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Al Jazeera, English: Poets of Protest

Date: August 31, 2012

Poets of Protest delves into the soul of the Middle East with intimate profiles of six contemporary poets, as they struggle to lead, to interpret and to inspire.  Poetry in the Middle East lives and breathes as in few other places.  In a region long dominated by authoritarian regimes, poetry is the medium for expressing people's hopes, dreams and frustrations. Poets became historians, journalists, entertainers - even revolutionaries.  Ever since Tunisians chanted Abu al-Qasim al-Shabi's If the People Wanted Life One Day poetry has been a key weapon of the Arab Spring, used to taunt regimes' refusing to see the writing on the wall.  As the revolution spread to Egypt, it turned out that the writing on the wall was also poetry - graffiti by young artists painting the works of poets like al-Shabi or Egypt's Ahmed Fouad Negm.  

Poets of Protest focuses on the writers, their political and artistic struggles, and their work, with beautifully filmed visual interpretations of the poems.  In Egypt, we are treated to a rare, intimate profile of 82-year-old folk hero and Egyptian poetry superstar Ahmed Fouad Negm, dubbed "the voice of the revolution", and Syria's renowned poet Hala Mohamad tells us about the pain of watching from exile as her country is violently torn apart.  But Poets of Protest also goes beyond the Arab Spring to hear the works of Mazen Maarouf from Palestine, Manal al-Sheikh from Iraq, Yehia Jaber from Lebanon and the "the poet of the rifle", Al Khadra, from Western Sahara. 
 

Artscape: Poets of Protest can be seen on Al Jazeera English from August 31, 2012.
For more information, click here.
 

Art Lounge, Beirut: 'Maktoob,' a Contemporary Calligraphy Exhibit

Date: August 31, 2012

“There are very, very few artist-calligraphers,” says Joumana Medlej. She muses that, for the most part, the ancient craft has become an artisanal practice, though the art is undergoing a sort of rebirth nowadays. A glimpse of this rebirth is on show at Beiteddine’s Old Silk Factory, where Beirut’s Art Lounge has set up a summer outpost. “Maktoob” (“Written”), as the exhibition is called, brings Medlej together with calligraphers Ziad Talhouk and Everitte Barbee, whose work explores the age-old art in new ways.  For more details, click here.

E-Flux applied to manage a .art Domain

Date: August 31, 2012

While at the moment new top-level domains may appear to some to be a small technical modification, they will nevertheless have very significant consequences for the field of art in the long run.  The internet has already become a major educational tool. As the first place we look to when we seek to learn about art, it also has the ability to shape our understanding of art over time. It is essential that a resource of such a global nature be overseen by a committee of peers: artists, educators, curators, historians, gallerists, funders—those who possess substantial knowledge of art and of the needs of artistic community, and work to produce art and bring it to the public.

Likewise, it is also important that the geographical and cultural diversity of institutions of art and its practitioners, as well as art's publics, be taken into consideration. While many assume that this diversity is taken for granted by the horizontal and networked nature of the internet as we know it, it is clear that the ground is shifting rapidly below our feet. As the internet matures to become increasingly less distinct from the structures of power that govern the world through financial or military control—whether corporations or state bodies—we can begin to see very quickly how the top-level domain names are a sign of the times, an adjustment that recognizes the enormous importance of managing the flow of information in our present moment.

The majority of applications for the art domain have been filed by venture capital firms with little familiarity with art, this domain could see a similar fate. To become profitable enough for a commercial investor, addresses falling under this domain would be 1) bought en masse by speculators and cyber-squatted, then 2) access for many real art organizations, galleries, and artists to their own name would be held hostage and subject to a high-stakes bidding war, and ultimately 3) the .art domain would be rendered either meaningless, a precious commodity available only to those who can afford it, or both.

In managing the .art domain, e-flux will work in consultation with a peer-based advisory committee to guarantee the integrity and sustainability of the name. Most importantly, e-flux will protect the copyrights and names of institutions and individuals in the arts by carefully reviewing all registrants to prevent cyber-squatting and speculation—for example, only the Brooklyn Museum will be allowed to register BrooklynMuseum.art.

In general, the pricing of the domain will be made accessible to professional and semi-professional practitioners in the field of art with limited income, while also returning a minimum of 10% of the revenue generated by the name back to the artistic community. The field of art has suffered catastrophic blows to its sources of income in recent years due to the global economic crisis, mainly in regions such as Western Europe that have grown accustomed to relatively generous government cultural funding. But many vibrant artistic communities in other parts of the world have never enjoyed much support to begin with, and we are hopeful and committed to the possibility that administering the art domain could provide an opportunity to contribute to the field of art in places where both public and private patronage have proven insufficient.  For more information, click here.
 

