Dissonant Archives: Contemporary Visual Culture and Contested Narratives in the Middle East
2015
The 'archive' is often viewed as a collection of historical documents that records and orders information about people, places and events. This view nevertheless obscures a crucial point: the archive, whilst subject to the vagaries of time and history, can also determine the future. This point has gained urgency in modern-day North Africa and the Middle East where the archive has come to the fore as a site of social, historical, theoretical, and political contestation. Dissonant Archives is the first book to consider the ways in which contemporary artists from the Middle East and North Africa—including Emily Jacir, Walid Raad, Jananne Al Ani, Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Mariam Ghani, Zineb Sedira, and Akram Zaatari—are utilizing and disrupting the function of the archive and, in so doing, highlighting a systemic, perhaps irrevocable, crisis in institutional and state-ordained archiving across the region. In exploring and producing archives, be they alternative, interrogative or fictional, these artists are not simply questioning the authenticity, authority or authorship of the archive; rather, they are unlocking its regenerative, radical potential.The result provides essential insights into the nexus between art and politics in the contemporary Middle East.
Bloomsbury
Bloomsbury
Identifier
L0006Call Number
N7265.D57 2015Extent
469 pages : illustrations ; softcover 23 cmLanguage
ISBN
9781784534110Place of Publication
London, UKPublication Type
PrintContributor
Emily Jacir, Walid Raad, Jananne Al-Ani, Basel Abbas, Mariam Ghani, Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Zineb Sedira, Akram Zaatari, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, John Akomfrah, Meriç Algün Ringborg, Héla Ammar, Burak Arıkan, Ariella Azoulay, Vahap Avşar, Sussan Babaie, Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck, Timothy P.A Cooper, Joshua Craze, Laura Cugusi, Ania Dabrowska, Nick Denes, Chad Elias, Media Farzin, Gulf Labor, Tom Holert, Adelita Husni-Bey, Maryam Jafri, Guy Mannes-Abbott, Amina Menia, Shaheen Merali, Naeem Mohaiemen, Mariam Motamedi Fraser, Pad.ma, Lucie Ryzova, Lucien Samaha, Rona Sela, Laila Shereen SakrEditor
Anthony DowneyPublisher
I.B. TaurisCollection
grunt gallery LibraryCopyright 2015 Anthony Downey, Kamel Lazaar, and the individual authors.