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#Aesthetics & Cultural Practice
This thread seeks to address and redress entanglements and disparities, and to consider the profound influence that societal changes have exerted on aesthetics and cultural practices (and vice-versa). It aims at investigating how aesthetic representations of disparity and entanglement are narrated, visualized, and performed in order to present the futures on offer to their respective societies. The essays are the result of the collaborative work of the IFG on Aesthetics and Cultural Practice.
Editorial Group: Rasha Chatta (Freie Universität Berlin), Sahar El Echi (École Superieure de l’Audiovisuel et du Cinema, Tunis), Farouk El Maarouf (Justus Liebig Universität Gießen), Katarzyna Falęcka (Newcastle University), Teresa Pepe (Universitetet i Oslo) and Angela Rabing (Universität Bremen), Felix Lang (coordination, Philipps-Universität Marburg)
In a region where authoritarian and patriarchal regimes have held the monopoly on what circulates publicly and where spaces of contestation are under scrutiny, graphic narratives or qisas musawwara as they are referred to in the Arabic language—alongside other popular arts such as graffiti or street art—have carved out a new arena of dissent that was made possible by the hopes for social and political changes instigated in the wave of the so-called Arab Spring.
=>TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research of the Forum Transregionale Studien, 20223
By Yousra Sbaihi. Not many Maghrebis have the chance to perform on some of Europe’s most prestigious comedy shows. However, the few who have successfully climbed their way up to the stage, I advance, are disrupting the theatrics of white francophone stand-up shows.
=>TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research of the Forum Transregionale Studien, 2022
I’ll start by stating that not all comics at the core of my scholarship were created in the digital age. Yet, artists working today are very active in the blogosphere. The online dissemination of comics – and, in particular, those that critique authoritarian regimes or bear witness to shared and/or individual experiences of political trauma – keeps pace with the general dissemination of information on the internet.
=>TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research of the Forum Transregionale Studien, 2022
#AESTHETICS & CULTURAL PRACTICE / #MECAM
Published on April 26, 2022 – Updated on June 7, 2022
Interview with El Meya by Katarzyna Falęcka. The artist Maya Benchikh El Fegoun (El Meya) was born in 1988 in Constantine, Algeria. Her paintings, often populated by women, respond to different visual legacies that include Orientalist images and the iconography of the Algerian War of Independence. El Meya is interested in the interiority of women, their dreams, desires, sins, life forms, and sociability.
=>TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research of the Forum Transregionale Studien, 2022
#AESTHETICS & CULTURAL PRACTICE / #MECAM
By Alena Strohmaier – Published on April 12, 2022 – Updated on June 7, 2022
By Alena Strohmaier. “Politics in the Middle East is now seen”, proclaimed political scientist and director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House Lina Khatib in 2012, designating a new era of political activism in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
=>TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research of the Forum Transregionale Studien, 2022
By Teresa Pepe. On 13 July 2021, the MECAM research cluster “Aesthetics and Cultural Practice” hosted a talk by Kawthar Ayyed, “La science-fiction et l’anticipation [Science Fiction and Anticipation]”, in the framework of the research initiative “Imagining the Future: Dealing with Disparities”.
=>TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research of the Forum Transregionale Studien, 2022
The Maghreb and the Mashriq have always been sites of multilingualism and multiculturalism, of artistic production and innovation, of struggle and contestation. This blog series explores the aesthetic and cultural practices of these regions in motion, with a particular interest in how they mediate different temporalities.
=>TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research of the Forum Transregionale Studien, 2022
#AESTHETICS & CULTURAL PRACTICE / #MECAM
By Farouk El Maarouf – Published on February 17, 2022 – Updated on June 7, 2022
By Farouk El Maarouf. There is a Moroccan community (based particularly in the Rabat/Sale regions) of vernacular dealers, connoisseurs, and savvy art practitioners, who, like their classic elite fellows, have a great deal of knowledge about the fine arts.
=>TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research of the Forum Transregionale Studien, 2022
By Angela Rabing. Abou Bakar Sidibé is a co-director of the films Les Sauteurs – Those Who Jump (2016) and My New European Life (2019). In both, he documents his life as migrant who tries to find a way to Europe and build a life there.
=>TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research of the Forum Transregionale Studien, 2022