Practitioners-in-Residence

Spring 2021 Virtual PRACTITIONER-IN-RESIDENCE

Unravelling Collections and Practices: Rights, Materialities and Photographic Agency at the Arab Image Foundation (AIF)

The workshops will be led by three members of the current Board of Directors of the AIF: Vartan Avakian, Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh and Kristine Khouri.

In the context of a world that is increasingly challenged by wars, ongoing conditions of coloniality, financialization and environmental destruction, all of which bring about new forms of migration, displacement, dispossession and transition, this seminar for the NYU Kevorkian Spring 2021 Practitioner-in-Residence will investigate the ways in which an archive can function as a space for renegotiating the distribution of agency, imagine forms of custodianship, and addressing questions around rights.

The spring sessions are conceived in three parts, which will be articulated through lectures, practice-based workshops, and public events. The workshops will be led by three members of the current Board of Directors of the AIF: Vartan Avakian, Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh and Kristine Khouri.

As a group, the PIR will question how collective work practices and horizontal governance - combined with critical documentation procedures - as well as creative ways of engaging with collections, can contribute to rethinking society in Lebanon today - and how these issues resonate beyond borders.

Across the spring semester each Practitioner will bring collections, some from the AIF, into the workshop sessions. Participants will learn, explore, and generate new knowledge by working on these collections.

mohamed elshahed

spring 2020 ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE

Special Workshop Title: Curating Architecture, Design, & Material Culture in the Middle East

Mohamed Elshahed is a curator and architectural historian focusing on modernism in Egypt and the Arab World. He earned his Masters from MIT’s Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture and a PhD from NYU’s Department of Middle Eastern Studies. His work spans architecture, design and material culture. He is the curator of the British Museum’s Modern Egypt Project and Egypt’s winning pavilion, Modernist Indignation, at the 2018 London Design Biennale. In 2019 Apollo Magazine named him among the 40 under 40 influential thinkers and artists in the Middle East. In 2011 he founded Cairobserver.com with six printed issues of the magazine by the same name, distributed for free in events in Cairo, Beirut and Dubai which aimed to stimulate public debates around issues of architecture, heritage and urbanism in the region. He is the author of Cairo Since 1900: An Architectural Guide (AUC Press, January 2020), the first comprehensive survey of Cairo's modern architecture.

SUZY HANSEN

fall 2019 ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE

Special Workshop Title: Ways to Write About the World: Foreign Reportage, Narrative Nonfiction, Essays, and Memoir

Suzy Hansen is a journalist and editor who has lived in Istanbul for over ten years. Her first book, Notes on a Foreign Country, was published in 2017 by FSG. It was a Finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction, and the winner of the Overseas Press Club’s Cornelius Ryan Award for Best Nonfiction Book on International Affairs. In 2020, she will be a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University, as well as an ASU Future Security Fellow at New America.She is also a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, and has written for many other publications. For several years, she was an editor at the New York Observer, and before that, an editor in the Books section at Salon. In 2007, she was awarded a two-year fellowship from the Institute of Current World Affairs to live in and write about Turkey.

MOLLY CRABAPPLE

SPRING 2019 ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE

Special Workshop Title: Is Al Andalus a Place or a Poem?

Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer in New York. She is the author of two books, Drawing Blood and Brothers of the Gun, (with Marwan Hisham). Her reportage has been published in the New York Times, New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. She has been the recipient of a Yale Poynter Fellowship, a Front Page Award, and shortlisted for a Frontline Print Journalism Award. She is often asked to discuss her work chronicling the conflicts of the 21st Century, and has spoken at venues including The Guggenheim, Harvard, Yale, The Brooklyn Museum, The London School of Economics, the American University in Beirut, The National College of the Arts in Lahore, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, and for audiences throughout Europe, in Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia, India, and Palestine. Her art is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the United States Library of Congress and the New York Historical Society.

Lara Baladi

Fall 2018 Artist-IN-RESIDENCE

Special Workshop Title: Archiving As Resistance & the ABC of Revolting

Workshop Description: The workshop, Archiving as Resistance & the ABC of Revolting, will map questions related to archiving a revolution in the digital age as a means of resistance with a focus on the language of rebelling.

Based on her ongoing project since 2011, Vox Populi, Archiving a Revolution in the Digital Age, the artist and the participants will study various revolts, revolutions and protests, past and present. Together they will explore various archives initiatives in the global context and create one or more artworks using the archive with a particular focus on language. The participants will produce collaboratively or individually, projects based on the material they will have researched.

