Spring 2012, ArteEast Quarterly
For all Quarterly Issues visit www.arteeast.org
ArteEast is pleased to announce the release of the Spring 2012 edition of ArteEast Quarterly, an online publication that offers readers a critical forum for contemporary artistic practices in the Middle East, North Africa and their diaspora. Consisting of 3 sections—ArteZine, Shahadat and Gallery—ArteEast Quarterly complements ArteEast live programs to serve its global audience.
Spring 2012: ArteZine
Title: C+
Guest Editor: Sandra Skurvida
The removal of work at the 2010 Sharjah Biennial was met with outrage and indignation amongst the arts community in the Middle East and beyond but often ignored the sensitive cultural context in which the work was situated. In the Spring 2012 ArteZine we approach Iran as a case study that has historically and systematically suppressed artistic expression and creative voices.
But rather than simply view censorship in a negative light, the Spring 2012 ArteZine, C+ explores the productive aspects of censorship within the Iranian context. With contributions from artists, curators and scholars, this issue looks beyond censorship’s association with the foreclosure of creative expression and curtailing of audience access to art. Instead, C+ invites readers to acknowledge a value and power within censorship that reveals the transformative possibilities for art in restricted environments.
Guest Edited by Sandra Skurvida, an independent curator and researcher, the issue assembles contributors who tackle censorship in a variety of ways. Interactive artist-driven projects by Sohrab Kashani, Slavs and Tatars, Katayoun Vaziri and Anahita Razmi reveal the aesthetic and generative qualities that censorship can afford practitioners. An introspective interview with Barbad Golshiri looks at the pernicious hold that censorship takes on individual movement and artists’ ability to “disturb the public opinion,” while an interview by Media Farzin with Sohrab Mahdavi explores the differences and conflicts between writers based in Tehran and those who come from abroad. Negar Mottahedeh‘s essay delineates between insurrection, religious revival, and technology to capture the “Islamic Cyborg” and Kaelen Wilson Goldie‘s treatment on risk reads as a manifesto for exceeding the market-driven censorship.
For this issue of ArteZine and to learn more about the contributors click here.
The launch of this issue of ArteZine will be marked by a public program consisting of issue contributors and followed by a response by Brian Kuan Wood (co-editor, e-flux journal) at Independent Curators International (ICI), New York on May 1, 2012 7–9pm.
Gallery
Featured artist: Slavs and Tatars
Curator: Dina Ibrahim
Guest-curated by Dina Ibrahim, the spring edition of the gallery features the work of the collective Slavs and Tatars and delves into the reality-producing capacity of language in art. Written script and calligraphy have been present for hundreds of years in art from the MENA region, and the Spring 2012 gallery unhinges text from the static printed page to reveal the charged quality of text in art. Slavs and Tatars‘ practice is devoted to an area east of the Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China known as Eurasia, redeeming an oft-forgotten, romantic sphere of influence between Slavs, Caucasians, and Central Asians.
For this issue of Gallery click here.
Spring 2012 Shahadat
Title: For Lives Undone: Gaza Summons Its Writers to Speak (Min Hutam al-Hayah: Ghazzah Tastantiq Kuttabaha)
Co-editors: Barrak Alzaid and Khalid Hadeed
The Spring 2012 launch of Shahadat is part of ArtEast’s Exploring Literature in Translation Series and features works in translation by six Palestinian poets writing on Gaza. This issue presents audiences with a literary perspective on a land that has been subjected to over two decades of occupation. Through works that are by turns adamantly critical of the occupation and intimately self aware, this issue brings together an array of voices on Gaza.
To view the issue online click here.
In conjunction with the publication of this Gaza edition of Shahadat, ArteEast presents two literary salons featuring two of the poets, Fatena al Ghorra and Soumaya Al Sousi, in dialogue with Adania Shibli, co-editor of the online forum Narrating Gaza, to discuss multi-genre writings and explore the repercussions of the Gaza War.
Spring 2012 Shahadat Events:
1. Fractured Web: Gazan Writing Online
2. From Memoir to Reportage and Back Again
For more information about ArteEast Quarterly contact Barrak Alzaid, Artistic Director, ArteEast
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