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Platform 010 Editorial

Ibraaz

Edited by Anthony Downey (IB Tauris, 2014)

What are the urgent questions affecting cultural production in Turkey? I am writing from the perspective of Turkey, rather than the perspective of the Middle East and North Africa in general...

There is never a neutral position for critique, but there certainly ought to be the practice of critique. And that is precisely the element that is missing in top-down formation of the art scene in West Asia and North Africa, and perhaps in the rest of the non-western art scene.

'The following considerations on performance as an artistic medium in the region of North Africa and Middle East refer to more general problems that relate to the art form's status as an institutionalized aesthetic practice...'

'To avoid misunderstanding, I write from the perspective of Turkey, because I can't really speak for North Africa nor for the Middle East in general...'

Contemporary Cinema from North Africa

The excited chatter about unrest and uprisings in the western world has focused particularly on a number of countries in North Africa and in what we here refer to as the Middle East (meaning anything between eighteen to thirty-eight countries according to Wikipedia). In the UK, we have received a...

A few Middle Eastern and North African countries having a strong control over means of expression are now present in some major artistic international events such as the Venice Biennale. The concept of national pavilions provides a vivid example demonstrating how international relations and diplomatic issues can influence artistic productions...

Theatre As a Tool of Empowerment

Platform for discussion004 With the benefit of hindsight, what role does new media play in artistic practices, activism, and as an agent for social change in the Middle East and North Africa today? Basim Magdy 2 November 2012 Basim Magdy Every Subtle Gesture, 2012 - ongoing Colour prints on Fuji...

Marie-Monique Steckel in conversation with Fawz Kabra

Reem Fadda in conversation with Fawz Kabra

Mohssin Harraki in conversation with Karima Boudou

Eric Van Hove in conversation with Natasha Hoare

Hicham Khalidi in conversation with Daniella Rose King

MADRASSA Collective in conversation with Antonia Alampi

Leung Chi Wo in conversation with Robin Peckham

Hamza Halloubi in conversation with Natasha Hoare

The second meeting of Maghreb des Arts

Future Imperfect, A Symposium

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Edited by Anthony Downey (Sternberg Press, 2016)

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Okwui Enwezor: in conversation with Anthony Downey

Ibn Khaldun’s The Muqadimmah

To close Ibraaz Platform 010, we present new essays by Ibraaz Editor-in-Chief Anthony Downey, Ibraaz Senior Editor Stephanie Bailey, Ibraaz Contributing Editor Ala Younis, and Natasha Hoare; interviews with Szabolcs KissPál and Mahmoud Khaled, Toleen Touq, Cevdet Erek, Hammad Nasar; projects by Shadi Habib Allah, Mahmoud Bakhshi, Maryam Monalisa Gharavi,...

Notes on Geo-cultural Exhibitions

At Aicon Gallery, New York

Ibraaz 5th Year Anniversary Editorial

An Introduction to Platform 010

The varying political, cultural and economic circumstances of the participants of Art Dubai 2016, Design Days and the March Meeting, merit further consideration, as it is the differences among them that highlight the current constraints and opportunities for cultural production in the region.

As a historian of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Middle Eastern art, I am concerned with the urgent questions facing cultural production as well as those facing histories of cultural production. My response below reflects that concern.

Of course, I do not wish to be misunderstood as arguing for nativism or closure. But the specific history of the region matters deeply, as factual evidence, but even more so in terms of identifying resources that can be transformed and activated in new ways today.

To answer this question I propose an excerpt from a text in progress called 'Art and Garbage'. This piece is intended to look into the relation between urgent social problems – in this case the ongoing garbage crisis in Lebanon – and contemporary art.

The development of a healthy regional Arab art scene, like anywhere else in the world, requires the collaborative efforts of the different components that constitute it.

Genealogy of a Territory at MuCEM, Marseille

'Mixed Media I (2009) is a list of 50 pages of technical descriptions of contemporary art pieces. The list, made up of automatic extractions of data about techniques used in contemporary art practices, is a multi-format, translatable database...'

Adel Abidin presents Subway Scene (2015).

For Ibraaz Platform 009, Hassan Darsi presents a photo essay.

'Do not pollute others' hearing with shameful sounds...'

'A few notes on the difference between performance art and mayonnaise...'

