Category Archives: Blog

An international conference being held next week in Beirut will bring together editors of local, regional, and global art periodicals (from the Czech Republic, Armenia, Lebanon, Romania, Russia, Afghanistan, America, and Egypt) to discuss their publications, and the agendas that shape their editorial decisions.

Critical Machines: Art Periodicals Today (Conference)
American University of Beirut
March 7-8, 2014
Faculty Lounge, Ada Dodge Hall, AUB
Conference organizers: Octavian Esanu and Angela Harutyunyan

For the conference, we re-apply the metaphor of the “critical machine” (the piece of industrial equipment programed to monitor and report on other machines in the production chain) in order to discuss various critical practices of reporting and commenting on contemporary artistic production, display and distribution. Today, art journals, magazines, newsletters, websites, zines and blogs are the critical machines that both monitor and outline the trajectories of artists’ interactions with global or local cultural circuits. These periodicals often serve a gatekeeping function, endorsing and determining what counts as legitimate art, or criticizing and even excluding “foreign bodies,” or experiences and practices that might disrupt and destabilize the established art system. While on one hand, institutional art criticism – as it circulates today in printed and electronic media – functions as a discursive gatekeeper, on the other hand it constantly seeks and finds ways to expand its discursive boundaries, in order to make space for new exegeses and interpretive experiences that the system might accommodate and use in its normal operations. In short, art criticism needs to introduce a degree of foreignness, an alien element – be it in the form of new discursive units, critical approaches or reference points – precisely in order to guarantee the functioning of the system of (art critical) production of meaning, creating self-adjusting and self-improving environments.

The two-day symposium invites art critics and artists involved in art publishing to discuss the production of art criticism in today’s globalized world. The participants will meet to discuss channels of production and distribution of art critical discourse, ways of coding this discourse and its media of transmission, types of storage and incorporation, ideological particularities and market interferences. We will ask ourselves, moreover, what has changed, or what must change today in a globally-charged art critical environment, where the location of the critical machine does not significantly or obviously affect either the content or the form of art critical production. For this event, at AUB Art Galleries we invite operators of critical machines to share their experience and participate in a series of debates.

For more information on the conference, please click here.

With tensions in Ukraine continuing to escalate after the seizure of two airports in Crimea, I’m trying to follow the reaction of the Muslim Tatar minority to the unfolding crisis. Many Crimean Tatars are concerned that if Crimea were to separate, deadly ethnic violence would erupt–and lead to the end of the Crimean Tatars…

In my talk on Sufism in Central Asia last night in Beirut, I discussed my research over the past few years in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan–where there are more foreign travelers than ever before. As you can see in the photo above, when I was in Uzbekistan for the first time in 2009, there were hardly any tourists there–even in Registan Square…

The French department store Le Bon Marché is presenting a retrospective of Proenza Schouler’s first 12 years as a fashion label. In an article today in the NYTimes, the creators of Proenza Schouler–Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez–take a walk through the retrospective, and revisit some of their earliest creations (btw: I went to high school with Jack–and he was a creative genius back then too). Now that the retrospective has launched, Jack and Lazaro are off to do a safari in Tanzania. To read more about their Fall 2014 Collection, please click here…

What’s Chinese About Contemporary Chinese Art?

Maxwell Hearn, Douglas Dillon Chairman, Department of Asian Art, MMA

Metropolitan Museum of Art
Wednesday, March 5, 6:00 p.m.
Tickets: $30
The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium

Examine a distinct subset of art produced by Mainland Chinese artists from the 1980s to the present: a contemporary “ink aesthetic” in which references to traditional pictorial and calligraphic concepts suggest a conscious effort by the artists to engage with and transform inherited Chinese art forms—to extend, question, or subvert them—as a defining feature of their artistic vision.

To buy tickets, please click here.

Capt. John Smith Goes to Ukraine
February 27 – March 9, 2014
La Mama’s First Floor Theatre
74 East 4th St, NYC
Thursday, Friday & Saturday at 7:30pm plus Sunday at 2:30pm

Created and Performed by Bob Holman, Susan Hwang and Julian Kytasty
Conceived & Directed by Virlana Tkacz

You know all about Pocahontas, now see what happened first!

In 1607 Capt. John Smith founded Jamestown, the first English settlement in America…but in 1603 he was in Kolomyia, Ukraine! Based on Smith’s own writing about his adventures fighting in the Turkish wars in Eastern Europe before he came to America, Capt. John Smith Goes to Ukraine includes traditional Ukrainian epic songs known as “dumas” and wild new songs written by Susan Hwang which she performs accompanying herself on the accordion, as well as over the top love poetry by Bob Holman. It’s an epic in an hour that resonates with today’s news headlines from Ukraine.

For tickets and more information, please click here.

