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Artistic Practices, Collective Action and Civil Society in Tunisia

Yes, artistic practices can offer insights into those things – but need they? Many artists in the region deftly wield smart institutional critique without breaking a sweat. But why not pass that responsibility to the audiences for their work? I think the best way to develop civil society is not...

As a politically engaged artist, I have to believe that artistic practices do have the potential to offer insights and negotiate anything from the demands of cultural institutions to politics and the ideals of civil society. Without such a belief, the entire foundation of what I do would be rattled....

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...

There is no doubt that artists are addressing this question and its associated issues in their work, as anywhere in the world. However the region comprises so many different descriptions of civil society; the politics and economics of one country enable while those in another disable. Volatility can be a...

Dar al-Ma'mûn is a new arts centre and residency for artists and translators outside of Marrakech. The questions of public space and of civil society have been with us since the beginning, as we were trying to avoid creating a mere retreat for artists, a luxurious ivory tower for intellectuals...

Can or should or will? Everything is possible, while a lot less is likely. These to me are three discrete topics: the health of institutions; public space (itself a maligned, misused term, most of the time); and civil society. I think if artists – or curators, or any agent involved...

Hera Büyüktaşçıyan in conversation with Basak Senova

Fulya Erdemci in conversation with Basak Senova

Randa Mirza in conversation with Amira Gad

Matthias Lilienthal in conversation with Göksu Kunak

Mario Rizzi in conversation with Cristiana Perrella

Özgür Uçkan and Vasif Kortun in conversation with Basak Senova

The Arab Digital Expression Foundation in conversation with Laura Cugusi

Ahd in conversation with Sheyma Buali

Jananne Al-Ani in conversation with Nat Muller

Maha Maamoun in conversation with Aleya Hamza

Fulya Erdemci in conversation with Basak Senova

Kim Beamish in conversation with Sam Bowker

Rifat Chadirji and Balkis Sharara in conversation with Amin Alsaden

Héla Ammar in conversation with Wafa Gabsi

Monira Al Qadiri: The Saudi New Wave | Digital Landscapes and Future Institutions

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

Ibraaz in partnership with Winchester Centre for Global Futures in Art

Ibraaz

The second meeting of Maghreb des Arts

A Report on Future City

Future Imperfect, A Symposium

Aimee Dawson

A Roundtable Discussion from The Middle East Institute

Doa Aly

Sondos Shabayek

Kim Beamish

The Outsider

Kauther

Al Intithar : (The Waiting )

Mario Rizzi

Heba Y. Amin

Ahd

Ammar Al-Beik

Mohamed Diab

Omar Robert Hamilton

Artists Intervening in Lebanese Dailies

Invisible Architecture in Rana ElNemr’s Streams of Synonyms

Lara Baladi

Walking Cabbages and Watermelons

Socially Engaged Art Practices in Tunisia

On Assumption and Authority

Organic Growth and the Rise of Visual Arts Organizations in the UAE

Choreographing Spaces of Gesticulation

Green Art Gallery

Burak Delier

Re-routing Institutional Critique

33rpm and a Few Seconds by Rabih Mroué and Lina Saneh

A Perspective on Algeria's Cultural Scene

A Review

Elif Öner and Vincent Rozenberg

A project by Maha Maamoun

The Circus (2)

On the Rooftop

Amira Hanafi

Tahrir Archives

The Recordings of the Cosmopolitan

The 4th Thessaloniki Biennale

FIAF’s 2013 World Nomads Tunisia Festival

Contemporary Artistic Practice in Iran at a Revolutionary Moment

Gezi Resistance, Public Space and the Counter-monumental

Creative Time Reports

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

Street art in Tunisia has appeared more and more since the early days of the 'revolution'. But this phenomenon was already there long before events took place. Certain activists – artists working in graphic and visual communication – invaded public spaces to express their grievances. They no longer wanted to...

Since the 25th of January 2011, a traditional arts programming model has become functionally irrelevant in Egypt. In this context of conflict and change, diverse publics have asked to use Townhouse's spaces in ways that extend far beyond the scope of visual arts exhibitions. Consequently, over the past year, we...

News from the Arab World reaches western audiences on a daily basis. The various analogue and online formats of media – TV, radio, newspapers, and blogs – are extensively reporting on the events in this region. In Berlin, and certainly elsewhere in Europe, cultural institutions and festivals reacted very quickly...

One major obstacle for a diverse art scene in a country or region is the lack of artistic infrastructure with institutions that offer support for artistic research and the production of independent, non-market-related work. During the past decade, most countries in the MENA region have seen the establishment of independent,...

