Uncommon Grounds: New Media and
Critical Practices in North Africa and the Middle East
www.ibraaz.org
Ibraaz Publishing and I.B. Tauris are pleased to announce the book
launch of Uncommon Grounds: New Media and Critical Practices in
North Africa and the Middle East, edited by Anthony Downey.
In this groundbreaking book, a range of internationally renowned
and emerging academics, writers, artists, curators, activists and
filmmakers critically reflect on the ways in which visual culture
has appropriated and developed new media across North Africa and
the Middle East. Examining the opportunities presented by the
real-time generation of new, relatively unregulated content
online, Uncommon Grounds evaluates the prominent role that new
media has come to play in artistic practices—and social
movements—in the Arab world today. Analysing alternative forms of
creating, broadcasting, publishing, distributing and consuming
digital images, this book also enquires into a broader global
concern: does new media offer a 'democratisation' of—and a
productive engagement with—visual culture, or merely capitalise
upon the effect of immediacy at the expense of depth? Featuring
full-colour artists' inserts, this is the first book to
extensively explore the degree to which the grassroots popularity
of Twitter and Facebook has been co-opted into mainstream media,
institutional and curatorial characterisations of 'revolution'—and
whether artists should be wary of perpetuating the rhetoric and
spectacle surrounding political events. In the process, Uncommon
Grounds reveals how contemporary art practices actively negotiate
present-day notions of community-based activism, artistic agency
and political engagement.
Contributors to the volume include Sarah Abu Abdallah, Sophia
Al-Maria, Fayçal Baghriche, Franco 'Bifo' Berardi, Wafaa Bilal,
Sheyma Buali, Maymanah Farhat, Azin Feizabadi, Ganzeer, Gulf
Labor, Hans Haacke, Aleya Hamza, Timo Kaabi-Linke, Dina Kafafi,
Amal Khalaf, Omar Kholeif, Tarek Khoury, Jens Maier-Rothe, Laura
U. Marks, Dina Matar, Edit Molnár, Mosireen, Rabih Mroué, Nat
Muller, Philip Rizk, Roy Samaha, Nermin Saybaşılı, Annabelle
Sreberny, Tarzan and Arab, Derya Yücel, and Maxa Zoller.
Uncommon Grounds: New Media and Critical Practices in North Africa
and the Middle East is Volume 01 in Ibraaz's Visual Culture in
North Africa and the Middle East Series. Volume 02, Dissonant
Archives: Contemporary Visual Culture and Contested Narratives in
the Middle East, will be published in May 2015.