It was strange today to wake-up to an Op-Ed in the NYTimes on the topic, “Moderate Islam? Look to Central Asia,” when that was to be the subject of my talk tonight in Beirut. Thankfully, I found some time in the lecture to critique today’s Op-Ed…

After the animals make their case against humanity in the 10th century text “The Case of the Animals versus Man Before the King of the Jinn,” the final human “spokesperson” defends humanity’s superiority over the animal kingdom by appealing to the special status of “saints.” The animal delegates agree that the “lives and characters of these saintly persons, their manners and thoughts, the studies in which they are versed are indeed worth vying for” and “something to take pride in”:

Finally arose a learned, accomplished, worthy, keen, pious, and insightful man. He was Persian by breeding, Arabian by faith, a ḥanīf by confession, Iraqi in culture, Hebrew in lore, Christian in manner, Damascene in devotion, Greek in science, Indian in discernment, Sufi in intimations, regal in character, masterful in thought, and divine in awareness. ‘Praised be God, Lord of all worlds,’ he said, ‘Destiny of the faithful, and foe to none but the unjust. God bless the Seal of Prophets, foremost of God’s messengers, Muhammad, God’s elect, and all his worthy house and good nation.

‘Yes, just Majesty and assembled hosts,’ he began. ‘These saints of God are the flower of creation, the best, the purest, persons of fair and praiseworthy parts, pious deeds, myriad sciences, godly awareness, regal character, just and holy lives, and awesome ways. Fluent tongues weary to name their qualities, and no one has adequately described their inmost core. Many have cited their virtues, and preachers in public assemblies have devoted their lives down through the ages to sermons dilating on their merits and their godly ways, without ever reaching the pith of the matter.’

While reading “The Case of the Animals versus Man Before the King of the Jinn,” a 10th century fable in which animals launch a case against humans for their cruelty to animals, I was drawn to the words of the elephant in the allegory–since elephant poaching in Africa is currently approaching the point of no return. Even the beloved elephant Torn Ear was killed earlier this month.

Though “The Case of the Animals versus Man” was written centuries ago, the ecological problems it addresses persist today:

The elephant said, ‘Had you seen us, your Majesty, as prisoners of the sons of Adam, with chains on our feet and cables about our necks while they held iron goads in their hands to beat us about the pate and drive us left or right, powerless to defend ourselves, despite our great bulk, our mighty frames, long tusks, and immense strength, you would have pitied us and wept for us. Where then are the tenderness and compassion this human claims they feel for us?’

This week in Beirut, my students and I are contemplating the relationship between Islamic philosophy and ecology, while reading “The Case of the Animals versus Man Before the King of the Jinn” (a translation from the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity)[اخوان‌الصفا‎]. In this allegorical fable–written in the 10th century by an esoteric brotherhood of Muslims in Basra and Baghdad–eloquent representatives of the animal kingdom appear before the revered “King of the Jinn” to bring a case against humanity–for abusing and enslaving them. While the text presents both sides of a rich, ecological debate, it also radically critiques human beings for being in constant dispute with one another, and for exploiting the environment for self-interest and profit.

Here’s what the mule says during the trial:

Your Majesty, if you consider how dense, vulgar, uncouth, and foul-mouthed humans are, you’ll be amazed at how little they discern their own odious ways, vicious traits, depraved characters, and vile actions, their manifold barbarities, corrupt notions, and conflicting dogmas. They don’t repent or take stock but ignore the warnings of their prophets and scorn the commands of their Lord, who said, “Let them show compassion and indulgence. Would you not wish God to show you mercy?”

This video was sent to me this morning by a friend and colleague. He knew the man in the video whose body is being prepared for a Balinese cremation–and its subsequent journey from the earth. It is a rare and remarkable instance of the private and public embracing one another. In the background, you’ll hear the sound of gamelan music playing…

Paradise is there, behind that door, in the next room; but I have lost the key.
Perhaps I have only mislaid it.

You are blind and I am deaf and dumb, so let us touch hands and understand…

— Khalil Gibran

On Sunday, when I arrived at this door of a monastery in the mountains, my mind flashed back to the last time I wandered through Bab Touma, the Christian district of Damascus–just two months before the war in Syria began…

On my way to this mountain monastery in Lebanon early Sunday morning–not long after Saturday night’s bombing–I was just as drawn to the humble cells of the hermits carved into the rock on the left, as I was to the breathtaking view on the right. The first sound I heard as I walked on the path was the voice of this young girl, speaking in Arabic to her grandmother–who was struggling to climb back up the hill…

Yesterday I drew myself from the noisome throngs and proceeded into the field until I reached a knoll upon which Nature had spread her comely garments. Now I could breathe.

I looked back, and the city appeared with its magnificent mosques and stately residences veiled by the smoke of the shops.

I commenced analyzing man’s mission, but could conclude only that most of his life was identified with struggle and hardship. Then I tried not to ponder over what the sons of Adam had done, and centered my eyes on the field which is the throne of God’s glory. In one secluded corner of the field I observed a burying ground surrounded by poplar trees.

There, between the city of the dead and the city of the living, I meditated. I thought of the eternal silence in the first and the endless sorrow in the second…

— Khalil Gibran