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 respond to 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?
We are also pleased to publish a conversation with Amar Kanwar, alongside the full Arabic and English transcriptions to accompany four discussions that took place at Global Art Forum 8 in March 2014, and a report from the Jerusalem Show VII.
Clare Davies and Nida Ghouse
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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.
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Kurchi Dasgupta
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"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 global political idiom)."
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Pio Abad
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Oh! Oh! Oh! (A Universal History of Iniquity) examines The Cultural Centre of the Philippines, which 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.
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Maryam Jafri
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"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."
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Embroiderers of Actuality
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Embroiderers of Actuality is an action that aims to be a sensible provocation: a visual discussion about the position of women in the society.
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Jeannette Ehlers
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"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 work."
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Farida El Gazzar
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"This 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."
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Daria Kirsanova
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"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."
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Anthony Gardner
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"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."
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Amar Kanwar in conversation with Stephanie Bailey
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Ibraaz
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Ibraaz
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Ibraaz
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Reema Salha Fadda
Nour K Sacranie
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From November 2014 to April 2015, Ibraaz will continue to invite cultural practitioners to articulate their views on how we might effectively locate North Africa and the regions of the Middle East within the context of the so-called Global South.
How, we will ask, does mapping such networks produce alternative forms of knowledge? What, moreover, does mapping mean in a postcolonial context? Could the Global South represent a nascent form of neo-colonialism and categorical essentialism? Through engagement with these expanded cartographies, the overall ambition of Platform 008 is to collectively formulate and develop new epistemological frameworks for producing cultural knowledge whilst also exploring a critical dynamic for revising accepted theories of global cultural production.
A selection of essays and projects from Platform 008, alongside newly commissioned texts, will be published in 2016 as part of our Visual Culture in the Middle East Series, edited by Anthony Downey.
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