[-empyre-] questions about teaching media art in ME

[Laura Marks]

Thanks Nat. Really interesting what projects students take up in different contexts--tactical media in Lebanon, surveillance in Dubai. 

----- Original Message -----
From: "nat muller" <nat at xs4all.nl>
To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Sent: Wednesday, February 9, 2011 3:05:39 PM
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] questions about teaching media art in ME

hi laura,

great to read you here. thanks for the question!

> So I'd like to introduce another line of questioning that seems more  
> mild but has its own deep politics. It is directed to those of you  
> who teach media art, or art generally, in the Middle East--Nat with  
> your varied experience, Isak, others. What do your students want to  
> learn? What is the fit between their interests and the curriculum?  
> Do people refer a canon of Western art when studying a given medium,  
> or incorporate local and regional artists? Where do your students  
> want to show their work; in what scenes do they want to intervene?  
> And, how do they plan to make a living?
well, the first time i taught the summer semester course "introduction  
to new media art and new media theory" at the Lebanese American  
University in 2005, it was hit and miss. management really wanted me  
to teach the curriculum as i had originally proposed it, but i felt  
insecure whether in beirut - where in 2005 downloading a pdf would  
take forever and the bandwidth was too low to play online video - all  
of the course made sense. there is also a real difficulty teaching  
interactive installations when all you have to go on is the  
documentation material, and when nobody has ever experienced that type  
of art. so the parts on net.art, interactive art, cyberfeminism and  
the theory were a bit of a struggle, but the classes on tactical  
media, hacktivism, adbusting and subvertising really struck a cord.

what i found extremely interesting was that students would translate  
the works of the western canon to their own experiences.   one student  
wrote his term paper on the analogies between islamic art and  
algorithmic art. actually laura, i had to think of khalil when i first  
encountered your latest publication _Enfoldment and Infinity_.  so in  
2007 and 2009 when teaching at ALBA (the art academy in beirut) i  
decided i would integrate as many local and regional artists into the  
curriculum as i could. as well as talk about public space projects.  
for me it was important that the students would acquire the tools and  
vocabulary to look at media and media images critically, and situate  
the latter in larger geo-political contexts. actually the early work  
of mona hatoum is great teaching material as it is all about  
mediation, technology, communication and representation. but also  
oraib touqan, rabih mroue, akram zaatari, raed yassin and hassan  
khan's work were incorporated. i also made a point to take students to  
local exhibitions and discuss the works with them. in 2007 i was lucky  
lamia joreige had a solo show in beirut, in 2009 the beirut art center  
had just opened its doors.

at ALBA many students eventually go on to work in graphic design or  
animation, but some also start working with art initiatives. the  
options in beirut have grown since 2005, and that also enlargens the  
field of possibilities for graduates.
at the american university in dubai during my visual culture seminar,   
i spent a lot of time talking about surveillance and counter- 
surveillance (from cctv film making to the surveillance camera players  
to michelle teran's work, etc). this was an instant hit, as was mieke  
gerritzen's great typographic film about globalisation. now showing  
that in dubai made a lot of sense! it was easy for students to relate  
to issues of surveillance and hi-capitalist globalisation. the film is  
copyleft so i think by now half of dubai has a copy.

i also read vilem flusser texts on exile and creativity with the  
students.  larissa already indicated how the diasporic/exilic is such  
an inherent characteristic of palestinian identity.  in my class there  
were palestinian, iranian, indian, lebanese, emirati and kuweiti  
students. i've never felt the words of flusser so forcefully as during  
that class.
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