AMCA sponsored events are marked with an asterisk: *. Submissions deadlines are highlighted in red.
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The Arab Image Foundation (www.fai.org.lb) is currently looking for a confident, inspiring and highly efficient person to coordinate the development and the activities of our research center.
Deadline: July 30 2010
For further information, or to apply, submit a CV and cover letter to: Zeina Arida, Director, zeina.arida@fai.org.lb
Requirements: Degree in a relevant subject, preferably cultural studies, art history, curatorial studies, photography or equivalent; Broad Knowledge of photography, contemporary art, regional context; Experience in line of work; Excellent writing and communication skills in English & Arabic; Excellent administrative skills, including scheduling; Experience in working with budgets; Elaborate research skills ; Proactive, flexible approach and an ability to work as part of a team, contributing positively to team goals; Computer literacy (Ms Word, Excel, Photoshop, InDesign)
There are no postings, double check wording with online.
Modern Arab Art: Objects, Histories, and Methodologies
The Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey (AMCA) is now accepting abstracts for AMCA’s first international conference, “Modern Arab Art: Objects, Histories, and Methodologies.” This two-day conference will be hosted in collaboration with Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar, and will take place in conjunction with the Museum’s inaugural events from December 8-11 2010.
The Museum’s aim is to use their preeminent collection of modern and contemporary Arab art as a catalyst for critical and creative exchanges across diverse audiences. This conference will bring together both established and emerging scholars working throughout the world, in order to interrogate potent issues of concern that continue to define and shape the field of modern Arab art today. It aims to historicize and contextualize the production of modern Arab art and modernity—and by extension the contemporary—through thematic and historiographic inquiries into the field.
Panels Include:
Producing the Modern Artist: Education and the Fine Arts
Picturing the Individual and the Nation: Portraiture and Landscape
Writing about Art: Art Criticism and Its Various Practices
3 panels dedicated to Research in Progress
To be considered to present a paper in the one of the above panels, please submit a 250-word abstract to info@amcainternational.org by July 30 2010. Final papers will be submitted to panel discussants and chairs by November 1 2010. Travel and accommodations to be covered by the Museum. Select papers may be published.
The Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey (AMCA) is a private, non-profit, non-political, international organization. An affiliate organization of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) and College Art Association (CAA), AMCA aims to advance the study of this emerging field through the creation of a network of interested scholars and organizations. We will facilitate communication and cooperation among those in the field by sponsoring conferences, holding meetings, and exchanging information via a newsletter and website. http://www.amcainternational.org
The academic journal, Middle East Panorama, is now accepting contributions for its September 2010 inaugural issue. The first issue of Middle East Panorama seeks to answer the question, “What is the Middle East?” from a multidisciplinary perspective. Many have criticized the term for a number of reasons, often due to its loose definition. The United Nations avoids the phrase entirely and officially refers to the region as "Southwest Asia," while other critics advise using the more general "West Asia.” For centuries, scholars and experts have debated the meaning of “Middle East,” and whether the term can be intelligently employed to describe the rich history and heritage of the region. As we are approaching the twenty-first century, should we re-evaluate our thinking about the “Middle East?" If it is defined as a cultural area, what are some of the distinct qualities that make this region different, as opposed to other “cultural areas?”
What is the meaning of “Middle East” for Middle Easterners? What is the impact of interdependence and globalization, and how does it change our definition of Middle East? What is the impact of U.S. military intervention in Iraq on U.S. and European perceptions of Middle East?
The editors welcome submissions from students, professors, and specialists alike, in fields including, but not limited to, anthropology, archeology, economics, history, linguistics, literature, political science, and sociology. In addition to scholarly papers, Middle East Panorama publishes book reviews. Books reviewed may be of your choosing, but must be less than three years old and pertain to the Middle East.