Participants from all disciplines are welcome to join. Please bring your creative thinking and if you already have ideas of what you wish to explore, some data and/or information on asocial movement, a revolution or a protest: photos (documentary, political satire, graffiti in jpgs format), videos (documentary, testimonies, animations) and/or tweets, articles, list of vocabulary that emerged during protests (words, slogans, sentences), etc.

No pre-requisite other than your enthusiasm. Limited enrolment: 15-18.Lara Baladi is an Egyptian-Lebanese artist, archivist and educator, internationally recognized for her multidisciplinary work. In her investigations into archives, personal histories, socio-political narratives and myths, Baladi’s work spans a wide range of mediums, photography—analogue and digital—collage, immersive video, sound and mutli-media installations, architectural spaces, sculptures, tapestries and perfume. Since 2014, she has been a Fellow at MIT’s Open Documentary Lab. In 2015-16, she was the Ida Ely Rubin Artist in Residence at MIT’s Centre for Art, Science and Technology (CAST). Currently, she is a Lecturer in MIT’s Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT).

TRITA PARSI

SPRING 2018 PRACTITIONER-IN-RESIDENCE

Special Workshop Title: Put Yourself in Iran's Shoes

Trita Parsi is an award winning author and the 2010 recipient of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. He is the founder and president of the National Iranian American Council and an expert on US-Iranian relations, Iranian foreign politics, and the geopolitics of the Middle East. He is the author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States (Yale University Press 2007), for which he conducted more than 130 interviews with senior Israeli, Iranian and American decision-makers. Treacherous Alliance is the silver medal winner of the 2008 Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations. Parsi's second book A Single Roll of the Dice - Obama's Diplomacy with Iran (Yale University Press) was released early 2012 and was selected by Foreign Affairs journal as the Best Book of 2012 on the Middle East. His latest book - Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy (Yale University Press, 2017) - reveals the behind the scenes story to the historic nuclear deal with Iran.

Mashrou' Leila

Fall 2017 Artists-in-Residence

Special Workshop Title: The Great Gig in the Sky: Imagining the Soundtrack to Utopia

Special Events: The Great Gig in the Sky: Imagining the Soundtrack to Utopia, Mashrou' Leila and Fred Moten in Conversation

Mashrou' Leila are an indie band based in Beirut. Their rousing, sensual electro-pop anthems about political freedoms, race, religion, LGBT rights, and modern Arabic identity have challenged the status quo of the Middle-Eastern pop industry.The band has self-released four albums to date and their most recent Ibn El Leil (2015) brilliantly reimagines the vibrant sound of contemporary Beirut with guitars, drum machines, samples, razor-sharp violin and Hamed's magnetic mercurial voice.

www.mashrouleila.com

Sultan Al Qassemi

Spring 2017 Practitioner-in-Residence

Special Workshop Title: The Politics of Modern Arab Art

Special Event: Politics in Modern Arab Art: A Lecture by Sultan Al Qassemi on May 1, 2017

Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi is a United Arab Emirates-based columnist whose articles have appeared in The Financial Times, The Independent, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, The New York Times, Foreign Policy, Open Democracy, and The Globe and Mail, as well as other notable publications. He is also a prominent commentator on Arab affairs on Twitter (@SultanAlQassemi). Rising in prominence during the Arab Spring, his tweets became a major news source, rivaling the major news networks at the time, until TIME magazine listed him in the “140 Best Twitter Feeds of 2011.”

Sultan is also the founder of the Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah, an independent initiative established to contribute to the intellectual development of the art scene in the Arab region by building a prominent and publicly accessible art collection in the United Arab Emirates. In the first quarter of 2017 Barjeel Art Foundation will inaugurate exhibitions at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris, Yale University Art Gallery in the US and the National Gallery of Jordan in Amman.

Suhel Nafar

Fall 2016 Artist-in-Residence

Special Workshop Title: Memory Metamorphosis

Special Event: Memory Metamorphosis: An Exhibition on Palestinian Memory (December 9, 2016 to January 31, 2017)

Suhel Nafar is a New York/Palestine based filmmaker and artist. He has worked on a number of projects together with fellow artist Jacqueline Reem Salloum, including the feature length documentary, “Slingshot Hip Hop,” (2008 Sundance), a series of short documentaries for Arab American Stories on PBS TV, the music video, “If I Could Go Back in Time”, and the short kids film, “Yala to the Moon” (2012 TIFF Kids). Nafar, who is a member of the first Palestinian hip hop group, DAM, recently co-produced the feature film "Junction 48" (Berinale 2016). Nafar is also motion graphics artist and filmmaker who helped launch Complex Snapchat Discover channel, the fastest growing platform in the history of Complex Networks.