Portrait of a Salafi en abyme in the Cyber World

This research-based response marks the beginning of a collaborative project undertaken by Clare Davies and Nida Ghouse that considers histories of artistic production in relation to the concept of metanoia.

Instead of focusing on the location of the 'MENA' in the context of the Global South, I will speak from the perspective of how such a location is of relevance to South Asia (which will be excusable, I hope, since 'MENA' is often compounded with 'SA' to form MENASA in...

The Cultural Centre of the Philippines opened to great political fanfare on 10 September 1969, with a ceremony that was graced by none less than California Governor Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy acting on the orders of President Nixon.

In a recent video work, Mouthfeel (2014) and a related lecture-performance titled Playlist (2014), I focused on symmetries between forms of aspirational consumption in the Global South.

Embroiderers of Actuality is an action that aims to be a sensible provocation: a visual discussion about the position of women in the society.

The term 'Global South' is quite new to me – but since my practice is concerned with the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade and the impact colonialism has on today's power structures I find it obvious that the concept of the 'Global South' is of great relevance in my...

The group of paintings is inspired by 'momentary images' or more accurately frozen moments taken from the contemporary cityscape of Egypt, as well as from personal records; old photographs found in family albums.

In the years that followed the destruction of the Berlin Wall, which triggered the rise of post-colonial studies, the definition of the term 'the Global South' has changed dramatically.

Strategic though it may be, the binary of 'South' and 'North' is no less reductive than the stale binaries of yore: of 'East' and 'West', communist and capitalist, aesthetics and politics, the list goes on.

A Provocation to the Question

Building Institutions Through Practice

Imagining the Future, Assembling the Past

In a globalized and quite complex world we need 'tools' to help shape our societies. This is what art institutions could be: giant toolboxes!

"Neither identification with an institution nor disengagement from an institution guarantees fluid, sensitive attitudes and openmindedness."

'I don't believe culture is nowadays negotiating social activity, political engagement and critical practices. Culture is following the forces of the market.'

'You can't draw desire, you have to walk it.'

'By producing an idea of the future, art transgresses official history and produces its own reality.'

'I suggest that we look at the past and present strengths of cultural organizations, which have always served social and informational purposes, regardless of region and time. It is in these two spheres that the future resides.'

'The future of arts looks promising, but it also risks looking stale if we're not too careful. I will concentrate here on what I think are important considerations in the shaping of spaces of encounter.'

'When one speaks of 'art infrastructures', it is crucial to recognize that infrastructures are, most importantly, people...and one of the most critical and urgent needs is for arts education.'

'Better imagine now, rather than later.'

'The future of art infrastructures in the region is still very much determined by pre-existing cultural misconceptions applied to audiences... During the last four years in Cairo, I've witnessed in several occasions how part of the audience has been marginalized according to nationality, class, race or economic income.'

Georgia Kotretsos: SPRING CLEANING and KARFI in Rabat

Ariel Hassan

Leung Chi Wo

Aikaterini Gegisian

Shezad Dawood

Mohamed Fariji

Ibraaz Platform 006 Editorial

FIAF’s 2013 World Nomads Tunisia Festival

Amy Charlesworth

It stipulates in my working contract as a professor in Middle East history at Leiden University that I must participate in 'media outreach'. This means that I must either seek out media outlets and contribute to a particular conversation about the Middle East, or, if contacted by a media representative,...

Firstly, and most immediately, I object to the characterisation of the context in which this question is situated. There is, of course, a marketplace for what we call cultural goods, including artworks, but there's no reason to situate all artworks immediately in an economy. Things that are made solely for...

Demonstrations by Palestinian villagers against Israeli colonisation has been described by non-local media sources as 'theatrics' and 'spectacle.' Such categorisation positions Palestinian acts of protest in the realm of 'acting'- a visual 'show' for the cameras, complete with homemade props, a soundtrack of chants performed to the rhythm of Israeli...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the word 'demand' seems to be the key word of the poll. In relation to a 'globalised cultural economy' it refers to the core term of economics that is used to rationalise the development of prices. Talking about 'demands of news media, journalism, cultural...

Basim Magdy, 13 Essential Rules for Understanding the World , 2011, super 8 film transferred to HD video, 5 min. 16 sec. Courtesy the artist and Newman Popiashvili Gallery, New York.

The globalisation of the modern art world is a fact. The rise of new economic powers has led to a shift in the balance of power in the art world as well. No longer is there one centre. Instead, we are faced with a mosaic of centres spread around the...

