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.

Ibraaz has also been preparing the theme for Platform 005, which will examine a number of interrelated issues including how, in a globalised economy, news media, art criticism, cultural diplomacy, and international market integration have all influenced and developed contemporary visual culture in North Africa and the Middle East.

The full question for Platform 005 will be released in January 2013 and will become the starting point for Volume 2 of Ibraaz's partnership with I.B. Tauris.

We publish an interview between artist Mahmoud Khaled and Omar Kholeif, who both recently contributed to a panel discussion produced in partnership with Culture+Conflict and the Delfina Foundation, which also featured Ahmad Hosni, Daniella Rose King and Dalia Mostafa. On the discussion, we have a jointly-commissioned essay by Kholeif inspired by the roundtable. We also present Bijan Moosavi's recent project The Sound and the Fury and a report on The Silent University's recent roundtable discussion at Tate Modern on alternative education practices and platforms.

From everyone at Ibraaz, we would like to take this moment to wish you a warm and restful holiday period.

Image captions from top to bottom; Mahmoud Khaled. detail from Do You Have Work Tomorrow?, 2012. Courtesy of the artist; Egyptian Visual Culture in the Context of Conflict and Unrest. Photograph by Rammy El Saadany. Courtesy of Culture+Conflict; "The Silent University Conference: Alternative to What?" A conference exploring alternative models of education, at Tate Modern, Starr Auditorium, Saturday 1 December 2012. Photo courtesy: Ahmet Ögüt and Pilvi Takala.