The deadline has been extended to August 15. Please email submissions to: panorama_mec@utah.edu
For more information, including formatting specifications, please visit: http://middleeastpanorama.org
British Art: Global Contexts
Deadline: 12/31/11
Ashgate invites book proposals for a new series, British Art: Global Contexts. The series seeks to problematize, historicize, and specify the idea of “British” art across the period (1700 to the present), as it intersects with local, regional, international and global issues, communities, materials, and environments. Specializing in studies of British art within comparative and interdisciplinary frameworks, the series includes monographs and thematic studies, and single authored works and edited volumes of essays.
Proposals are welcomed with aspects of art and design history and visual culture, from the perspective of the colonial and postcolonial world, global history, and the circum-Atlantic. Please submit a letter of inquiry, or a complete book proposal, to Meredith Norwich, Commissioning Editor for Visual Studies, at mnorwich@ashgate.com, AND to the series editors at the University of York: David Peters Corbett, at dmpc1@york.ac.uk, and Jason Edwards, at je7@york.ac.uk.
Oral History in Art, Craft, and Design Held in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and National Life Stories at the British Library, 2-3 July, 2010
Negotiating Trade: Commercial Institutions & Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Medieval/Early Modern World," Sept. 24-25, 2010, Binghamton University
FIFTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE ARTS IN SOCIETY
University of Sydney, Australia, 22-25 July 2010
http://www.Arts-Conference.com/
Veiled Constellations: The Veil, Critical Theory, Politics, and Contemporary Society York University, Toronto, Canada, June 3-5, 2010
Arab Studies Journal Spring 2010
Themed issue: Visual Arts and Art Practices in the Middle East
:
http://www.arabstudiesjournal.org
From the Editors,
The last decade has comprised tremendous transformations for the artscapes of the Middle East, transformations simultaneously occurring on a number of levels. Regionally, there has been a mushrooming of “independent” art spaces, artist-run projects, and large-scale bi/annual events and festivals. Conveniently neat portrayals of bifurcated art scene(s)—pitting more recent initiatives against the historic prominence of the state as the primary patron of the arts—quickly gained currency and framed the majority of discussions of artistic production. The post-9/11 addition of the Middle East as a crucial stopover on curatorial itineraries has meant that artists from the region have been steadily gaining access to Western art capitals (albeit under the guise of large, all-encompassing regional platforms) and are making regular appearances on the biennale circuit, and to a lesser degree, in museum collections. Most recently, the region has witnessed the burgeoning of a Gulf-based art market, supported by an impressive infrastructure of commercial galleries, individual and institutional collectors, and world-class museums. The existent Sharjah Biennial and Art Dubai (an annual art fair accompanied by an extensive program of events), as well as the forthcoming Museum of Modern Arab Art in Doha and Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, are all critical nodes in the articulation of a different set of conditions and possibilities for the production, consumption and understanding of art. www.gla.ac.uk/arthistoriography
For more information or to send proposals and submissions, contact Professor Richard Woodfield: richard.woodfield@ntlworld.com.
A&E Papers aims to exponentially widen the accessibility and reach of art historical and critical discourse by hosting a free online platform for the publication and exchange of texts on modern and contemporary art. Art historians, students, critics, and artists alike will have the opportunity to gain access to a far greater and more focused readership than conventional publishing allows, while also enjoying unlimited access to a deep archive of scholarly writing by and for Art & Education's rapidly growing audience, which currently comprises an international network of more than 70,000 visual arts professionals and academics. At a time when the distribution of many forms of knowledge remains confined to small conferences, private seminars, or specialized academic journals, we believe that the broad distribution and exchange of ideas is key to increasing dialogue in all aspects of art production, criticism, and history.
In order to build the A&E Papers database, we are now calling for either new or already existing (published or unpublished, recent or older) scholarly articles from around the world. Texts should be comprehensive, research-based articles focusing on topics in 20th century and contemporary art. Texts may be culled from conference papers, seminar papers, dissertation chapters, etc. We ask that you submit pieces anywhere from 2,000 words to approximately 10,000 words and include a 100 word abstract and full contact information (or publication information for previously published texts). All submissions will be considered for publication on the website.
