[-empyre-] Welcome to week 2 of February 2020 discussion: Thinking differently in scholarship and curation

Wed Feb 12 21:28:07 AEDT 2020

I’d like to pick up on something very important Sama wrote in her last paragraph, for which many thanks. It’s true that artists (and occasionally other art workers in precarious positions such as freelance curators, art writers, etc) often feel that they are being put with their backs to the wall when it comes to how their work is framed. With large Western institutions it is often a choice between visibility and career prospects vis-à-vis a flattening representation of their practice. And in the Gulf, as Sama rightly has pointed out, it’s really complicated too. For example, should one show at state-sponsored events in Saudi? Or as an artist with a progressive and politically emancipatory practice, how comfortable are you selling your work to a Saudi collection? Do you refuse or do you also need to pay the rent? I know of many artists who really struggle with these issues, but indeed these conversations are kept under wraps because the repercussions of being candid are just too high. While we see more artists standing up against how the institutions they shown in are funded, the issue remains that the fabric of the contemporary art field makes it very difficult to have an open discussion about ethics.  In a way this is at the heart of our topic this week.

-Nat

> On Feb 10, 2020, at 07:56, Sama Alshaibi <alshaibi at email.arizona.edu> wrote:
> 
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> When I was in graduate school, my faculty were delighted to award me grants reserved for Asian research. They noted the accuracy of Palestine being in West Asia. That has largely been the exception. I pushed for the Middle East to be referred as West Asia in my monograph (sand rushes in) published by Aperture,  and the publisher complied. The editor was happy. But not all the writers. A significant curator and scholar told me that it was inconsistent (because each writer said something different) and that basically scholars agree with it just being the Arab world. That I should change if. I’m not sure if that’s true, that scholars agree. 
> 
> I just learned of a new collective branding under southwest Asia yesterday (apparently that is the Middle East). I don’t regret my choice in my monograph but have grown sick of the questions. As someone that explicitly addresses the complexities of women’s experiences of the region as being flattened, I certainly don’t want to refer to all as Arab. I would be flattening too. I’ve primarily gone back to Middle East and North Africa as it seems to be where the academic field sits, and tired of my students googling West Asia and trying to figure out where it starts.
> 
> I think it’s better to be more specific if at all possible. Right now in Tucson, Arizona, where I work and live, the debate is over Chicano/a/x and Latinx ... many find the Latinx is erasing and canceling historical, radical movements that fought for visibility. Latinx is the buzzword, but erases indigenous peoples. 
> 
> And finally, I didn’t jump in last week for a number of reasons. I guess I don’t feel safe to comment or critique the discussion of artists I know and exhibitions and initiatives I have been a part of. It’s a very precarious position to be in— as an artist that is also an academic. I feel ... differently about some of what was discussed and am very aware of the power structures, funding and material support by a number of the artists discussed. It’s not simple, and the conditions for artists there are not simple. But I also know societies want to believe that artists live outside of systems that they critique. It’s not true, and it’s not that easy. It doesn’t make them hypocrites, especially in gulf countries where these edges are complicated. I would caution against believing artists have a platform or achieve a success because they organically found strategies to gain audience trust or that the work is so good. Access in that part of the world is largely tied to systems and patrons.  It doesn’t make the artist corrupt or any less important. Perhaps complacent. Perhaps more. We have our own set of problems here in the USA. However, it just became abundantly clear how unsafe it is to speak truthfully, because we are at the very heart of it. How can we do what we do, what allows us to continue to do it, and yet address it without it quickly being taken away? And yes, each one of these initiatives or artists have important ideas to share, breaking ground with women leading in critical roles. But it is happening within and through a system and structure that is often highly problematic. 
> 
> Very few artists don’t care about this. But they have very few options to do differently. The only group they talk to about such stuff is their families and their close artists friends. 
> 
> Sama 
> 
> On Sun, Feb 9, 2020 at 12:44 PM Kay Dickinson <kay.dickinson at concordia.ca <mailto:kay.dickinson at concordia.ca>> wrote:
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> West Asia, you say, Dale? I’ve presented work at a few Asian Studies conferences now and am frequently jarred by how regularly smart, well-educated people who hold university jobs in that discipline remark to me that the countries I study (Palestine, Syria, the UAE…) “aren’t in Asia.”  It would be intriguing to see how many Asian Studies departments actually count “Middle Eastern” specialists within their ranks. We might have a long way to go.  More typically, people whose research springs from or takes them there are housed in either Middle East Studies or Islamic Studies.  The latter betrays how even deliberately secular investigations get circumscribed and stereotyped.  The former designation has always seemed somehow more inclusive.  Personally, I work within frameworks that foreground “Arab” as their regional classification.  That grouping word – amongst other things – brings with it a proud anti-imperialist history that calls out for our attention in an increasingly neo-colonized world.  Not that pan-Arabism or Arab nationalism ever cut ties with internationalism.  In my (main) field of cinema, these movements encouraged radical solidarity between Palestinian and Japanese freedom fighting filmmakers.  Their foundations in Syria saw their roots nourished in film school education in the Soviet Union.  Arab filmmakers wrote manifestos collaboratively with comrades from Latin America and Africa.  In fact, if anything, it was the ties to other Middle Eastern countries like Turkey and Iran that seemed less to the forefront and for evident and shifting geopolitical reasons.  Could a focus on “the Middle East” today, for instance, give us greater awareness of a history of Iranian pro-Palestine films or how Syrian refugees are continuing their art in exile in Turkey?  Might “the Middle East” encourage South-South alignments of all stripes that speak to an independence from the way cinematic culture is often pressurized into routing itself through the gatekeeping institutions of Europe and North America?
