Platform for discussion 006
What role can the archive play in developing and sustaining a critical and culturally located art history?
Essays
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Rethinking National Archives in Colonial Countries and Zones of Conflict28 January 2014
The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Israel's National Photography Archives as a Case Study
Rona Sela
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Field notes for 'What We Left Unfinished'6 November 2013
Dispatch One: the Artist and the Archive, June–September 2013
Mariam Ghani
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Enacting the Archives, Decentring the Muses 6 November 2013
The Museum of Islamic Art in Doha and the Asian Civilizations Museum in Singapore
Walter D. Mignolo
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In/distinction6 November 2013
Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh’s 'A photographic conversation from Burj al-Shamali Camp'
Daniel Berndt
Interviews
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With Nail and Spring31 March 2014
Georgia Kotretsos in conversation with Stephanie Bailey
Stephanie Bailey
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Building Mental Infrastructures31 March 2014
Ayşe Erkmen in conversation with Basak Senova
Başak Şenova
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Where Are We Now?31 March 2014
Hicham Khalidi in conversation with Daniella Rose King
Daniella Rose King
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On Documentation31 March 2014
Parastou Forouhar in conversation with David Hodge and Hamed Yousefi
David Hodge and Hamed Yousefi
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Narrative Treatments27 February 2014
Wael Shawky in conversation with Stephanie Bailey
Stephanie Bailey
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Meanwhile…History27 February 2014
Shumon Basar, Ala Younis and Omar Berrada in conversation with Sheyma Buali
Sheyma Buali
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Raising the Roof27 February 2014
Nevin Aladağ in conversation with Walter D. Mignolo
Walter D. Mignolo
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An Artwork is not Just a Passive Object You Hang on Your Wall27 February 2014
Elif Öner in conversation with Derya Yücel
Derya Yücel
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Photography as Apparatus28 January 2014
Akram Zaatari in conversation with Anthony Downey
Anthony Downey
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Curating the Revolution: Meeting Points 719 December 2013
WHW in conversation with Omar Kholeif
Omar Kholeif
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Then and Now6 November 2013
Adelina von Fürstenberg in conversation with Stephanie Bailey
Stephanie Bailey
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Influence, Passion, Process6 November 2013
Lucien Samaha in conversation with Walid Raad, Part II
Walid Raad
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Chapters, Records, Keywords6 November 2013
Lucien Samaha in conversation with Walid Raad, Part I
Walid Raad
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Archives on Archives6 November 2013
Maryam Jafri in conversation with Stephanie Bailey
Stephanie Bailey
Projects
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The Use of Social Media as a Dated Document and its Prospect as an Archive
Elif Öner and Vincent Rozenberg
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Responses
From the photo-text series Getty vs. Ghana (2012).
When family members die they take their memories, facts and figures with them. Their stories, as well as their lies and omissions, become harder to track after they've gone. They leave behind mountains of material, with few entry points. If you dare to enter, you will find yourself alone in the archive.
I felt the desire to examine the reverse process: what in art history and, more specifically, in the making of art, can contribute to the development of an archiving process?
Through art practices, particularly in this region, the artist might slip into this muddy area, which is mostly based on fetishes and collective political memory and which somehow stands on the most influential component of media archive. It is not necessarily only that which is visible and legible, but more an area that relies on the storytelling archive.
Working with archives is a relatively new development, only recently have artists and institutions had access to archives. In the Middle East in general, the idea of the archive and of history is very vague. Even the idea of archiving, of having an institution that holds an archive, is new.
I envision the liberation of an archive (from attachment to a person, state, or region) through its transfiguration into a database. This emancipation requires dematerialization and displacement.
...one of the main problems with modernity in the Arab World is the lack of credibility, criticality and scrutiny in understanding, presenting, and evaluating its nature and objects.
The conceptual turn of the 1970s gave full legitimacy to queries into the document and the archive. Issues of memory become the favourite material of contemporary artists. Yet, in Tunisia, we missed the conceptual turn of the 1970s – it took us until the start of the revolution in 2011 to question our memory, since it became clear that we would not be able to understand the turmoil of our present and ask questions about our future if we were not able to know our past. Unfortunately, this past has been largely confiscated by the last two authoritarian regimes, which have written their own history.
Akira Mizuta Lippit, in Atomic Light (Shadow Optics), characterizes the shadow archive as what cannot be archived, and therefore survives when the archive is destroyed. The shadow archive describes the majority of Arab cultural memory, which survives in non-visual traces, such as the work done by memory and imagination in response to an archival fragment, or the lack of any physical archive at all.
The Soldier: 'Indeed, I took these photographs from the pocket of a dead Arab, killed in Bab Al-Wad in the beginning of May 1948.
The idea of the art archive in the Middle East provokes a number of associations – some of them spiritual, some historical, some clearly political.
What is a platform?
A platform is a space for speaking in public. It is an opportunity to express ideas and thoughts. It also suggests the formal declaration of a stance or position on any given subject.
Unique to Ibraaz is a 'platform', a question put to writers, thinkers and artists about an issue relevant to the MENA region. This platform is sent to respondents both within and beyond the MENA region and contributions will be archived every 12 months.