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This is a review on a section of the French film Les statues meurent aussi (1953), directed by Alain Resnais and Chris Marker, two French filmmakers framed in the Nouvelle Vague that refused to follow …

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Al-Jazeera has recently passed two milestones. The first, on 11 November was the launch of its new Balkans channel. The second, four days later, was the fifth anniversary of Al-Jazeera English. As Al-Jazeera extends its …

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For lack of better way of explaining this, I am going to have to go down the naïve route: in our world, we have a lot of apathy.  We are apathetic about everything: neo-liberalism, fascism, …

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Walter Benjamin, in his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, asserts that the rise of easily reproducible artwork leads to that very artwork losing its traditional ritual meaning. Art loses its …

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To say Marx’s Capital has become the ‘bible’ of Western academic and social thinking in the 20th century  goes beyond cliche – and like anything biblical, it has manifested fanatics and atheists alike. And much …

We have now finally gotten peer-review comments back from a book that I have been co-editing the past year. The book “Indian Mass Media and the Politics of Change” will now be published sometime 2010 after a few relatively standard changes / edits / modifications. My chapter passed without any edits required so quite happy to avoid the extra work.

Abu Dhabi is a city that has been mentioned more frequently in the ‘culture’ sections of international publications for the last two years because of its announced construction of Saadiyat Island. This island is designed to become the ‘culture hub’ of the Gulf, if not the Middle East; it will be home to the Louvre Abu Dhabi, a Guggenheim museum, performance art centers, hotels, etc.

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The sculpture exhibition presented by V22 PRESENTS is unlike any exhibition I have been to before.  The concept of the exhibition is to explore the modes of thought and production in sculpture and showcase the …

I have been doing some writing for a book looking at the tricky relationship between theory and practice in understanding digital cultures. While doing the usual rounds of search and destroy, I came across this rather interesting read: Evil Media Studies. One of the authors, Matthew Fuller, is a rather interesting young generation media theorist who has been, for instance, one of the founding members what is now called Software Studies and has written a decent book on the pirate radio scene in London. I quote:

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Following  America’s war on terror and its invasion of Afghansitan, Saul David wrote this book which I recently read. David offers important historical lessons in this book.
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‘Saul David, a splendid narrator, interweaves histories of …

I have been reading this book on and off in the recent year and thought it might be interesting to add a few comments about it here as we are gearing towards getting “Project: Carousel!” to go public. But before that, a few words of reflection about the site.

When I initially conceived of the idea for the site, I had two themes in mind:

I visited this exhibition with fellow Global Media students Rounwah, Osama and Fazilet. I went with a completely open mind, intrigued as to what art from the Middle East actually looked like. I whole heartedly accept that it is not possible all the art that originates from the Middle East come under one label. Geographically, the Middle East is a diverse terrain and the same analogy can be applied to the art produced by Middle Eastern artists. So it would be redundant of me to use terms such as “Arabic”, “Islamic” or even “Middle East” to a certain extent.

Nevertheless, I entered the exhibition filled with trepidation. While touring the exhibition, I felt a mixture of emotions.

“The Reluctant Fundamentalist” is a compelling read but for many different reasons. I was just passing time in the Waterstones near SOAS when I saw this book. A subconscious compulsion made me reach for the novel and before I realised it, I had purchased it. Even though the title suggest the novel would contain some hard hitting material, I thought it would be a suitable read before bedtime, a novel from which I could read a chapter or two before falling asleep…how wrong was I!!!

I read the entire novel within 4 hours (this did mean it was 2 a.m. by the time I finished.)

British Muslim artist Sarah Maple has created some controversial pieces which question the boundaries in art, censorship and religion.

Maple states that the aim of her work is: “to give my audience food for thought. I believe comedy is a great tool to achieve this, which is why I choose to portray my conceptual ideas through a light-hearted and tongue-in-cheek approach”.

Is her art opening up taboo areas to alternative discourses? The sort of imagery she uses is bound to cause controversy however does it easily fall into a dominant critical discourse, such as the assertion that Islam is inherently oppressive? Does her being a woman brought up in Islam allow her to criticise Islam in a way that would be denied other artists?

Within this post the work of an artist, Muhammad Ali is discussed and how he has begun the movement that fuses graffiti art with Islamic calligraphy. It is a very odd pairing, so naturally I thought I would bring it to everyone’s attention!

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The Kabul Chronicle’ in Vogue (March 2009) by Andrea Busfield is an interesting article about life in Kabul ‘which she says wasn’t about terrorism or the Taliban- it was a heady mix of partying, friends …
“at …

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Here is a good book by Michael Griffin, if you want to learn the facts about the Taliban and the American involvment in Afghanistan, 

I just received this, so putting this here as an announcement if somebody is interested or knows somebody who might fit the bill:

URGENT CASTING CALL!!GO TO GAZA, DRINK THE SEA

Palestinian and British writers, actors, artists, film-makers and musicians collaborate to create a multi-media piece weaving verbatim testimony with film and music to tell the story of the dignity, courage and suffering of the people of Gaza. This unique event – both celebration and lament – invites audiences, after the performance, to show their support and record personal messages to a people under siege. Supported by the Amos Trust, Jews For Justice For Palestine and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. 20% of box-office revenue will go to medical aid in Palestine.

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So its official now: I am currently working on a book for Routledge India with my collaborators Soumyadeep Paul and Angad Chowdhry.  We will write a chapter about some of the more experimental work we …