Initiated by the Kamel Lazaar Foundation in 2011, Ibraaz has reached its first year of production since launching last year at the Venice Biennale. With the launch of Platform 003, Ibraaz will have published over 200 contributors in less than 12 months, with material ranging from platform responses to essays to interviews and artists’ projects.
For Platform 003, we formulated a question that explored how art as a practice engages with institutional contexts, public space, and the ideal of civil society today. We are very pleased to announce that we received a significant number of informed and engaging responses and Platform 003 will include texts and images from, amongst others, Larissa Sansour, William Wells, Aaron Cezar, Angela Harutyunyan, Beral Madra, Ergin Çavuşoğlu, Brian Kuan Wood, Laura U. Marks, Barrak Alzaid, Hanan Toukan, Houcine Tlili, Sandra Teitge, Charlotte Bank, and Alice Planel. We would like to formally thank all those who have contributed to this and previous platforms.
The current platform responses and others can be read at www.ibraaz.org/platforms, and the fully searchable archive is available at www.ibraaz.org.
Platform 003 will also see the publication of interviews with the 2012 Abraaj Capital Art Prize winners Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Christine Tohme, Mohanad Yaqubi, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Ziad Antar, Tarzan and Arab, Jack Persekian, Michket Krifa, Slavs and Tatars, and others.
As part of our Platform 003 Projects, Ibraaz will feature an audio and text work by the Dictaphone Group, Saba Innab’s project on Amman, entitled On-longing, Marwa Arsanios’s final installment of The Missing Link, Isak Berbic’s recently shown D.M., The Arabian Gulf Chapter, and image-led projects by artists Seher Shah, Sinisa Vlajkovic, and Myriam Abdelaziz.
As part of our continued commitment to publishing full-length essays, Ibraaz will publish commissioned essays by Sheyma Buali on filmmaking in the Gulf, Basak Senova on the perception of occupation and control in Cyprus today, Alice Planel on contemporary art practices in Algeria, and Omar Kholeif’s questioning of art’s relationship to the demands of revolution. Ibraaz will also publish Caecilia Pieri’s essay on the Urban Observatory of Beirut.
In the weeks following the launch of Platform 003, Ibraaz will be publishing monthly rolling content in the form of a project by 2011 Emdash Award-winner Anahita Razmi, and interviews with artists Fayçal Baghriche, Driss Ouadahi, and Taysir Batniji, and an essay by Anthony Downey on the aesthetics of conflict in the Middle East today.
In our News section, Ibraaz has recently published reports on the March Meeting in Sharjah, and will be publishing reports on the recent conference held at the Cornerhouse gallery in Manchester to mark the launch of Subversion (curated by Omar Kholeif), and the 2012 London Palestine Film Festival.
Ibraaz is also in discussion with a number of organisations regarding the future publication of its online content in Arabic and English and a biannual print publication of Ibraaz’s online essays and interviews. More details will follow in June 2012.
Ibraaz is an online publishing forum initiated by the Kamel Lazaar Foundation. It publishes essays, interviews and artists’ projects on visual culture within and beyond the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
Ibraaz Platform 004 will be launched in November 2012.
*Image above:
Ziad Antar, Foujaira, from the series Portrait of a Territory, 2010, C-print.
Commissioned and produced by Sharjah Art Foundation.
Courtesy of the artist and Selma Feriani Gallery, London.
