Uncommon Grounds
New Media and Critical Practices in North Africa and the Middle East
Published on 30. September 2014
296 pages
978-0-85773-593-5 (ISBN)
Description
In this groundbreaking book, a range of internationally renowned and emerging academics, writers, artists, curators, activists and filmmakers critically reflect on the ways in which visual culture has appropriated and developed new media across North Africa and the Middle East. Examining the opportunities presented by the real-time generation of new, relatively unregulated content online, Uncommon Grounds evaluates the prominent role that new media has come to play in artistic practices - and social movements - in the Arab world today. Analysing alternative forms of creating, broadcasting, publishing, distributing and consuming digital images, this book also enquires into a broader global concern: does new media offer a 'democratisation' of - and a productive engagement with - visual culture, or merely capitalise upon the effect of immediacy at the expense of depth?Featuring full-colour artists' inserts, this is the first book to extensively explore the degree to which the grassroots popularity of Twitter and Facebook has been co-opted into mainstream media, institutional and curatorial characterisations of 'revolution' - and whether artists should be wary of perpetuating the rhetoric and spectacle surrounding political events.
In the process, Uncommon Grounds reveals how contemporary art practices actively negotiate present-day notions of community-based activism, artistic agency and political engagement.
In the process, Uncommon Grounds reveals how contemporary art practices actively negotiate present-day notions of community-based activism, artistic agency and political engagement.
More details
Series
Edition
Digital original
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Edition type
Digital original
Illustrations
170 bw integrated, 100 colour in 64pp plates
ISBN-13
978-0-85773-593-5 (9780857735935)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
09/2014
I.B. Tauris
€53.47
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Person
Anthony Downey is an academic and writer. He is the author of Art and Politics Now (Thames and Hudson, 2014), and editor of Uncommon Grounds: New Media and Critical Practice in North Africa and the Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2014). Recent and forthcoming publications include The Future of a Promise: Contemporary Art from the Arab World (Ibraaz Publishing, 2011); Dissonant Archives: Knowledge Production and Art Practices in the Middle East (forthcoming, I.B. Tauris, 2015); and Mirrors for Princes (NYU Press, forthcoming 2015). He is the Director of the Contemporary Art Masters Programme at Sothebys Institute of Art, London, and the Editor in Chief of Ibraaz (www.ibraaz.org), a research forum on visual culture across the Middle East and North Africa.
Content
Anthony Downey
Introduction
Philip Rizk
2011 is not 1968: An open letter to an onlooker
Franco Berardi
The Paradox of Media Activism: The Net is not a Tool, It's an Environment
Anthony Downey
For the Common Good: Artistic Practices and Civil Society in Tunisia.
Jens Maier-Rothe, Dina Kafafi, Azin Feizabadi
Citizens Reporting and the Fabrication of Collective Memory
Derya Yucel
Art's Networks: A New Communal Model
Dina Matar
A critical reflection on aesthetics and politics in the digital age
Nat Muller
Performing the Undead: Life and Death in Social Media and Contemporary Art
Sheyma Buali
Digital, Aesthetic, Ephemeral: A brief look at image and narrative
Omar Kholeif
Re-Examining The Social Impulse: Politics, Media and Art after the Arab Uprisings
Maymanah Farhat
New Media and the Spectacle of the War on Terror
Laura U. Marks
Arab Glitch
Maxa Zoller
Potential Media The appropriation of images commercial media and activist practices in Egypt today
Nermin Sayba??l?
The Magnetic Remenances: Voice and Sound in Digital Art and Media
Edit Molnar and Aleya Hamza
When the Going Gets Tough...
Tarek Khoury
The Art of the Written Word + New Media Dissemination: Across the Borders between Syria and Lebanon
Mahmoud Abu Hashhash
Farther Than Language Can Reach
Walter Mignolo
Re:emerging, Decentring, Delinking: Shifting the Geographies of Sensing, Believing and Knowing
Amal Khalaf
The Many Afterlives of Lulu
Timo Kaabi-Linke
On Revolution and Rubbish: What has Changed in Tunisia since Spring 2011
Annabelle Sreberny
Cardboard Khomeini - An Interrogation
Gulf Labor
Saadiyat and the Gulf Labor Boycott
ARTIST PROJECTS
Tarzan and Arab: GAZAWOOD
Ganzeer: POSTER DESIGNS
Sophia Al-Maria: CHEWING THE DATA FAT
Sarah Abu Abdallah: SAUDI AUTOMOBILE
Faycal Bahgriche: FAMILY FRIENDLY
Jananne Al-Ani: SHADOW SITES
Mosireen: REVOLUTION TRIPTYCH
Mariam Ghani: Notes from the Archive (IMAGES)
Introduction
Philip Rizk
2011 is not 1968: An open letter to an onlooker
Franco Berardi
The Paradox of Media Activism: The Net is not a Tool, It's an Environment
Anthony Downey
For the Common Good: Artistic Practices and Civil Society in Tunisia.
Jens Maier-Rothe, Dina Kafafi, Azin Feizabadi
Citizens Reporting and the Fabrication of Collective Memory
Derya Yucel
Art's Networks: A New Communal Model
Dina Matar
A critical reflection on aesthetics and politics in the digital age
Nat Muller
Performing the Undead: Life and Death in Social Media and Contemporary Art
Sheyma Buali
Digital, Aesthetic, Ephemeral: A brief look at image and narrative
Omar Kholeif
Re-Examining The Social Impulse: Politics, Media and Art after the Arab Uprisings
Maymanah Farhat
New Media and the Spectacle of the War on Terror
Laura U. Marks
Arab Glitch
Maxa Zoller
Potential Media The appropriation of images commercial media and activist practices in Egypt today
Nermin Sayba??l?
The Magnetic Remenances: Voice and Sound in Digital Art and Media
Edit Molnar and Aleya Hamza
When the Going Gets Tough...
Tarek Khoury
The Art of the Written Word + New Media Dissemination: Across the Borders between Syria and Lebanon
Mahmoud Abu Hashhash
Farther Than Language Can Reach
Walter Mignolo
Re:emerging, Decentring, Delinking: Shifting the Geographies of Sensing, Believing and Knowing
Amal Khalaf
The Many Afterlives of Lulu
Timo Kaabi-Linke
On Revolution and Rubbish: What has Changed in Tunisia since Spring 2011
Annabelle Sreberny
Cardboard Khomeini - An Interrogation
Gulf Labor
Saadiyat and the Gulf Labor Boycott
ARTIST PROJECTS
Tarzan and Arab: GAZAWOOD
Ganzeer: POSTER DESIGNS
Sophia Al-Maria: CHEWING THE DATA FAT
Sarah Abu Abdallah: SAUDI AUTOMOBILE
Faycal Bahgriche: FAMILY FRIENDLY
Jananne Al-Ani: SHADOW SITES
Mosireen: REVOLUTION TRIPTYCH
Mariam Ghani: Notes from the Archive (IMAGES)
