[spectre] Fwd: Uncommon Grounds: New Media and Critical Practices in North Africa and the Middle East

[Andreas Broeckmann]

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.