'What do we do when as artists we are invited to behave as liberal democratic [beings]? You have your own space, each has their own little house, we can all live together; does this not sound like the idea of a Lebanon of all the different mosaics and cohabitation -...

I am broadly interested in addressing the recontextualisation of cultural heritage in the MENA region by institutions, thus aligning it in the process with current developments in contemporary art at large. Artistic practices are frequently used to measure the economic and cultural growth of geographies. This is often achieved by...

Artistic practices can offer many insights, but it is important to remember that when art’s role is reduced to a tool for social development or economic prospects, it ceases to be art. Rather than provide a broad qualification of the use value of art in the world, it can be...

A recent project led by Walid Raad attempted to draw attention to, and improve the treatment of, migrant workers on Saadiyat Island by Guggenheim and its Abu Dhabi partner, the Tourism Development and Investment Company (TDIC). Tactics were initially conducted privately but when it was clear to those involved that...

The question implies a view on artistic practice informed by a liberal framework of reception and interpretation: artistic practices are expected to politely negotiate within and with the larger sphere of culture; they are expected to expose, reveal, unmask, reform and finally find a place within various institutional configurations. The...

How artistic practices define and negotiate public space is to me the most significant issue in the question posed, which I will begin to discuss in the context of Algiers. The site specific practice of Amina Menia testifies to both the richness of meaning and difficulties of execution endemic to...

Writing on the Walls: Transition, A Photographic Series by Myriam Abdelaziz

The two-year-old MASS Alexandria, founded by artist Wael Shawky in the working-class neighbourhood of Miami in east Alexandria, Egypt, aims to create a space for the production and dissemination of ideas and debates concerning contemporary visual culture. Apart from displaying and encouraging the consumption of art through exhibitions, it creates...

When Umru' al-Qais stood by the traces of the tent of his beloved in the middle of the desert of Hijaz, he shed tears that became the key to Arab poetry. Until recently, no one could have guessed that those tents would one day be made of concrete. These days,...

From Brute Ornament: Seher Shah's Recent Drawings

On-longing: A Project by Saba Innab

Dictaphone Group is a collaboration between performance artist Tania El Khoury and urban researcher architect Abir Saksouk-Sasso, whose aim is to research specific urban spaces in Lebanon. Issues of public space and public amenities, or indeed the lack thereof in Beirut, come to the fore in Bus Cemetery, a sound-based...

Home Workspace: A Conversation Between Christine Tohme and Anthony Downey

The Past is Another Country: Two Projects by Sinisa Vlajkovic

Cultural institutions in Turkey are divided into those run by the state, local governments and private sectors; each have different culture policies and no significant collaborative policies. Contemporary art productions and practices are based in Istanbul and are dependent on private sector investments, rather than official funds. Compared to the...

'The young conservatives embrace the fundamental experience of aesthetic modernity – the disclosure of a de-centered subjectivity, freed from all constraints of rational cognition and purposiveness, from all imperatives of labour and utility – and in this way break out of the modern world. They transpose the spontaneous power of...

A friend recently asked me, what would be my dream cultural/art space in Ramallah? In the midst of rapid urban construction in Ramallah, my impulse is not to build another building but create what is lacking – an open public space. I feel this would be an artistic, political and...

I will limit myself to tackling the situation from the point of view of the ‘common ground’, which is lost or has never been found. There is a wide gap between art practice on one side and the institutions on the other; the first doing the minimum in terms of...

