[-empyre-] -empyre- Introducing Mirene Arsanios, Ayah Bdeir, Mayssa Fattouh, Shuruq Harb

[Timothy Murray]

Thanks very much to Horit, Nat, and Eliot for contributing to the 
discussion during what turned out to be a tremendously momentous week 
in the Middle East!  We continue our conversation this week with four 
new featured guests, Mirene Arsanios (Lebanon), Ayah Bdeir 
(Lebanon/US), Mayssa Fattouh (Qatar), Shuruq Harb (Palestine).  We 
are delighted that Ayah decided to join us after we made the initial 
announcement of featured guests at the start of the month.

We look forward to hearing your thoughts and we welcome you warmly to -empyre-.

Best,

Renate and Tim

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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.

Ayah Bdeir (Lebanon/US) is an engineer and interactive artist who 
does not believe in boundaries set by disciplines or cultures.  With 
an upbringing between Lebanon, Canada, and the US, her work uses 
experimental tools to look at deliberate and subconscious 
representations of reality.  Living and working between Beirut and 
New York, Ayah has exhibited at Peacock  Visual Arts in Scotland, the 
New Museum, Ars Electronica, Badcuyp, and Location One.  She is an 
Honorary Fellow at Eyebeam Art + Technology Center in New york  where 
she was in residence in 2008, and mentored the regional reality 
tv-show Stars of Science promoting science and technology innovation 
in the Middle East.  In 2010, Ayah was awarded a Creative Commons 
Fellowship which includeed spearheading the first Open Hardward 
definition and co-chairing  the Open Hardward Summit at the New York 
Hall of Science.  She works commercially with collaborators as art&d 
studio.

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.

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