Please submit articles by email to papers@artandeducation.net and consult the website for further information and updates: http://www.artandeducation.net/papers
Art & Education is a collaboration between Artforum and e-flux. News Announcements Papers About Subscribe Contact RSSUnsubscibe
*Pirated Politics: Contemporary art, artists, and the postproduction of the Middle East
Chairs: Anneka Lenssen and Rhonda Saad
Discussant: Nada Shabout
In this panel, we take up the concept of "postproduction" to reframe a critical discussion of one category of signs - those of global media including viral video, televised news networks like Al-Jazeera and CNN, and others - as they are redeployed by artists with ties to the Middle East. "Postproduction" is a technical term in television, film, and video that refers to the set of operations performed on recorded material - montage, subtitling, voice-overs, special effects and other applications. In the art world, it is a term that critic and curator Nicolas Bourriaud introduced to describe artistic practices he saw emerging in the 1990s in a climate characterized by the fall of the Berlin wall and the rise an international circuit of biennial art exhibitions. Common among these practices was to take appropriation strategies as a starting point to create novel intuition, feelings, or social groupings, so collapsing the historically distinct zones of production and consumption, and challenging, in part, traditional models of artistic authenticity and originality. In this mode, art participates in a postmodern culture of sampling but intervenes in it, taking control of particular 'signs' in conjunction with their social function and manipulating the two together as uniquely contemporary works.
Producing art in or about a region that is typically understood to passively receive or purchase non-indigenous forms (from 'democracy' to Ivy-league curricula), the artists to be discussed in this panel have adopted the attitude of postproduction and pushed its permutations in various ways. By their "postproduction," we assess this descriptive category as a model for investigating contemporary work that emerges from and/or about the Middle East. Questions to be raised include: How do artists identified as Arab, Muslim, or Middle Eastern participate in international biennial culture while grappling with more situated obligations to their nation, inherited Socialist causes of progress and consciousness-raising, or other personal mores? In exploring the significance of their work, can we acknowledge the pitfalls of global identity politics while also recognizing sources for the distinctiveness of this art apart from linear development narratives based on the Pioneers paradigm? What factors have made possible the emergence of these artists on the international scene, and what factors will sustain them there?
Anneka Lenssen, Making Nothing from Something: Historicized Satire in Adel Abidin's Welcome to Baghdad (2006)
Rhonda Saad, (Mis)consuming Reality in Omer Fast’s The Casting (2007)
Elizabeth Rauh, Street Art in Post-Revolutionary Iran
Kathy Zarur, Mediated Reality In and Out of Palestine
Between Public Memory and National Narrative: The Visual Document and History in the Middle East
Chairs: Mitra Abbaspour and Alex Seggerman
Discussant: Kishwar Rizvi
National memory is often less about its subject and more about the frame that surrounds and presents it, formed more by its retelling, by the fraction of a scene captured in a photograph, or the bolded terms in a school textbook than an actual recollection of events. However, as the basis for historical truth, collective memory remains one of the most deeply contested terrains of modern politics and culture. National governments and elderly citizens, maps and diaries, news images and internet blogs all contend with one another to control the ways in which memory and thus history are produced, given authority, and transformed over time. In the Middle East, where many nations have relatively recently come to independently control their own national narrative these issues are at the forefront of governmental and scholarly discourse and art – whether formal or vernacular – is essential to these debates.
This panel will address the ways in which historical narratives are both institutionalized and challenged through four contexts: the museum, the urban landscape, the photographic archive and the traveling exhibition. Specifically, this panel includes studies of the Beirut National Museum rebuilt following the wars, government sponsored public art sites in the heart of Cairo, art works of contemporary Lebanese artists in the international market, and an American artist’s portrayal of ancient Egyptian objects, which provide four perspectives on the formation of collective memory in or about the Middle East.
