Flame Wars

Iran is a fascinating place.

Alaa Abd El Fattah

Terms Falling: Between artist, curator, and entrepreneur

Does a curatorial démarche deserve its own rubric, or even need to be identified in the first place?

Akram Zaatari

The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art: Shimmering totalities

For some time now, public museums the world over have been implementing their own highly professional, big budget mises en scène of what international-standard contemporary art should look like, usually opting for something comparatively urbane, in a Duchampian wit meets iPod joie de vivre sort of way.

Tirdad Zolghadr

Wael Shawky: At least there are no puppets

Wael Shawky’s most recent video work, The Cave (2005), included in the current Istanbul Biennial, features the artist at the center of the frame speaking without pause for eleven minutes.

Mary Blair Taylor

Envy as Consumer Credo and Political Temperament

Have you ever compared the marketing value of White Trash to that of Brown Immigrants? In the eyes of those who are neither, the white working class is common, taste-less, ugly, and embarrassing…

Tirdad Zolghadr

One Day You’ll Miss Me

Shirana Shahbazi

Coloring Book

Ahmet Ögüt, Sener Özmen

Land of the Seven Scarves: The Kuchi, Afghanistan’s nomads

The Kuchi home is a goat’s wool tarp. Everything happens under there — stories, sex, fights, food.

Elizabeth Rubin

Despotism, Democracy and the Fetish: On Saddam Hussein

Drawing as a mode of representation challenges the institutional truth of recorded media. It’s David versus Goliath. Guess who I’m betting on?

Negar Azimi, Paul Chan

Responding to War: …while waiting for a work by Steve McQueen

Four weeks after US President George W. Bush had declared major combat in Iraq to be over, British artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen, winner of the 1999 Turner prize, was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum to “create a work in response to the war in Iraq”…

Tom Holert

Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige on ‘A Perfect Day’

Filmmakers Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige’s second feature, the ironically titled A Perfect Day, won the FIPRESCI International Critic’s Prize on its premiere at Locarno Film Fes-tival, and has since played at festivals in Europe, Asia and North America to great acclaim and further awards.

Antonia Carver

The Most Fatal Attraction: Kiarostami’s ‘Close-Up’ revisited

Sabzian was a complex figure: a troubled loner, he spent the last few years hawking DVDs in Tehran’s south bus terminal.

Coco Ferguson

Emotional Fields

Sherif El Azma’s video/film Television Pilot for an Egyptian Hostess Soap Opera is brilliant.

Hassan Khan

The New Iraqi Flag: An exercise in identity manipulation

In preparation for the US authorities’ transfer of power to the new interim Iraqi government, the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) launched an artistic competition to design a new flag for the nation.

Fawwaz Traboulsi

Hysteria as Form: Adeeb el Shabbab and his mind of steel

According to popular legend, Mahmoud Abd El Raziq Affifi, the self-styled Adeeb el Shabbab (writer of youth) exploded into the consciousness of this city sometime in the 1970s, when he paid street kids to lift banners advertising his books at football matches…

Hassan Khan

Cheese Costs Money: On Paul E. Erdman’s The Crash of ’79

Reading Paul E Erdman’s thriller The Crash of ’79 I couldn’t help but sit back and reminisce about the 1970s in Bulgaria. It was a cozy time of relative stability and prosperity…

Luchezar Boyadjiev

Shaaban: Egyptian gangsta rappa and improbable hero of the people

Shaaban and I have been playing hide-and-seek over the telephone for some time now, he grumbling and me rambling.

Yahia Lababidi

Mr. Lebanon: Anatomy of an icon

We’d just finished Saturday lunch, and Nawaf Salam, an author and professor of political science at the American University in Beirut, wanted to try out a theory about the assassination of Rafiq Hariri…

Elizabeth Rubin

For The Poet Has A Butcher’s Face and The Butcher A Poet’s

Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili

War Bazaar: Panorama of the 6th of October

Friezes depicting battle plans, the “great crossing [of the Suez Canal]” and acrobatic Pharaohs have all the definition of a much-handled soap bar…

Yahia Lababidi