[-empyre-] February on -empyre-: New Media and the Middle East

Fri Feb 4 01:03:43 EST 2011

Thank for mounting this timely and important discussion.

Today, at Noon EST, there is a live streaming discussion of new media and the middle east, here's the link for those interested, from Engage Media in Indonesia:

http://www.engagemedia.org/Members/emnews/news/live-stream-the-middle-east-the-revolution-and-the-internet/view

-------
Patricia R. Zimmermann, Ph.D.
Professor, Cinema, Photography and Media Arts
Roy H. Park School of Communications
Codirector, Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival
953 Danby Road
Ithaca College
Ithaca, New York 14850 USA
Office: +1 (607) 274 3431
FAX: +1 (607) 274 7078
http://faculty.ithaca.edu/patty/
http://www.ithaca.edu/fleff
BLOG: http://www.ithaca.edu/fleff10/blogs/open_spaces/
patty at ithaca.edu

---- Original message ----
>Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2011 01:17:55 -0500
>From: empyre-bounces at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au (on behalf of Renate Ferro <rtf9 at cornell.edu>,Timothy Murray <tcm1 at cornell.edu>)
>Subject: [-empyre-] February on -empyre-: New Media and the Middle East  
>To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>
>>February 2011 on -empyre- soft_skinned space
>>
>>"New Media and the Middle East"
>>
>>Moderated by Renate Ferro (US) and Tim Murray 
>>(US) with Mirene Arsanios (Lebanon), Eliot Bates 
>>(US), Isak Berbic (UAE), Tarek Elhaik  (US), 
>>Mayssa Fattouh (Qatar), Shuruq Harb (Palestine), 
>>Horit Herman Peled (IS), Laura U. Marks (Cn), 
>>Kevin and Jennifer McCoy (US/UAE), Nat Müller 
>>(Netherlands), Larissa Sansour (UK).
>
>http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/
>
>This month's geopolitical focus on new media and 
>the Middle East will provide a framework for 
>engaging in a wide-range of interdisciplinary 
>approaches to new media art and theory. 
>Featured guests will introduce their practices 
>across a range of media and cultural traditions, 
>from video, interactive, and relational media to 
>photography, sound, and gaming.  Equally 
>important will be curatorial and social 
>initiatives.    In so doing they will engage in a 
>discussion of how  the cultural, political, and 
>theoretical specificities of the Middle East 
>contribute to and impact artistic practice?  What 
>role does technology play in artistic and 
>curatorial practice, and how do Middle Eastern 
>histories, customs, and politics inform this 
>contribution?  Is there a way that new 
>technologies and their artistic expression 
>enhance reflection on geopolitical considerations 
>important to the region and its reception?  Or 
>might new technology itself exemplify the 
>paradoxes or tensions that in themselves have 
>informed the artistic and curatorial practices of 
>our guests.  And, flowing from January's 
>discussion, how might the list's discussion of 
>the Netopticon dialogue with artistic and 
>curatorial practices in the Middle East?  Are 
>there ways that flows between artistic and 
>geopolitical  borders contribute to political and 
>conceptual thinking about the "Middle" as it 
>informs both "East" and "West"?
>
>=================================================================
>Moderated by:
>Renate Ferro (US) is a conceptual and new media 
>artist working in emerging technology, 
>participatory installation, and digital culture. 
>She is the Co-Managing Moderator of  -empyre- and 
>the art/imaging editor of the journal diacritics 
>published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. 
>She teaches in the College of Architecture, Art, 
>and Planning at Cornell University.  She has 
>recently staged participatory exhibitions and 
>installations  in Berlin, Chiapas, Mexico, and 
>Pécs, Hungary.  She directed an intervention in 
>October for -empyre- at the Making Sense 
>Colloquium at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and 
>teaches new media and conceptual art at Cornell 
>University.
>
>Tim Murray (US) is the Curator of the Rose 
>Goldsen Archive of New Media Art at Cornell 
>University and Co-Managing Moderator of 
>-empyre-.  He is Director of the Society for the 
>Humanities and Professor Comparative Literature 
>and English at Cornell.  He sits on the Steering 
>Committee of HASTAC and is the author of numerous 
>books and articles on new media, film and video, 
>contemporary art, performance, and theory, 
>including Digital Baroque: New Media Art and 
>Cinematic Folds.
>
>Featured Guests:
>
>Mirene Arsanios (Lebanon)  is curator, critic, 
>and co-founder of 98weeks Project Space and 
>artist organization in Beirut.  She studied art 
>history in Rome and received her Masters in 
>Contemporary Art from Goldsmiths College, London. 
>She previously worked as a researcher at Ashkal 
>Alwan and as an Assistant Curator at MACRO, 
>Museum of Contemporary Art Rome. She now teaches 
>at the American University of Beirut.
>
>Eliot Bates (US) is an ethnomusicologist 
>specializing in digital audio recording cultures 
>and the production of contemporary music in 
>Istanbul, Turkey.   He is a Society for the 
>Humanities ACLS Fellow in Music at Cornell 
>University.  He has published, Music in Turkey: 
>Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (Oxford) 
>and co=founded the dancecult.net collaborative 
>bibliography project and the open source journal, 
>Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music 
>Culture.
>
>Isak Berbic (UAE) is an artist, writer and 
>lecturer born in Bosnia and Herzegovina, at that 
>time called Yugoslavia. In 1992 as Yugoslavia 
>dissolved and Bosnia was under attack, he and his 
>family became refugees, moving from Croatia, 
>through the Czech Republic to a refugee camp in 
>Denmark, and lastly to the United States.  In 
>2007 he moved to the Middle East; United Arab 
>Emirates, where he currently teaches media at the 
>College of Fine Arts and Design, University of 
>Sharjah. He is a continuing contributor to 