Conceptually, these four sites are all mediated by time and space; thus, the public’s perception exists as a set of continually shifting meanings rather than a singular, fixed interpretation. From the violent divide of the Lebanese ‘green line’ to the traffic medians of wust al-balad in Cairo, interactions with the public sphere are circumscribed by the changing particularities of their locations. While in the case of archives and exhibitions, meaning shifts depending on each curatorial intervention with the collections and the purview of their international circuit. Through the juxtaposition of these various sites, the panel will strive to promote discussion of the distinctions offered by time and place in Lebanon, Egypt, and the international and national art markets with the common pursuit of institutionalizing collective memory.
JOANNE NUCHO, ORDERING HISTORY IN TIME: THE BEIRUT NATIONAL MUSEUM
KATIE PFOHL, JOSEPH LINDON SMITH’S PAINTED EXCAVATIONS OF EGYPT
Alexandra Dika Seggerman, THE STREET AND THE ROAD: PUBLIC ART IN CAIRO
Mitra M. Abbaspour, COLLECTING TRUTHS: STRATEGIES OF THE PHOTO ARCHIVE IN CONTEMPORARY LEBANESE ART
* AMCA Reception at the MESA 2008 Meeting
(November 22–25, Washington, DC)
Saturday, 11/22
7–9pm
Park Tower, Suite 8216
* AMCA’s panel at the MESA 2008 Annual Meeting November 22–25, Washington, DC
A History of the Real World: Realism and the Visual Arts in Egypt and Lebanon
Organized by Raja Adal and Sarah Rogers
Presenters:
Session IV (P095)
Sunday, November 23
2:00pm-4:00pm
Registration and Program info. at: www.mesa.arizona.edu/annual/current.htm
A History of the Real World: Realism and the Visual Arts in Egypt and Lebanon
Organized by Raja Adal and Sarah Rogers
Presenters:
Session IV (P095)
Sunday, November 23
2:00pm-4:00pm
Registration and Program info. at:
www.mesa.arizona.edu/annual/current.htm
Papers from this session appear in the MESA Bulletin Volume 42(1), Summer 2008
Art Without History? Evaluating 'Arab' Art
Montreal, Canada, November 2007
Given the recent interest in the field, this double session seeks to challenge the common preconception that scholars of modern and contemporary art from the Arab world are often forced to address, namely the assumed lack of any kind of critical discourse surrounding the production and consumption of the visual arts. The first panel takes a historical approach to institutionalization of Arab art in the region, whereas the second one tackles the theoretical implications of defining the field along a term premised on national rhetoric and a unifying cultural agent.
The first session tracks the institutionalization of art in the region during the twentieth century. The papers address the different channels through which a public role of visual arts was established—museums, the press, galleries, educational institutions, and artist collectives—with attention to how class and gender shaped this development. Drawing on interviews and archival resources and from a number of disciplines including art history, cultural studies, literary studies, and sociology, the papers presented provide a necessary yet often neglected history of the role of the visual arts in informing critical cultural debates in the region throughout the twentieth century. Together, this work refutes the claim that there is no art history in the Arab world by taking into account individual and institutional efforts at building a discipline regionally.
The second session turns to the contemporary moment in order to examine the ramifications of the term “Arab” art. There seems to be a consensus among Arabs that there is a body of works of art that could be labeled “modern Arab art.” This label is based on the premise that the various countries within the Arab world share enough commonalities to justify a perceived cultural unity. Given the popularity and prominence of the concept of Arabism during the 1950s, this premise is grounded in the same rhetoric of national identity. This panel considers the relevance, political and otherwise, of contemporary Arab art in the era of globalization—an era in which the notion of identity has shifted its emphasis from the nation to the local/individual. The papers presented grapple with a range of questions, including: Should the term ‘Arab’ still serve as the unifying agent in defining the field? And if so, what is the definition of Arabism today and what are its effects on visual production? Did in fact the accessibility allowed by globalization create a different “Arab” space of visualization?
Organizers: Nada Shabout, Sarah Rogers, Dina Ramadan
Chairs: Nada Shabout and Silvia Naef
Discussant: Shiva Balaghi
Presenters: