatars, and others.

PROJECTS

L-R: Sinisa Vlajkovic, Across The Street, Beirut, Lebanon, 2003, photograph. Courtesy of the artist; Saba Innab, Untitled, 2011, reinforced concrete map on steel table, 100 x 100 cm. Courtesy of the artist; Bus Cemetery, a project by Dictaphone Group, 2012. Courtesy of Dictaphone Group.

As part of our Platform 003 Projects, Ibraaz will feature an audio and text work by the Dictaphone Group, Saba Innab’s project on Amman, entitled On-longing, Marwa Arsanios’s final installment of The Missing Link, Isak Berbic’s recently shown D.M., The Arabian Gulf Chapter, and image-led projects by artists Seher Shah, Sinisa Vlajkovic, and Myriam Abdelaziz.

ESSAYS

L-R: UNCOVERED Archive. Courtesy of Basak Senova; Mohammed Rashed Buali, The Good Omen, 2009, film still. Produced by Bahrain Film Production. Courtesy of Mohammed Rashed Buali; Caecilia Pieri, Baghdad, February 2011, photograph. Courtesy and © Caecilia Pieri.

As part of our continued commitment to publishing full-length essays, Ibraaz will publish commissioned essays by Sheyma Buali on filmmaking in the Gulf, Basak Senova on the perception of occupation and control in Cyprus today, Alice Planel on contemporary art practices in Algeria, and Omar Kholeif’s questioning of art’s relationship to the demands of revolution. Ibraaz will also re-publish Caecilia Pieri's essay on the Urban Observatory of Beirut.

UPCOMING CONTENT AND NEWS

In the weeks following the launch of Platform 003, Ibraaz will be publishing weekly rolling content in the form of a project by 2011 Emdash Award-winner Anahita Razmi, and interviews with artists Fayçal Baghriche, Driss Ouadahi and Taysir Batniji. Ibraaz will also publish Anthony Downey’s essay on the aesthetics of conflict in the Middle East today.

In our News section, Ibraaz has recently published reports on the March Meeting in Sharjah and will follow up with reports on the recent conference held at the Cornerhouse gallery in Manchester to mark the launch of Subversion (curated by Omar Kholeif) and the 2012 London Palestine Film Festival.

Ibraaz is pleased to announce the appointment of Bashar Lazaar as our Social Media Manager. Bashar was one of the founders of SAWTY, a not-for-profit, non-politically-aligned organisation that was set up in the wake of the Tunisian revolution. Meaning both ‘my voice’ or ‘my vote’, SAWTY sought to provide an objective platform for an open discussion about political parties in the country. It has enjoyed a popular following since its inception. For Bashar’s full bio, please see: http://www.ibraaz.org/about/.

FUTURE PROJECTS

We are also pleased to announce that we are currently in discussion with a number of organisations regarding the future publication of Ibraaz's online content in Arabic and English and a biannual print publication of Ibraaz’s online essays, artists' projects and interviews. More details will follow in June, 2012.

ABOUT

Ibraaz is an online publishing forum initiated by the Kamel Lazaar Foundation. It publishes essays, interviews and artists’ projects on visual culture within and beyond the Middle East and North Africa.

Ibraaz Platform 004 will be launched in November 2012.