Shahs of Sunset finally has a premiere date! Continue Reading

"The Hunter" by Nicky Nodjoumi, 2009

Opening today and running through March 31st, 2012, ”Domination, Hegemony and The Panopticon”, and art exhibition in UAE will showcase several Iranian artists, including: Rokni Haerizadeh, Nicky Nodjoumi, Shahpour Pouyan, Hesam Rahmanian, and Farzan Sadjadi.

Curated by Rami Farook, this exhibit explores the notion of power through the writings of Jean Baudrillard and Michel Foucault, among others and will also feature a performance by hip-hop artists, Diligent Thought.

The Panopticon is a type of institutional building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the late eighteenth century. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (opticon) all (pan) inmates of an institution without them being able to tell whether or not they are being watched.

The design comprises a circular structure with an “inspection house” at its centre, from which the managers or staff of the institution are able to watch the inmates, who are stationed around the perimeter.

Bentham conceived the basic plan as being equally applicable to hospitals, schools, poorhouses, and madhouses, but he devoted most of his efforts to developing a design for a Panopticon prison, and it is his prison which is most widely understood by the term.

Bentham himself described the Panopticon as “a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind.”

Jean Baudrillard says of domination and hegemony: ”In order to grasp how globalization and global antagonism works, we should distinguish carefully between domination and hegemony. One could say that hegemony is the ultimate stage of domination and its terminal phase. Domination is characterized by the master/ slave relation, which is still a dual relation with potential alienation, a relationship of force and conflicts. It has a violent history of oppression and liberation. There are the dominators and the dominated- it remains a symbolic relationship. Everything changes with the emancipation of the slave and the internalization of the master by the emancipated slave. Hegemony begins here in the disappearance of the dual, personal, agonistic domination for the sake of integral reality- the reality of networks, of the virtual and total exchange where there are no longer dominators or dominated.”

A complete list of participating artists is as follows: Allora and Calzadilla, Athier, Katherine Bernhardt, Blek Le Rat, Ahmed Bouholaigah, Arnaud Brihay, Fahd Burki, André Butzer, Jake and Dinos Chapman, James Clar, Ayman Yossri aka Daydban, Manal Al Dowayan, Faile, Reem Al Faisal, Ian Francis, Michele Giangrande, Dan Graham, Loris Gréaud, Shilpa Gupta, Rokni Haerizadeh, Damien Hirst, Jenny Holzer, Mark Jenkins, Jeffar Khaldi, Idris Khan, Bharti Kher, Barbara Kruger, Huda Lutfi, Jill Magid, Adam McEwen, Philip Mueller, Sara Naim, Ahmad Amin Nazar, Nicky Nodjoumi, Shahpour Pouyan, Richard Prince, Iman Raad, Hesam Rahmanian, Anselm Reyle, Farzan Sadjadi, Marwan Sahmarani, David Shrigley, Taryn Simon, UBIK, Ebru Uygun, Vhils, Dan Witz, Word to Mother, Lantian Xie, Zevs

*About Diligent Thought

Jibberish, Feras Ibrahim and Wriggly Scott (aka DJ Solo) have worked together for years as members of the conscious hip hop collective Diligent Thought (alongside fellow member SoulPhonic) and also on each other’s individual projects. They are widely regarded to be at the forefront of the live hip hop scene in the U.A.E.

Image Via Iran.USEmbassy.gov

Has the just launched Virtual Embassy of the United States Tehran, Iran been blocked in Iran already? Continue Reading

Image: The marriage of Yusuf and Zulaykha, from Jami, Yusuf u Zulaykha, 1595. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

Featuring more than 60 visually stunning works on loan from the historic Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford as well as works from the State Library of Victoria and other local collections. Love and Devotion: From Persia and Beyond, is the largest exhibition of Persian manuscripts to be held in Australia.

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Original Image: From the series "Confused by the Spectacle Around Me", by Rokni Haerizadeh

“It’s useless to wait-for a breakthrough, for the revolution, the nuclear apocalypse or a social movement. To go on waiting is madness. The catastrophe is not coming, it is here. We are already situated within the collapse of a civilization. It is within this reality that we must choose sides.” – The Coming Insurrection

“The State” presents a group exhibition running from November 10th-December 3rd, 2011 at Traffic in UAE, which takes its title from the book The Coming Insurrection (2007) by “The Invisible Committee”.

The show is a continuation of The State, a socio- historical journal & forum, and a symbolic transition from the last exhibition “Social/Antisocial?”, which dealt with socialization and the current state of people and behavior.

The exhibition is a response to the causes of discontent, namely mass injustice, corruption and greed in our societies and world at large. It calls for a paradigm shift of human expression, to prevent an emerging social condition. It is not a call to arms but an attempt to get people thinking about the global transmutation that surrounds them.

The Invisible Committee is the collective pen-name for a small group of French post- Situationist intellectuals and academics, who in 2007 authored The Coming Insurrection, and in 2008 were arrested in France on charges of terrorism. The Coming Insurrection is a commentary on contemporary society and the building revolt against governmental and economic oppression. It references collapsing economies, crashing monetary systems, corrupted democracies, environmental degradation, global crises, riots, protests and above all, a moral and social decay.

People all around the world have witnessed the collapse of a system, a disintegrating modern social order. Which may just be getting worse. As Mark Twain once said, ‘History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.’ Despite glimmers of hope for change, through the likes of Barack Obama’s 2008 political campaign, we are still in a dire state.We have recently seen the revolutionary Arab Spring, riots and looting in London, among other communal uprisings.

As Rami Farook, Emirati curator & social–historian, explains: “The works presented share the perspective of The Coming Insurrection and deal with reasons for the current social condition, illustrating examples of it, and providing remedies. Similar to the book, many of the works touch on aspects of the self, social relations, work, the economy, urbanity, the environment, and civilization, while searching for a social solution to the present. It is our duty as citizens, activists, mentors, monitors and advisors to raise a clamour to change the conditions. By being warned, the insurrection might be prevented. An uprising is one thing, a successful revolution is another.”

The Coming Insurrection includes works by Iranian artists: Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian as well as; Allora & Calzadilla, Banksy, Ahmed Bouholaigah, Arnaud Brihay, Wim Delvoye, Abdulnasser Gharem, Pascal Hachem, Aman Mojadidi, Jean-Luc Moulene, Hamza Serafi, David Shrigley, Roman Signer, UBIK, Douglas White, Dan Witz, Ayman Yossri aka Daydban, and Akram Zaatari.

* The show’s opening will include an hour-long music performance by singer/songwriter Gayathri and a big-band ensemble. The performance is an homage to 1940s jazz club days and will mark the release of her single as well as limited edition LP and music video.