Ibraaz is pleased to announce the launch of Platform 006, which explores the following question:
What role can the archive play in developing and sustaining a critical and culturally located art history?
Platform 006 offers points of departure that seek to understand our unresolved relationship with archived histories and, crucially, the histories that remain elided within these formative narratives.
In exploring the theme of the archive, Ibraaz has invited writers, thinkers, artists, and other cultural practitioners to consider the contingent role of the archive today and its often ambiguous status in both art practices and cultural institutions across North Africa and the Middle East. Read the full platform question here.
Contributors to Platform 006 include, amongst others:
Mohamed Abdelkarim / Nevin Aladağ / Ian Almond /Héla Ammar / Daniel Berndt / Sheyma Buali / Ali Cherri / Hassan Darsi / Mai Elwakil / Mounir Fatmi / Azin Feizabadi / Adelina von Fürstenberg / Joy Garnett / Mariam Ghani / Francis Gooding / Rana Hamadeh / Aleya Hamza / Adelita Husni-Bey / Maryam Jafri / Fawz Kabra / Katia Kameli / Maha Maamoun / Jumana Manna / Laura U. Marks / Mona Marzouk / Shaheen Merali / Walter D. Mignolo / Mariam Motamedi-Fraser / Ahmed Nagy / Joe Namy / Tsolin Nalbantian / Elif Öner/ Walid Raad / Lucien Samaha / Nada Shabout / Setareh Shahbazi / Rona Sela / Sandra Skurvida / Noor Kadhim / Tara Agdashaloo /
Following the launch of Platform 006, Ibraaz will be addressing further aspects of the archive as part of our international conference, Future Imperfect: Cultural Propositions and Global Perspectives, which will be held at Tate Modern on the 9th of November 2013. For further information and tickets, see here.
Ibraaz publishes regular monthly content as well as a bi-annual Platform, the themes of which form the basis of our upcoming partnership with I.B. Tauris and the publication of the series Visual Culture in North Africa and the Middle East. Edited by Anthony Downey, volume one—Uncommon Grounds: New Media and Critical Practices in North Africa and the Middle East—will explore the role of new media in contemporary art practices. This volume will question how art practices engage with and challenge forms of activism and, in their engagement with the public sphere and civic society, act as elusive tools for social change in the Middle East and North Africa today.
For full details on Uncommon Grounds and its contributors, see here.
Initiated by the Kamel Lazaar Foundation, Ibraaz is the leading critical forum on visual culture in North Africa and the Middle East, working with artists and other practitioners who explore how art practices address and reflect upon the global and regional complexities of contemporary life within and beyond the region.