>numerous projects and publications on 
>contemporary art. His research deals with 
>histories, politics, tragedy, memory, humor, 
>exile, and the limits of representation.
>
>Tarek Elhaik (US) is an anthropologist, film 
>curator, and Assistant Professor of Cinema
>Studies at San Francisco State University. He situates his conceptual,
>sensorial and ethnographic investigations of Modernity at the frontier
>of anthropology, trans-cultural cinema, contemporary media arts and
>curatorial work. He is particularly interested in the intersection between
>the history of clinical concepts, political culture, curatorial
>practice, and new media practices in both Latin America and the Middle
>East.
>
>Mayssa Fattouh (Qatar) is an independent curator 
>and cultural practitioner born in Beirut and 
>currently based in Doha Qatar. Fattouh has been 
>developing her practice between Beirut, Dubai and 
>Bahrain where she worked as Curatorial and 
>Program Manager at Al Riwaq Gallery. Her latest 
>ongoing project 
><http://receptiveground.blogspot.com/>Receptive 
>Ground, is a web based archive platform 
>addressing subjects of art and culture in the 
>Middle East and the Arab Gulf. Fattouh is 
>currently pursuing her Master's of Arts in 
>Communication at The European Graduate School in 
>Saas-Fee, Switzerland.
>
>Shuruq Harb (Palestine) is an artist based in 
>Ramallah, Palestine. Working with text and 
>photography, her artistic practice deals with 
>issues around writing, language and image.  Harb 
>has worked on several online projects such Across 
>Borders in 2005/2006, and is currently developing 
>online photography courses for  Birzeit 
>University 's Virtual Gallery. She is the 
>co-founder of ArtTerritories, an online platform 
>for critical exchange on matters of art and 
>visual culture in the Middle East and the Arab 
>World.
>
>Horit Herman Peled (Israel) is an artist, peace 
>activist, and theorist.  She resides in Tel Aviv 
>and teaches new media and theory at the Art 
>Institute, Oranim College, Israel.
>Horit Herman Peled is an artist, peace activist 
>and theorist. Resides in Tel Aviv and teaches new 
>media and theory at the Art Institute, Oranim 
>College, Israel. Most recent publication: "Post 
>Post Zionism: Confronting the Demise of the 
>Two-State Solution," New Left Review, 67, 
>January-February 2011 (co-authored with Yoav 
>Peled).  
>
>Laura U. Marks (Canada) is the Dena Wosk 
>University Professor of Art and Culture Studies 
>at Simon Fraser University.  A scholar, theorist, 
>and curator of independent and experimental media 
>arts, she is the author of The Skin of the Film: 
>Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses 
>(Duke University Press, 2000),Touch: Sensuous 
>Theory and Multisensory  Media (Minnesota 
>University Press, 2002).  Several years of 
>research in Islamic art history and philosophy 
>gave rise to her new book Enfoldment and 
>Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art 
>(MIT Press, 2010). She has curated programs of 
>experimental media for venues around the world. 
>Her current research interests are the media arts 
>of the Arab and Muslim world, intercultural 
>perspectives on new media art, and philosophical 
>approaches to materiality and information culture.
>
>Kevin and Jennifer McCoy (US/UAE) are a Brooklyn, 
>New York couple who make art together, and are 
>now located in Abu Dhabi while Kevin launches the 
>art program at the Persian Gulf campus of New 
>York University.  Their current exhibition at 
>Postmasters in New York, "Abu Dhabi is Love 
>Forever" explores their experiences in the media 
>rich environment of the UAE.  They work with 
>interactive media, film, performance and 
>installation to explore personal experience in 
>relation to new technology, the mass media, and 
>global commerce.  They often re-examine classic 
>genres and works of cinema, science fiction or 
>television narrative, creating sculptural 
>objects, net art, robotic movies or live 
>performance.
>
>Nat Müller (Netherlands) is an independent 
>curator and critic based in Rotterdam. She has 
>held positions as staff curator at V2_, Institute 
>for Unstable Media (Rotterdam) and De Balie, 
>Centre for Culture and Politics (Amsterdam). Her 
>main interests include: the intersections of 
>aesthetics, media and politics; (new) media and 
>art in the Middle East. She has published 
>articles in off- and online media. Her  projects 
>include Xeno_Sonic: a series of experimental 
>sound performances from the Middle East 
>(Amsterdam, 2005), the workshop 'Between a Rock 
>and a Hard Place? Negotiating Artistic Practice, 
>Audiences, Representation and Collaboration 
>within Local and International Frameworks' 
>(Amman, 2007).  She was the first 
>curator-in-residence at the Townhouse Gallery in 
>Cairo (2008-2009), and serves as an advisor on 
>Euro-Med collaboration to the ECF and the 
>European Commission.
>
>Larissa Sansour (UK) was born in Jerusalem and 
>lives in London after studying  Fine Art in 
>Copenhagen, London, and New York.  Her work is 
>immersed in the current political dialogue and 
>utilizes video art, photography, experimental 
>documentary, the book form and the internet.  By 
>approximating the nature, reality, and complexity 
>of life in Palestine and the Middle East to 
>visual forms normally associated with television 
>and televised pastime, her schemes clash with the 
>gravity expected from works commenting on the 
>region.  She has participated in the Busan 
>Biennial in Korea, the Third Guangzhou Triennia, 
>Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, PhotoCairo4, 
>Dubai International Film Festival, Istanbul 
>Biennial and Loverpool Biennial.
>-- 
>Renate Ferro and Tim Murray
>Managing Co-Moderators, -empyre- a soft-skinned-space
>Department of Art/ Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
>Cornell University
>_______________________________________________
>empyre forum
>empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>http://www.subtle.net/empyre