Whatever Happened to Immaginari PostColoniali/Postcolonial Visions?

A few years ago, I first learned about this project on Italian colonial memory called "Immaginari PostColoniali - PostColonial Visions".The project sought to establish "a large shared archive of everyday images and objects, an unconventional convention, exhibitions, performances and workshops in schools" about Italy's colonial history. I had a personal interest in this project because …

A New Iftah Ya Simsim

I have fond memories of watching the old Iftah Ya Simsim (the Arabic Sesame Street). As someone born outside the Arab world, and expected to be trilingual at a young age, the programme is probably one of the reasons I learned to speak Arabic as a mother tongue. Even though the videos were old by …

Sayed Kashua at Other Israel Film Festival

Following a screening of Season Four of his comedy show Arab Labour, Sayed Kashua talks about his reasons for leaving Israel, in a panel moderated by Lucy Aharish with Mira Awad, Menashe Noy and Sammy Smooha. Nashua gets into a  bit of a heated debate with Smooha as to whether things have improved or not for Arabs …

Unerasable Memories

A video exhibition which opens on August 30th in São Paulo will feature work by three Lebanese artists, Akram Zaatari, Walid Raad, and Rabih Mroué, as well as Morocco’s Bouchra Khalili. The full title of the exhibition is “Unerasable Memories – A Historical Take on the Videobrasil Collection,” referring to the Videobrasil project, which claims …

Their Archives, Our History

In Moroccan author Muhammad Barradah’s The Game of Forgetting (1998, Luʿbat al-Nisyān, 1987), there is a disagreement between a figure referred to as the author and another described as the narrator’s narrator, who objects to the author’s attempt to write history. As the narrator’s narrator points out: “You still live in a society that has …

The Aroma of Coffee

From Mahmoud Darwich's Memory For Forgetfulness, a prose poem set during one day, August 6, "Hiroshima Day" during the siege of Beirut in 1982. I no longer wonder when the steely howling of the sea will stop. I live on the eighth floor of a building that might tempt any sniper, to say nothing of …

When Absurdity Becomes The Form

The two works of art above, by Lebanese artist Youssef Shawki, are described in an article in The National as at the centre of his exhibition, Acid Fields, "a collection of abstract works featuring tormented and distorted figures." The only two paintings that veer from illustrating bodies are the maps: Arab World Map Construct / …