The Visual ARTBEAT Magazine, Issue 9

Date: August 31, 2012

 We are pleased to announce that The Visual ARTBEAT Magazine, Issue9 is out now!

The Visual ARTBEAT Magazine is created in English for European and Middle Eastern Art Collectors and Art enthusiasts. It is an Art Magazine of new ideas. Talented young artists roll players of the art markets and the art works, with increasing values of contemporary art world talk here...

The Visual ARTBEAT pursues the evolutions and the transformations of artistic interactions. The 'thing' belongs to tomorrow which today is not yet codified may be understood here intuitively.

For more information and to order your copy, click here.

Film Society Lincoln Center presents: Orientation, A New Arab Cinema

Date: August 29, 2012

Film Series Dates: August 24 - August 29

Among the effects of the recent Arab Spring has been a welcome focus on the emerging cinemas throughout the Arab world. New filmmakers, often educated outside the region and well aware of contemporary international film styles, have begun to create a new Arab cinema that fearlessly engages in a dialogue with their respective societies, broaching subjects unthinkable even a decade ago. Among the most important forces in this cinematic renaissance has been the Dubai International Film Festival, which offers a number of programs to develop and support new talents. We are pleased to present this series of recent feature films and shorts, all supported by DIFF, as an introduction to a new film movement about which we will surely be hearing much more in the years to come.

For more details, click here.

Young Arab Architects Competition - Venice Biennale 2012

Date: August 28, 2012

The international jury for the « Young Arab Architects » competition gathered in Paris on Tuesday, May 29th 2012. Three prizes and twelve honorable mentions, including a special mention, were awarded. The projects will be displayed in Venice and in Paris.

Over 140 architects from Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Sudan, Qatar and Libya submitted their projects.

 After reviewing applications, three winners tied for first place and twelve selected entries were also awarded, including a special mention.

The three winners are :
• Tarik Oualalou (Kilo Architectures) from Rabat, Morocco, for the project « Volubilis Archeological Museum ».

• Chamss Oulkadi from Agadir, Morocco, working with Khalid Ait El Madani for the project « Memorial, history of a destroyed city ».
• Youssef Tohme (Y.Tohme / Architects & associates) from Beirut, Lebanon, for the project « Campus for innovation, economics and sport ».

To learn more, please click here. 

Nejla Y Yatkin Dance and New York International Fringe Festival presents: Oasis

Date: August 26, 2012

This new evening length multi-media dance theatre work conceived and choreographed by Nejla Yatkin for 7 dancers (Shay Bares, Sevin Ceviker, Ahmaud Culver, Rachel Holmes, Jean- Rene Homehr, Fadi Khoury, Karina Lesko) and original music is composed by Iranian American composer Shamou and Video Design is by Patrick Lovejoy is centered on a juxtaposition between the desert and the oasis. Similar to mystical realism in literature, the piece exists in multiple realities - magical elements blend seamlessly with the real world meaning that the "real" and the "fantastic" exist in the same stream of thought.  Through the prism of desert/oasis and magical/real, the piece explores issues of identity, veiling, torture and spirituality, moving through what is familiar; what is imagined or mythical, what is actual; what is out of the Middle East and what is inside it.

The work will use a well-known Middle Eastern love story of Layla & Majnoon, known as the Romeo and Juliet of the Middle East as a binding element in the form of a Persian/Turkish shadow play. As conceived, the story has an allegorical meaning of humanity’s separation from its soul and thereafter the constant search for it. The story is layered through movement, poetic imagery, shadow play, humor, fragmented text and a tea ceremony. Some elements will be recognizable, others will be distorted thus challenging the audience to directly confront issues named above in a new light while still experiencing the humanity inherent in these aspects of society.

For more information and for tickets, click here.

Collectorspace, Istanbul presents; Living with Video: The Way Things Go at the Kramlich Collection

Date: August 25, 2012

The Way Things Go (Der Lauf der Dinge) is an art film by the artist duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss that premiered in 1987 at Documenta 8. The work depicts a nearly half-hour long series of sustained chain reactions involving non-glamorous every-day objects such as kettles, chairs, mattresses, balloons, tires, ladders, and trash bags. These ordinary objects perform a kinetic display of cause and effect as they crash, burn, melt, explode, ignite, dissolve, rotate, slide, and bang, exhausting the energy released from the breakdown of one another. The film documents a constant battle between predetermined precision and probabilistic implausibility; and the artists ensure a seemingly miraculous continuity in scene after scene where disorder and failure would have been the more likely outcome. Carefully choreographed by Fischli/Weiss, the objects in this 100 feet-long installation on stage in a large warehouse seem to have been given performing roles by the artists, and meticulously trained for their act. As Jeremy Millar describes in his book on this particular work, the film embodies many of the qualities of Fischli/Weiss’s oeuvre: “slapstick humor and profound insight, a forensic attention to detail, a sense of illusion and transformation, and a dynamic exchange between states of order and chaos.”