This is a big question with a lot of big words so I can either try and break down the question and resolve some of the semantic issues with it or simplify the question and try and answer that. Either way my response could be an essay, which I don't...

In the 1990s, it would have been difficult to find an artist in Egypt who thought that any of their contemporaries would sell their work at international auction and for thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars at that. Artists were busy negotiating other, more immediately local, elements of a...

A new book has surfaced on the shelves of Lebanese and possibly Arab bookstores. The title reads: Pure Nostalgia . As in Exclusive Nostalgia, as in free from this contaminated present . The emergence of this publication is perhaps symptomatic of something larger than a trivial nostalgia quenched by the...

In the globalised world we live in, I feel that creating the image of an enemy becomes a difficult task. It becomes difficult to name and make symbols for an enemy – an abstract 'evil' – since things are never abstract, but always and at any time connected and related.

In certain respects, the demands on contemporary artists issued forth by a (purportedly novel) globalised cultural economy are starkly obvious in the Arab world. The concurrent fascination with contemporary art and the region has resulted in the now well-documented - and equally well-debated - critical and curatorial investment in contemporary...

Some artists in these parts of the world began using new media in their work in the 1990s. This happened for a number of reasons but the most important one, I believe, was that of reaching the general public, which was far from being interested in art. In this respect,...

'Networks have no inside, only radiating connectors. They are all edges. They provide connections but no structure. One does not reside in a network, but rather moves to other points through the edges'. Bruno Latour, 'Some Experiments in Art and Politics', e-flux journal, 03/2011. With the benefit of hindsight, one...

Shining a spotlight on something in order to 'make it visible' is a task indeed. It does not only entail personal and professional risk but also demands courage and responsibility. The ethics of monstration (on behalf of those whose intention is precisely that - to make sense of vision, to...

Selçuk Artut. Courtesy of the artist.

A video by Ali Cherri.

New media has played a role in artistic practices, activism and social change for a long time, and we are increasingly seeing artists using and manipulating images from mainstream media and circulating them online to elucidate political causes.

Digitised media in the last decade has undoubtedly been propelled by the enormous speed of new technology and spontaneous platforms for rights, defined by Hakim Bey as 'Temporary Autonomous Zones' and 'network guerrillas' by Ozgur Uckan. Consequently, despite the mediated content of the mainstream media, social media sites have emerged...

Using new media tools and technologies available today has become standard practice for a range of activities; it's become a source of educational content and entertainment, as well as a means of communicating from conflict zones or even from the comfort of our homes. New media technologies available on smart...

Artists have for some time been using new media to investigate and question their mainstream socio-political environments. In Arab countries, the revolutions that took place are a direct expression of this process's shift from the art community to the mass, from the artist to the public. It was a mutation...

When we talk about media, whether we consider them old or new, and critical practices, whether we label them as artistic, activist or hybrid, we would do well to look at issues of embodiment, and where virtual presence and physical presence intersects. The Arab uprisings have shown that no matter...

A significant component of Sada's programming provides seminars, lectures, and workshops to young, emerging artists and students in Baghdad. We do this using basic Internet connection, Skype, some simple software, and a projector. A private Facebook group is the site of extensive conversations, critique and debate. This was not done...

Can the subaltern tweet? asked Lisa Nakamura, in response to the formulation 'social media caused the Arab Spring'. If Spivak famously deconstructed the promotion of democracy by supremacist means, Nakamura and others subsequently dismantled the digital orientalism latent in rhetoric suggesting that a US twittersphere galvanised Arab revolutionaries against Arab...

New media's role as an agent for social change in the MENA region has been somewhat sensationalised by mainstream media in referring to recent incidents of unrest as 'Facebook' or 'Twitter revolutions'. Whether used for the purpose of social exchange or as part of an artistic practice, real-time communication and...

One of the more important aspects of the uses of new media and in particular social media is the emergence and visualisation of online communities. These participant groups have utilised the tools offered by social media sites, such as the creation and exchange of user-generated content, to inform and influence...

The state of the Internet, or more specifically, the state of 'online surfing' is similar to that of dreaming; things leach into each other according to a logic that does not belong to us and cannot be correlated to our chronological time; images are constantly morphing into ghosts of other...

vs. The Ruler was made during the first year of the Arab uprising. It is comprised of two custom-made wooden 'electrocution' chairs (thrones) sitting in opposition to each other. The patriarchal male throne suggests the military and religion. Its counterpart is also suggestive of Islamic architecture, but is grounded by...

The digitally mediated world operates as a gigantic magnet for centralisation, regulation and control by giving shape to our lives, our languages and bodies. This means that the digital domain is increasingly becoming the very location of politics. I propose the term 'magnetic' as an invitation to re-think audio-visual artwork...

I treated a young homeless kid to some tea at the local coffee shop one morning and asked him how he usually spent his day. He told me he would hang out on the street, ask people for money so that later in the evening he would go to the...

I Think I Love You is an installation of oil paintings produced by art workers in Dafen, China. Paintings are crafted as replicas of a single, publicly-distributed image of His Highness Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Prime Minister and Vice President of the United Arab Emirates, and constitutional monarch of...

Initiated by the Kamel Lazaar Foundation in 2011, Ibraaz is the leading critical forum on visual culture in North Africa and the Middle East. We publish an annual online platform – consisting of essays, interviews, artists' projects, and platform responses – that focuses on research questions conceived through a network...

One needs to be careful with the concept of regions as geographical entities. Such an understanding is only valuable if it takes into account the way these regions relate to their neighbours, as frontiers are still too often frontiers of misunderstanding. The Middle East, like North Africa or the so-called...

Critical reflections on Ibraaz publications

The Jerusalem Show VIII 'Before and After Origins': Jerusalem

This Sea is Mine: Gaza

The People of the Sea: Haifa

Biographies

Partner institutions

Encounters Programme

Contextual Notes: Rawan Sharaf Reema Salha Fadda Stephanie Bailey

Curator's Essay: Aaron Cezar

Lina Lazaar

A roundtable discussion

Ismaïl Bahri in conversation with Silke Schmickl

Nadia Kaabi-Linke in conversation with Lina Lazaar

Shezad Dawood in conversation with Sara Raza

Michket Krifa in conversation with Wafa Gabsi

Bouchra Khalili in Conversation with Dorothea Schoene

Zeina Arida in conversation with Laura Allsop

Ayah Bdeir in conversation with Omar Kholeif

Simone Fattal in conversation with Mirene Arsanios

Sheikha Hoor Al-Qasimi in conversation with Stephanie Bailey

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian in conversation with Stephanie Bailey

Rasha Salti and Kristine Khouri in conversation with Samah Hijawi

Meriem Bennani in conversation with Myriam Ben Salah

Mahmoud Khaled in conversation with Omar Kholeif

Koyo Kouoh in conversation with Stephanie Bailey

Alya Sebti in conversation with Göksu Kunak

Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige in conversation with Nat Muller

Hassan Sharif in conversation with Nujoom Al Ghanem

Robin Kahn in conversation with Stephanie Bailey

Mario Rizzi in conversation with Cristiana Perrella

Hiwa K in conversation with Anthony Downey and Amal Khalaf

Urok Shirhan in Conversation with Stephanie Bailey

Seth Ayyaz in conversation with Sheyma Buali

Navine G. Khan-Dossos in conversation with Stephanie Bailey

Martina Caruso in conversation with Sheyma Buali

Stefano Rabolli Pansera in conversation with Stephanie Bailey

Sumesh Sharma in conversation with Amanprit Sandhu

Aikaterini Gegisian in conversation with Stephanie Bailey

Vangelis Vlahos in conversation with Stephanie Bailey

Rana Hamadeh in conversation with Stephanie Bailey

Fulya Erdemci in conversation with Basak Senova

Georgia Kotretsos in conversation with Stephanie Bailey

Suha Shoman in conversation with Amin Alsaden

Kamel Lazaar in conversation with Anthony Downey

Uriel Orlow in conversation with Omar Kholeif

Younes Bouadi in conversation with Stephanie Bailey

Anthony Downey: Introduction to 'Future Imperfect'

Wided Rihana Khadraoui: Digitalizing Social Change through Cultural Institutions in Saudi Arabia

Leila Al-Shami: Emerging from ‘The Kingdom of Silence’ | Beyond Institutions in Revolutionary Syria

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Sharjah Art Foundation, 17-19 March 2012

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Nour K Sacranie

Coline Milliard

Nour K Sacranie

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Questions to be addressed

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Regional vis-à-vis Global Discourses: Contemporary Art from the Middle East

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Theme: Performance

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News JAOU Tunis 2015 008 / 18 May 2015 Jaou Tunis 2015. Copyright Kamel Lazaar Foundation. 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 28–29 May, 2015. This...