Aesthetics, Civil Society, and the Politics of Representation

Critical reflections on Ibraaz publications

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

Moments for Possibilities 'Air, Land and Sea': London

Partner institutions

Responses

Nadia Kaabi-Linke in conversation with Lina Lazaar

Adonis in conversation with Laura Allsop

Ziad Antar in Conversation with Anthony Downey

Tom Bogaert in conversation with Anthony Downey

Amina Menia in conversation with Laura Allsop

Lida Abdul in conversation with Sara Raza

Zeina Arida in conversation with Laura Allsop

Rasha Salti in conversation with Fawz Kabra

Sheikha Hoor Al-Qasimi in conversation with Stephanie Bailey

Looking at Wafaa Bilal's Domestic Tension : Barrak Alzaid

Sulayman Al Bassam in conversation with Ala Younis

Reem Fadda in conversation with Fawz Kabra

Coco Fusco in conversation with Stephanie Bailey

Lasse Lau in conversation with Amira Gad

Helene Kazan in conversation with Amal Khalaf

Farah Saleh in conversation with Marianna Liosi

Yael Bartana in conversation with Clelia Coussonnet

Rabih Mroué in conversation with Anthony Downey

Mohanad Yaqubi in conversation with Sheyma Buali

Raed Yassin in conversation with Nat Muller

Martina Caruso in conversation with Sheyma Buali

Jonas Staal in conversation with Stephanie Bailey

Burak Arıkan in conversation with Basak Senova

Raed Yassin in conversation with Stephanie Bailey

Discussing arts infrastructure in Tehran

Rana Hamadeh in conversation with Stephanie Bailey

Nida Sinnokrot in conversation with Natasha Hoare

Carole Alfarah in conversation with María Gómez López

Suha Shoman in conversation with Amin Alsaden

A View from Afar: Stephanie Bailey

Younes Bouadi in conversation with Stephanie Bailey

Louis Henderson in conversation with Amira Gad

MADRASSA Collective in conversation with Antonia Alampi

Nora Razian, Nataša Petrešin Bachelez, and Angela Harutyunyan in conversation, with a contribution from Natasha Gasparian

Amar Kanwar in conversation with Stephanie Bailey

Eric Baudelaire in conversation with Anthony Downey

Alia Rayyan: Recounting the Past, Present and Future

Lois Stonock: Mapping the Possible: Syrian Organizations, Movements and Platforms

Ibraaz

Ibraaz

Ibraaz

Ibraaz

Ibraaz

Ibraaz

Rachida Triki

New initiative fosters connections between the Middle East and the western world

Ibraaz

10 Years On: Art and Everyday Life in Iraq and Iran

Ibraaz

Ibraaz

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...

William Wells in conversation at Serpentine Galleries

Işıl Eğrikavuk's The Art of Disagreement

Aimee Dawson

Ibraaz

Ibraaz

Okwui Enwezor: in conversation with Anthony Downey

Farah Al-Nakib: in conversation with Stephanie Bailey

Hiwa K.

Edited by Anthony Downey (IB Tauris, 2014)

A two-part conversation with Szabolcs KissPál and Mahmoud Khaled

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,...

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Platform 010 Editorial

On Navigating Without a Compass

Hamid Dabashi

Exhibitions and Other Representations in 25 Years at Witte de With

The Sketches of Mahmoud Al Rifai at FADA 317

Rayyane Tabet at Museo Marino Marini

Ibraaz 5th Year Anniversary Editorial

Participatory Art in the Middle East

Forests, Freaks and Performativity

An Introduction to Body Art and Performance in the Gulf

Six Short Stories on Arabic Voice Acting

A Nomadological Study of Ottoman Arab Photography

Performing Armenity at the 56th Venice Biennale

Natasha Ginwala

Five Stages of an Artist Residency

Nikos Papastergiadis and Gerardo Mosquera

An Art Collection as an Alternative Archive of Iranian History

Pan-Kaffirism in Iraq, South Africa, and Sri Lanka

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

A Provocation to the Question

Outside Looking In: Taking a Title and Running With It*

Re-Thinking Cultural Development in Palestine

Can T-Wall Murals really Beautify the Fragmented Baghdad?

Object Lessons from Saadiyat Island and Gehry’s Guggenheim, Abu Dhabi

Arts Infrastructures and Institutions in Libya Post-Dictatorship

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.'

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

'Better imagine now, rather than later.'

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

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

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Israel's National Photography Archives as a Case Study

Dream Homes and Community-building

Transition, a photographic series by Myriam Abdelaziz

A Libyan Diary (Part I) - October 2011

Projects 'Graphic Witness' at Drawing Room, London 010 / 16 June 2017 When images of conflict and protest can be so easily captured on mobile devices, why translate them into graphic representations? How does the translation into graphic form change the act of witnessing, fabricate commentaries on instances of injustice,...

Basma Alsharif

An Online Performance

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...

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.

When Buildings Become Part of the Record

Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh’s 'A photographic conversation from Burj al-Shamali Camp'

The 13th Istanbul Biennial

Literary Affects and the New Political by Tarek El-Ariss

Creative Time Reports

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

Aid and the Politics of Art in Processes of Contemporary Cultural Production

A Talk and Screening by Shabbir Hussain Mustafa

The Story of Bahrain’s Pearl Roundabout

What has Changed in Tunisia since Spring 2011

On the Memory of a Memorial

Jens Maier-Rothe

The Shifting Narrative of Uprising

Theatre As a Tool of Empowerment

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...

Anthony Downey

Cultural Institutions, Urban Development, and Regional Cinema in the Gulf Today

For a Polysemic Reading of Both City and Territory

Yazid Anani

Raymond Baker

Modernism, Architecture, and National Heritage under the Pahlavi Monarchs