For more information, click here.

The Mosaic Rooms presents: Nermine Hammam's solo exhibition, 'Cairo, Year One'

Date: August 24, 2012

Upekkha features images of individual soldiers from the Egyptian army taken in Tahrir Square, reset against utopian landscapes of luminous blue skies, verdant fields, rolling snow peaked mountains and still bodies of water. The series examines youth in war, masculine frailty, and notions of power. By reclaiming these soldiers as individuals, the artist seeks to reveal the vulnerability of youth parading behind the weaponry and masculinity of the military, questioning the reality of power and its construction.

Unfolding consists of stylized Japanese landscapes, intersected with explicit footage, downloaded from the web, of police brutality in the year following Egypt’s 2011 revolt. In Unfolding the moment of impact becomes hidden behind foliage, or ornamentation and instantaneous gratification is frustrated. Instead the viewer is asked to become active in their viewing, to look closer, and re-examine the surface in front of them to realize the full violence of what is being portrayed. The concept for this series emerged from the artist’s own experience of watching a young protester die in Tahrir Square, whilst less than a kilometer away city life continued undisturbed.

To learn more, please click.

Hadi Tabbal Presents, 'Burying Elephants and Other Plays' at Bridge Theater, New York

Date: August 19, 2012

An innovative project that has been in the making for more than a year, 'Burying Elephants and Other Plays' is a one week limited-engagement theater production of a captivating series of four one-acts, two of which are world premieres, examining the dynamic of conflict between women surrounding sex, love, class, and self-fulfillment. With two actresses playing all eight characters in four distinct stories, the production brings to life some of the most universally conflicting circumstances of modern life; circumstances in which burying the most evident elephant in the room eventually proves to be impossible.

Hadi Tabbal produced and directed ‘Burying Elephants and Other Plays.’  Originally from Lebanon, Hadi was lately seen in the lead role of Mona Mansour’s world premiere of ‘ The Hour of Feeling’ at The Humana Festival for New American Plays, directed by Mark Wing-Davey. In film, Hadi was featured in Mayram Keshavarz’s ‘Circumstance’ (Sundance Audience Award winner 2011). As director, Hadi directed, produced and starred in his own Off Broadway production of Howard Korder’s ‘Boys’ Life' at the Zipper Theater in 2008. Hadi is currently in development for an original play with writer Bekah Brunstetter and a contemporary Lebanese adaptation of Federico Garcia Lorca’s Spanish Classic ‘The House of Bernarda Alba’. 

To help support this project, click here.  To learn more and purchase tickets, click here.
 

PBS Presents: 'The Light in Her Eyes,' a Documentary about Houda Al Habash

Date: August 19, 2012

Synopsis
Houda al-Habash, a conservative Muslim preacher, founded a Qur’an school for girls in Damascus, Syria, 30 years ago. Every summer, her female students immerse themselves in a rigorous study of Islam. A surprising cultural shift is underway — women are claiming space within the mosque. Shot right before the uprising in Syria erupted, The Light in Her Eyes offers an extraordinary portrait of a leader who challenges the women of her community to live according to Islam, without giving up their dreams. An Official Selection of the 2011 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. Produced in association with American Documentary | POV.

For more information and to stream the documentary, click here.
 

Beirut Art Center Presents a Solo Exhibition by Khalil Rabah

Date: August 18, 2012

The works presented in Review are the most recent outcomes of on-going projects that the artist has been working on for the past ten years. The title of the show refers to the processes by which Rabah has reached these most recent manifestations: the act of looking over something again; and the method of surveying with the possibility or intention of instituting a change if necessary. The works presented may vary in medium, from painting to photography and sculpture to installation; however the coherence of the exhibition is underlined by their shared concerns, such as: the boundaries between the imaginary and reality; the use of objects and images as palimpsests; collisions between conventional and unconventional media within various institutions; the role of the gallery, museum and biennial; the synthesis of local realities in an international context; and the document as source and a document’s sources.