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Gregory Sholette at Home Workspace Program

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Jim Quilty

A Report from Cologne

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Aimee Dawson

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Hans Ulrich Obrist: in conversation with Omar Kholeif

Oscar Guardiola-Rivera: in conversation with Anthony Downey

Adam Szymczyk: in conversation with Omar Kholeif

Mario Rizzi

Jim Quilty

Sama Alshaibi

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Ibraaz

Edited by Anthony Downey (IB Tauris, 2015)

London book launch

Edited by Anthony Downey (Sternberg Press, 2016)

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On Navigating Without a Compass

Stephanie Bailey

Rupture, War and Surrealism in Egypt (1938–1948) at the Centre Pompidou

Natasha Marie Llorens

Edmund Clark at the Imperial War Museum, London

Lara Baladi

Mega-museums and modern artists from the Middle East

Walking Cabbages and Watermelons

Anthony Downey

Ahmad Makia

An Alternative Genealogy of Musique Concrète

Notes on Maverickism as Genealogy and Genealogy as Approach

The Subversive Feminine

The 13th Biennale de Lyon

Franco Berardi

Natasha Ginwala

Street Art in the Mediterranean Border Zones

On Bouchra Khalili’s Cartographies

On Nikolaj Larsen's End of Dreams

Anthony Downey

Nikos Papastergiadis and Gerardo Mosquera

Conflicting Narratives and the Invention of Geographies

An Emergent Design Approach to the Gulf

Art and Culture Beyond Institutions in Amman

Reflections on Ashkal Alwan's Home Workspace Program, 2013-14

Reflections on Ashkal Alwan's Home Workspace Program, 2013-14

Oreet Ashery

Santiago Mostyn

Hera Büyüktaşçıyan

Monira Al Qadiri

A Radio Series on the Poetics and Politics of Language

An Image of a Revolution

Yousef Moscatello

A project by Yousef Moscatello

Wendelien van Oldenborgh

The Museum of Islamic Art in Doha and the Asian Civilizations Museum in Singapore

The 4th Thessaloniki Biennale

Farah Makni Hendaoui

Contemporary Artistic Practice in Iran at a Revolutionary Moment

Literary Affects and the New Political by Tarek El-Ariss

Is soft power helping or hindering the state of the arts in Jordan?

Celebrating Arab Women Filmmakers

Shifting the Geographies of Sensing, Believing and Knowing

Ibraaz Platform 005 Editorial

Looking for Palestine in the Jordanian Music Scene

Introduction

Artistic Practices, Collective Action and Civil Society in Tunisia

Jens Maier-Rothe

The Shifting Narrative of Uprising

The Impossibilities of Production in New Media

Artistic Practices, Civil Society, and Secular Determination in Tunisia Today

The MENA region is not short of attempts by cultural practitioners to interrogate, negotiate and redefine 'the public' (as manifested in the form of an institution, a public space, an audience, or the essentials of civil society). Some of most potent images of events over the last year in the...

Cardboards are leaned against a wall in a street. They form a peculiar assemblage one can identify as makeshift shelters. Fashioned out of the detritus of consumer society, the cardboards have become facades. They conceal women who were probably repudiated by their families. One of them emerges from her 'house'...

Middle Eastern culture, which is Islamic and mainly very conservative, is in the process of redefining its interpretation of, and relationship to, visual culture. The role of contemporary art in the Middle East is different to that in many parts of world. Design, advertising, media, performance, photography, conceptual art, new...

Walking in the Darkness of a Promised Light

Ela Greenberg

It is in protest.

The question 'What do we need to know about the MENA region today?' triggered a series of questions from my part. My contribution will be these questions; the aim is to start a game of Q&Q (instead of a Q&A) with no rules and no time limits. Who is this...

When initially presented with the task of summing up the nearly two-dozen nations that are lumped together under this peculiar acronym, my immediate impulse was to emphasize that it is impossible to describe such a vast region in less than 200 words. Even the few commonalities that do exist among...

Aesthetics, Civil Society, and the Politics of Representation

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