Jacqueline Reem Salloum

Fall 2016 Artist-in-Residence

Special Workshop Title: Memory Metamorphosis

Special Event: Memory Metamorphosis: An Exhibition on Palestinian Memory (December 9, 2016 to January 31, 2017)

Jacqueline Reem Salloum is a New York based filmmaker and artist. She is the director of the award winning film, Slingshot Hip Hop (2008 Sundance), the first feature-length documentary about Palestinian Hip-Hop. Alongside Suhel Nafar, Jackie directed DAM's official video clip "If I Could Go Back in Time", the first single of DAM's 2013 album Dabkeh on the Moon, as well as on other projects including a series of short documentaries for Arab American Stories on PBS TV and the short kids film, “Yala to the Moon” (2012 TIFF Kids). Salloum's experimental video, "Planet of the Arabs" (Sundance 2005) documents and challenges stereotypes of Arabs in Hollywood. She teaches film and video workshops at universities and institutions in the US and internationally.

Sarah Leah Whitson

Spring 2016 Human Rights Activist-in-Residence

Special Workshop Title: Dissecting the Democratic Moment in Egypt

Special Event: 'The Morsy Administration’s One Year in Power: What Went Wrong and Who's to Blame?' A Panel Discussion with Amr Darrag, Former Minister of Planning and International Cooperation, 2012-2013; founding member and Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Freedom and Justice Party; Secretary General of the 2012 Constituent Assembly; Chairman, Egyptian Institute for Political and Strategic Studies 2014- date; Mohamed Almohandes, Member of the Supreme Council of the Egypt Strong Party, headed by presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh; served as spokesman of the party and participated in the National Dialogue, and Saif Abdel Fattah, Former senior adviser to President Mohamed Morsi, and former Professor of political science, Cairo University.

Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa Division, oversees the work of the division in 19 countries, with staff located in 10 countries. She has led dozens of advocacy and investigative missions throughout the region, focusing on issues of armed conflict, accountability, legal reform, migrant workers, and political rights. She has published widely on human rights issues in the Middle East in international and regional media, including The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The Los Angeles Times, and CNN. She appears regularly on Al-Jazeera, BBC, NPR, and CNN. Before joining Human Rights Watch, Whitson worked in New York for Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard Law School. Whitson is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She speaks Armenian and Arabic.

Nancy Kricorian

Fall 2015 Writer-in-Residence

Special Workshop Title: Life Stories: Transforming Family and Oral Histories into Narrative Non-Fiction and Fiction

Special Event: Art and Memory: Looking Back and Moving Forward on the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide, A Panel Event with photographer Diana Markosian and artist Silvina Der Meguerditchian, moderated by Hrag Vartanian, founder of Hyperallergic, on November 9, 2015.

Nancy Kricorian is a New York City-based writer and activist. She is the author of the novels Zabelle, Dreams of Bread and Fire, and most recently All The Light There Was, which is set in the Armenian community of Paris during World War II. Her poetry and essays have been published in Guernica Magazine, The Minnesota Review, The Mississippi Review, Parnassus, and Women’s Studies Quarterly, among other periodicals. She has been the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, The Anahid Literary Award, a Gold Medal of the Writers Union of Armenia, and the Daniel Varoujan Prize of the New England Poetry Club, among other honors. She participated in the 2010 Palestine Festival of Literature and is a fellow of Columbia University’s Women Mobilizing Memory Workshop. She has taught at Barnard, Columbia, Yale, Rutgers and Queens Colleges, as well as with Teachers and Writers Collaborative in the New York City Public Schools.

Adam Shatz

Spring 2015 Journalist-in-Residence

Special Workshop Title: Writing for a Non-Academic Audience

Special Event: 'What Went Wrong in Syria?,' A Panel Discussion with Mohammad Bazzi (Journalism, NYU), Steven Heydemann (U.S. Institute for Peace), George Saghir, and Lisa Wedeen (Political Science, University of Chicago) on April 30, 2015.

Adam Shatz is a contributing editor at The London Review of Books and a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and other publications. Previously, he was a fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars. Raised in Massachusetts, he studied history at Columbia University and has lived in New York City since 1990.