> 
> 
> On 2020-02-09, 11:24 AM, "empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au <mailto:empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au> on behalf of Dale Hudson" <empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au <mailto:empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au> on behalf of dmh2018 at nyu.edu <mailto:dmh2018 at nyu.edu>> wrote:
> 
>     ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>     Thanks, Beth and Sean, for sharing some of your research on ways that artists in KSA and UAE are navigating the limitations of territory.
> 
>     I realized that the numeral dates were aligning with the weekend for many subscribers, so I’m starting week 2 on Sunday evening my time, which hopefully will more closely align with the start of the week in Australia and start of the day in North America.
> 
> 
>     This week, I’ve invited Kay Dickinson and Nat Muller to extend the discussion into ways to think differently in our scholarship and curation. 
> 
>     I’m pasting their bios below for a sense of the expertise that they bring to the discussion, particularly as it concerns art and media that are labelled as “Middle Eastern” or “in the Middle East.”
> 
>     I’m curious how we as artists, scholars, curators, activists, theorists, students, and so forth can make ideas and perspectives visible and legible to broader publics without using terms that are reductive (like the ones Beth mentioned in her last post) or inaccurate (like Middle East) since the structures of publishing and curating are often based on keyword-search-friendly reproduction of these reductive and inaccurate categories.
> 
>     There was an article published online in one of the arts/museums journals about an ongoing discussion about replacing Middle East with West Asia or Southwest Asia at a one of the museums in London, I believe. If I find the link, I will share. 
> 
>     Dale
> 
> 
> 
>     2—Thinking differently in scholarship and curation
> 
>     Scholarship and curation often adopt the nation-state as a category of analysis. Much like art and film are promoted at commercial festivals and art market, our scholarship and curating often under-represent the significance of other aspects of identity and politics. Even museums and educational institutions continue to reduce artists to place of birth and residence.
> 
>     This week considers ways of thinking differently, whether the transcontinental, pan-Arab, pan-African, and non-aligned movements of the mid-20th century or the more recent deterritorialized movements that emerge via internet and mobile networks, often using the idea of the nation-state as an oppositional strategy against corruption and nepotism.
> 
>     How can we conceive more complicated ways to organize art practices? Are concessions to the logics of film festivals and art markets in our publishing, curating, and programming unavoidable?
> 
> 
>     Kay Dickinson is Professor of Film Studies at Concordia University, Montreal.  She is the author of Off Key: When Film and Music Won’t Work Together (Oxford University Press, 2008), Arab Cinema Travels: Transnational Syria, Palestine, Dubai and Beyond (bfi, 2016) and Arab Film and Video Manifestos: Forty-Five Years of the Moving Image Amid Revolution (Palgrave, 2018).
> 
>     Nat Muller is an independent curator and writer based between Amsterdam and Birmingham. Her main interests are: image politics and contemporary art from the Middle East. Recent exhibitions include Spectral Imprints for the Abraaj Group Art Prize in Dubai (2012); Adel Abidin’s solo exhibition I love to love… at Forum Box in Helsinki (2013); This is the Time. This is the Record of the Time at Stedelijk Museum/American University of Beirut Gallery (2014/15); the A.M. Qattan 2016 Young Artist of the Year Award at Qalandiya International in Ramallah and The Mosaic Rooms in London; Neither on the Ground nor in the Sky at ifa Gallery Berlin (2019). In 2015 she was Associate Curator for the Delfina Foundation’s Politics of Food Program (London). She has curated film programs for Rotterdam’s International Film Festival, Norwegian Short Film Festival, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, and Video D.U.M.B.O New York. Her writing has been widely published and she edited Sadik Kwaish Alfraji’s monograph (Schilt Publishing, 2015), Nancy Atakan’s monograph Passing On (Kehrer Verlag, 2016), Walid Siti’s monograph (Kehrer Verlag, forthcoming 2020). Her AHRC-funded PhD project at Birmingham City University researches science fiction in contemporary visual practices from the Middle East. She curated the Danish Pavilion with Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour for the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. www.natmuller.com <http://www.natmuller.com/> 
> 
>     _______________________________________________
>     empyre forum
>     empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au <mailto:empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au>
>     http://empyre.library.cornell.edu <http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/>
> 
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au <mailto:empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au>
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu <http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/>-- 
> Sama Alshaibi, Professor
> Co-Chair of Photography | Video | Imaging
> 1885 Distinguished Scholar
> School of Art | University of Arizona
> (+)1-520-595-8305
> www.samaalshaibi.com <http://www.samaalshaibi.com/>
> http://aperture.org/shop/alshaibi-sand-rushes-in-book <http://aperture.org/shop/alshaibi-sand-rushes-in-book>
> 
> Upcoming exhibitions:  
> "State of the Art 2020" <https://crystalbridges.org/exhibitions/state-of-the-art-2/>
> Curator: Lauren Haynes; Assistant Curator Alejo Benedetti; Associate Curator Allison Glenn
> 22 February - 24 May 2020 | Crystal Bridges Museum and the Momentary | Bentonville, AR
> 
> "Migration(s) and Meaning in Art"
> curator: Deborah Willis
> 30 January - 15 March 2020 | MICA | Meyerhoff Gallery | Baltimore, MD
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

|_______--|||
nat muller ||| independent curator | art writer || precarious art worker || PhD researcher
mob NL +31652474016 
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skype: nat_muller
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