Articles

Slogans Are Walls That Prevent Misunderstanding: 2/5 BZ, aka Serhat Köksal

It’s 4 AM and Serhat Köksal and I are standing in a bar off Istiklal in downtown Istanbul. In the background, or rather in the foreground, is a petrifying trip hop remix of “Riders on the Storm.”

Tirdad Zolghadr

Tropical Baroque: A rough and partial history of popular furniture

When journalist Paul William Roberts interviewed Saddam Hussein in his Baghdad office back in the mid 90s, he went out of his way to comment on the furniture.

Tirdad Zolghadr

My Travels with Thomsun: (or other ways I keep it real in old Dubai)

The last time I was in Dubai, a friend told me that 50 Cent had done a concert there a few weeks earlier. This came as a surprise, seeing that the last time hip-hop made a fantastic voyage to the desert, it came in the form of, well, Coolio.

Nima Nabavi

Permanent Vacation: The making of someplace out of no-place

In the early 1960s, while the rest of the world was busy incubating hippies, fighting with their neighbors, and declaring independence, the small trading post of Dubai was hard at work dredging its Creek…

Brian Ackley

Project Misplaced

Project Misplaced is the story of Simon, a fictitious character who tries to recreate himself in the US (or any other foreign culture).

Houman Mortazavi

Sidewalk Magic

The Inhale and Exhale of Economics 1 Euro = 1.

Simona Schneider, Yto Barrada

History of the World

Hassan Khan scanned all 271 painted illustrations in the 1981 edition of The Hamlyn Children’s History of the World, which he has owned since he was eight, and used Photoshop to create one meta image.

Hassan Khan

Grand Hotel Londra: The second nicest place to stay in Istanbul

Constructed in 1892 by the Glavani Family, the Büyük Londra Oteli, or the Grand Hotel de Londres, was considered “the most prestigious establishment in the area of Pera, at that time,” according to one guide.

November Paynter

Aside from Being Wildly Intelligent: Michele Maccarone in conversation with Okwui Enwezor

What seems to stun me the most is we’re living in the most politically ridiculous moment in recent American history. Yet at the same time it seems like everyone has these blinders on — collectors are buying painting.

Okwui Enzewor, Michele Maccarone

Thank God He Wasn’t French: Notes on Edward Said (1935–2003)

I once saw Said give a speech in the sumptuous Grand Ballroom of the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. It was December of 1997…

Tirdad Zolghadr

On Edward Said: The Stupidest Word: Christopher Hitchens reflects on his friend and foe

Right. Well, I should first say that I think that the word “icon” is the stupidest word in our current discourse, and it would be no one poorer if we gave it up.

Christopher Hitchens, Emran Qureshi

Tent-City: Two worlds, an automaton, and a skyscraper

Lebanon is the country were the two worlds meet, not the East and the West, but that of the living and that of the dead.

Tony Chakar

The Yacoubian Building: A drama of novel proportions

Nestled along downtown Cairo’s busy Talat Haarb Street, the Yacoubian building is easy to miss.

Ursula Lindsey

Yul Brynner: Hollywood’s one man melting pot

The 1966 film Poppies Are Also Flowers is an international crime thriller that follows the trafficking of opium from the fields of Iran to the mafia distributors of Europe.

Brian Ackley

Atatürk: National rhetoric verses contemporary art in Turkey

One of the few mediums availed to dissident expression from the seventies that managed to survive the Turkish military coup of 1980 is the tradition of humor magazines.

Erden Kosova

Javad Yasari: Secondhand fridge salesman, singing legend of the Tehran Bazaar

Javad Yasari is Iran’s Willie Nelson, and like the country legend, he is the voice of the road. The rhythms of Javad’s music have kept truckers awake across Iran’s deserts for thirty years…

Coco Ferguson, Khosrow Hassanzadeh

Cat Stevens: The pop idol forgoes his fame for his faith

A young man with wide eyes and skinny, aristocratically mod style stages his elaborate suicide again and again.

Mary Blair Taylor

Islamic Chic: Only in America can a poor black boy grow up to be a rich white woman

Malcolm X did it, Cat Stevens did it, and even simpleminded Mike Tyson did it. And if you blinked you might have missed it, but Michael Jackson, too, fell in love with Islam.

Yahia Lababidi

The Popular That Is Not Pop: An album cover for the anxious

The man in the brown corduroy get-up calmly stares back at us from a hot sticky late 70s Cairene summer night. In the return of his gaze we become implicated…

Hassan Khan

Natascha Sadr-Haghighian

How to write a profile on an artist whose current intellectual concern is to subvert identity precisely in the “curriculum vitae,” “career profile” sense of the term?

Tirdad Zolghadr