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

Wed Feb 16 07:31:32 EST 2011

Hi Nat,

Nice to see you here too.
The Casablanca conference gathered as mentioned art professionals and
artists from all corners of the world, this gave a very generic idea of what
was happening in the various french speaking countries (or previously under
the mandate of France) but nonetheless it was interesting to see the
approach of artists in North and West Africa and the Levant compared to
Canada and Europe. Artists present from Egypt and Morocco were explaining
the rational behind their shift from painting to electronic art stating that
"technology gave them a freedom to express themselves far greater than
painting did and that they wanted to experiment with New media". There's no
doubt that this experimentation is both technological and conceptual as the
message be it socio-political or narcissistic remains the core of the work,
however the fetishization and the fascination with the media is still
evident: the middle east's internet penetration is still approximately 30%
of its population compared to the TV which is 98%, personal computers are
not a given, video art has been accepted in this part of the world not more
than a decade ago although artists have been utilizing this material here
since the 90s and before, art professors have been fighting with deans of
universities to introduce electronic art in the curriculum this as mentioned
is changing.
Ayah Bdeir and Ricardo Mbarkho, who's works I had mentioned during this
conference, have a lot to say about the context in Lebanon and will leave
Ayah, also a guest in this discussion, to reiterate on this.
I believe Ali Cherri's interactive video installation Now I Feel Whole Again
http://www.acherri.com/whole.html is a rare example of the complementarity
of interactive technology to an intimate approach of socio-political issues
such as the censorship of sexuality lived in this region.
As you know, socio-political subjects remain a major influence on works of
artists in this region, whether there are attempts to escape them or
confront them they are still present across all disciplines. I agree with
your observation that artists such as Akram Zaatari, Rabih Mroue, Raed
Yassin and Joanna Hadjithomas&Khalil Joreige, are concerned with the image
and its treatment, perhaps it would be relevant to say that it is the
treatment of an image of a memory that they're concerned with.

I take your comment about the heydays of electronic art being in the 90's
and early 2000, but as you mentioned with Nam June Paik already established
and recognized as the father of video art since the 60's, influencing
artists almost immediately after; forms such as laser and holograph, video,
computer and communication art were being utilized by artists as early as
the 60s and 70s and the 80s with names such as Paul Earls, Dieter Jung, Roy
Ascott and Fred Forest to name a few; I thought it important to mark that
decade as a crucial period of experimentation.

Mayssa

-- 
Independent Curator
mayssa.f at gmail.com
Skype mayssafattouh
+97466894029
Doha, Qatar

On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 1:27 PM, nat muller <nat at xs4all.nl> 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.
>>
>> --
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>
>
>
>
>
>
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