Review contains three distinct sections; however, the intersection of shared themes allows the works to be interpreted as part of a larger whole. In this issue is a work based on various aspects of The Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind and specifically its Summer 2011 newsletter, which reviews the institutional history of the museum. Another Geography is a work derived from the 3rd Riwaq Biennale, which takes the fractured landscape of Palestine contextualized within the global art world, and presents it from another perspective, as a pixelated field of postcards. The section of the exhibition titled Two Exhibitions is made up of three pairs of seemingly identical photo-realist paintings documenting a previous solo exhibition by the artist titled Art Exhibition: Readymade Representations: 1954-2010. Like a palimpsest, Art Exhibition is itself a collection of photo-realist paintings documenting nearly sixty years of exhibition making practices in different locations around the world.

Review brings together works that typify Khalil Rabah’s method of historicizing and then re-historicizing, synthesizing and then reviewing. For more information, please click here.

Leila Heller Gallery: Rock, Paper Scissors

Date: August 18, 2012

Rock, Paper, Scissors, an exhibition of work by nine artists, will be on view at Leila Heller Gallery in Chelsea at 568 West 25th Street from July 12 through August 18, 2012. The show will include work by Louise Bourgeois, Rob Carter, Jim Dine, Soonja Han, Kim Chun Hwan, Louise Nevelson, Jackson Pollock, Hadieh Shafie, and Kasper Sonne. Curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, Rock, Paper, Scissors will present painting, sculpture, photographs, film, mixed media work, and installation.

The show’s title is derived from the name of the popular hand game and refers to the mediums and formalistic choices of the works represented in the show, which is divided into three sections. An illustrated catalogue with an essay by the curators will accompany the exhibition.

“Rock, Paper, Scissors is a double folded statement that ponders the broad range within the formalistic trends that have come to define the contemporary moment of artistic production,” the curators note. “The exhibition explores the extent to which contemporary art oscillates between a concern for art-­‐historical lineage and the desire for a departure from formal expression.” 

For more information, click here.
 

Royal College of Art, London: Europa Triangle, a Group Show of International Artists

Date: August 18, 2012

The Europa Triangle will kick off a series of exhibitions, conferences and projects that will run in cities around the world until next April. It will be the first curated show of the College’s new Dyson Building gallery in Battersea.

Domestic and international artists – Oliver Klimpel, Marisol Malatesta, Nils Norman, Diego Santomé, Slavs & Tatars, Christian Teckart, Lincoln Tobier, Daniel Wilkinson, Hannes Zebedin – will showcase specially-commissioned and existing work.

According to show curator and RCA MA Curating Contemporary Art tutor Kit Hammonds, work throughout the exhibition examines how facets of European society – from the built environment to corporate management structures – are formed around a triad of the first, second and third sectors, or government, business and the community.  The aim is to create a dialogue between often disparate fields such as architecture, sociology, politics and economics through showcased work.

To learn more, click here.

Cultures of Resistance presents, "The Suffering Grasses" a film about the Crisis in Syria and pleads you for A Call to Action

Date: August 15, 2012

Over a year later, with thousands dead and counting, the ongoing conflict in Syria has become a microcosm for the complicated politics of the region, and an unsavory reflection of the world at large. Against the backdrop of the Arab Spring, NATO’s toppling of Moammar Qaddafi in Libya, and the complicated politics of the region, this film seeks to explore the Syrian conflict through the humanity of the civilians who have been killed, abused, and displaced to the squalor of refugee camps. In all such conflicts, large and small, it is civilians—women and children, families and whole communities—who suffer at the leisure of those in power. While focusing on the plight of those caught in the crossfire of the hegemons, we seek to unravel the conflict by exploring the motivations of its actors—the Ba’athist regime of Bashar al-Assad, the Free Syrian Army and other geopolitical players like the United States, Israel, Russia, China, Iran, Lebanon, Turkey, the Gulf countries... When elephants go to war, it is the grass that suffers. This is a film about the elephants, but made for the grasses.

In May 2012, director Iara Lee led a press delegation that spent weeks in the Turkish refugee camps housing Syrian exiles, interviewing those who have been most affected by the bloody conflict. Some who fled to the camps identify as militants, others are committed to nonviolent tactics, and many more are just trying to live in peace without repression. Each may have his or her own opinion about the decision of some actors to take up arms, or about whether the international community should try to topple the regime. Ultimately, however, any understanding of the Syrian conflict and its costs should be rooted in recognizing the humanity and suffering of these refugees. This film is one effort to do just that. 

For more information about the film, where it's screening, how you can host your own screening and other ways to get involved, click here.
 
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