[-empyre-] -empyre- Introducing Mirene Arsanios, Ayah Bdeir, Mayssa Fattouh, Shuruq Harb
ayah bdeir
ayahbdeir at gmail.com
Wed Feb 16 07:58:26 EST 2011
Hello all,
I should open by saying that I am not a curator or a theoretician when
it comes to the topic so forgive me if my thoughts are much more
grounded in my own experience and exposures as an artist, rather than
in depth observations/thoughts about the "field" as a whole. That
said, I'm excited to take part in the conversation and to meet all of
you (and to re-see you Mayssa and Nat!).
Like Tim mentioned, I come to art from a slightly unconventional
background, as I have training as an engineer. After having studied
computer engineering in beirut, I went to MIT to the Media Lab to
studio Media Arts and Sciences and have been living in the US for a
little over 7 years now. I tend to not call myself a media artist for
some of the reasons referred to by Mayssa and Nat: Often "new media"
is used to reflect art work that uses new technologies, but in my
opinion, as mediums of "display" (screens, projections, audio
installations, etc). That's why I like to use the term "interactive
artist", to signify work where the medium used (software, hardware,
interactive-display, sensor-based, etc) is crucial in defining the
relationship of the work to the audience. So (in part of course), the
medium is the message.
My entire artistic practice has been formed during my time in the US
(Boston, New York). And recently, I have partially moved back to
Beirut, and been trying to settle there. For obvious reasons, this
isn't easy. And first and foremost is an "identity" issue. Not
identity as an arab or lebanese or woman, but as an interactive
artist. Because the "interactivity" in interactive art requires
technical knowledge, most interactive artists are also "geeks" one way
or another. If our craft is technology, then we must be fluent in
technology, and as it keeps changing/moving/reconfiguring, we need to
be as curious and involved in pushing technological experimentation as
artistic concept. In the US/Europe, so much of our community is formed
of engineers, computer scientists, programmers, roboticists (etc) who
have jobs or teach in technology. Artists attend/give technical
workshops, have startups, develop software, belong to techies mailing
lists, embark on purely technological projects, etc. And it is not
detrimental to our identity as artists. In the middle east, this
fluidity between disciplines is still uncomfortable. You are an artist
OR a designer OR an engineer, and that, i think, is preventing the
medium from a creative explosion.
Again coming back to my personal experience, in the United States (and
Europe), interactive artists have (often) very little trouble finding
a support structure. From an institutional perspective, organizations
(in my case Eyebeam, Creative Commons, INK, MIT) over the years offer
support for the sole purpose of providing support to experimental
interactive work. It comes in the forms of stipends, commissions,
studio spaces, etc. Also, galleries, festivals are interested and
comfortable showing this kind of work, and needless to say, that's a
long way from being the case in the Middle East (although it's
improving). But the place where I really feel the difference, is from
the Community perspective. In the "west" I am part of a large
community of people, artists, engineers, hackers that are very
comfortable straddling the border between art and technology. The
community provides a lot of support, brainstorm, constant learning and
sharing that is crucial to the process. When I am in Beirut, I feel
alone, cut out, and constantly having to explain (or justify) how it
is that i am equally, or simultaneously experimenting in art and in
technology.
In part that led me to join forces with friends and start www.karajbeirut.org
, a lab for experimental arts and technology. There is some
international support, but it's still in early days of attempting to
meet/bring togther a community of like minded "straddlers". I am
looking forward to liaise with other communities, groups, people, and
am very much interested in thoughts.
cheers
ayah
--------------------------------------------
twitter - @ayahbdeir
website - www.ayahbdeir.com
MS. MIT Media Lab - www.media.mit.edu
adjunct faculty at NYU - ab197 at nyu.edu
fellow at Creative Commons - www.creativecommons.org
honorary fellow at Eyebeam - www.eyebeam.org
founder - www.KarajBeirut.org
On Feb 15, 2011, at 5:27 AM, nat muller wrote:
> hi mayssa,
>
> great to see you here! i was wondering if you could elaborate a bit
> more on the ways how artists are experimenting with platforms
> (re:casablanca conference). do you feel the experimentation is more
> technological or conceptual, or combines both?
> in the 90s and early 2000s - the heydays of new media art, net.art,
> electronic art if you will - (not the 80s by the way) much of the
> best works managed to combine a probing of the media/technology by
> stretching its aesthetic possibilities and often by referencing its
> socio-political grounding. very similar to what one of the father's
> of it all - nam june paik did. do you feel these elements come
> together in the works and approaches discussed during the conference?
> what i found interesting during my research is that what in the west
> is considered "old skool" like video, photography, has a different
> status in let's say egypt and lebanon. of course we find artists
> like aya bdeir, ricardo mbarkho who works with software, recently
> lamia joreige with interactive installations and the fabulous sound
> artist tarek atoui. however if i would have to make a sweeping
> generalisation, the emphasis of much of the work we are seeing from
> the region is more concerned with "the image" and the construction
> and porosity of that image (be that by technological or by
> ideological means as we detect in the work of akram zaatari, lara
> baladi, rabih mroue, mounira el solh, raed yassin, joanna
> hadjithomas&khalil joreige, hassan khan, mahmoud khaled,...). does
> this chime with your observations?
>
> .nat
>
>
> following, as this is something i have been thinking a lot about too:
>
>>
>>
>>
>> On the other hand, new media as it is called, I feel no longer fits
>> in the realm of this century, it was perhaps still new until the
>> late 80s but with the expansion of the computer's capacities and
>> the internet's proliferation it is just another available medium.
>> This said though artists in the Middle East are still experimenting
>> with these platforms for several reasons that were highlighted in a
>> conference about digital arts in Casablanca, organized by Crea
>> Numerica with the aim to identify "digital artists", hosting
>> platforms and challenges they face in the French speaking countries
>> which pretty much are in all corners of the world. I was asked then
>> to assess the Lebanese scene. The first question I was asked by the
>> artists is what is considered as digital art today? it is important
>> to note here that art schools in Lebanon hardly ever introduce art
>> outside the classical formats of fine arts in their curriculum,
>> this though is now slowly changing. Informal art schools are
>> opening around the region - this, interestingly, is perhaps also
>> due to the lack of governmental art policies and their general lack
>> of interest in investing in the cultural fields with the exception
>> of Gulf countries.
>> I hear the comment discussed earlier about internet as a space of
>> freedom and democracy, it does perhaps provide an immediacy in the
>> accessibility which could result in the interpretation of a certain
>> democracy or freedom but it would be a total illusion to think that
>> these platforms are free of interferences.
>>
>> I apologize for the disruptive flow, I'm happy to dwell on all
>> above points but for now will leave the floor to the other guests.
>>
>> Look forward to the continuation and a growing momentum of the
>> discussion.
>>
>> Mayssa
>> --
>> Independent Curator
>> mayssa.f at gmail.com
>> Skype mayssafattouh
>> +97466894029
>> Doha, Qatar
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 9:43 PM, Timothy Murray <tcm1 at cornell.edu>
>> wrote:
>> 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
>>
>> =================================================================
>> 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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>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>
> |_______--|||
> nat muller ||| independent curator | critic | delight-maker | foodie
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