Articles

White Masks

It’s a testament to the uncanny sense of immediacy that Elias Khoury’s White Masks creates that it seems impossible that it should have been written nearly three decades ago.

Suzy Hansen

How to Wreck a Nice Beach

How did the Bee Gees hijack Edison?

Alexander Provan

Untitled Tracks

According to Untitled Tracks, Beirut’s music scene was dead — a smattering of derivative metal outfits, rock bands playing Nirvana covers, jazz combos stuck in the 1950s, pop musicians parroting the most typical of Arab ballads and other schlock — until the end of the millennium, when a generation of young experimentalists who had come of age during the civil war began to make an irrepressible amount of noise.

Alexander Provan

This Brand is Your Brand: Evaluating a selection of exemplary nation brands

Were Latvia, Armenia, and Poland all just sold the same kit or did they jostle around to end up with the same crap magic marker pallet?

Sophia Al-Maria, Michael C. Vazquez, Babak Radboy, Latiffeh Ehteshami, Shumon Basar, Andy Pressman, Nelson Harst, Parag Khanna

Identity Bazaar

Four takedowns of opportunism, art world hustle, and shameless dilettantism.

Hassan Khan, Nav Haq, Mahmoud Khaled, Sherif El Azma, Nida Ghouse

Hungry Ghosts: Playing the numbers in Macau

Dipping a toe into the world of luck and frank appraisal.

Lawrence Osborne

Pleasure for the Eyes: How I recovered from souklessness

When a love of ornament finds purchase in hard modernity.

Gini Alhadeff

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune: An exhibition of a film that never was

Published in 1965, Frank Herbert’s Dune is the bestselling sci-fi novel of all time.

Sam Thorne

Sangak Nation: The Mecca of ethnic markets

Not quite the same as Whole Foods, Wholesome Choice is owned by an Iranian, “Mike” Mokhtare, a veteran food importer from Tabriz.

Latiffeh Ehteshami

The Omega Man: Gadalla Gubara and the half-life of Sudanese cinema

Sometime, in another life, in another world, he danced in the nightclubs of Khartoum.

Nadja Korinth

The Golden Compass: Islam versus global capitalism

How to topple Western finance and unite a fractured faith.

Alexander Provan

Arabia on the Turkey: The making and marketing of Elkader, Iowa

Destination tourism and Algerian nationalism in small-town Iowa.

Adam John Waterman

Marwan Rechmaoui: Understanding (and shrinking) a city divided

He does not write texts, collect photographs, make videos, or stage performances. He insists that his objects speak for themselves.

Kaelen Wilson-Goldie

Culture in the Wake of the Kuwaiti Oil Boom: A conversation with Farida Al Sultan

Before Doha, Dubai, or Abu Dhabi, the city with the boldest ambitions in the Gulf may have been Kuwait.

Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, Fatima Al Qadiri

Forms of Compensation

Forms of Compensation is a series of twenty-one reproductions of iconic modern and contemporary artworks, with an emphasis on sculptures, paintings and prints by Arab and Iranian artists.

Babak Radboy, Ayman Ramadan

Rasht 29: A cultural oasis in central Tehran

Rasht 29 soon became a popular destination for “discerning” tourists and flower children on the trail to India or Katmandu.

Sohrab Mohebbi

Lord of the Drone: Pandit Pran Nath and the American underground

The emergence and unclear history of North India’s avant-garde singer-saint.

Alexander Keefe

Fluffy Farhad

Neon-lit coffee shops with confusingly exotic names such as GRAFFITI and LATEX opened on every block.

Negar Azimi

H. Musavi Khamenei

If the Western artist speaks of domination over material, technique, and space in his work, like a hiker on top of a mountain, in the art of the East it is exploration, intimacy, growth and expansion, and unification with the world that we see and live in.

Sohrab Mohebbi, Clifford Borress

Enterprise Square USA: A capitalist hallucination

Beyond the Hall of Giants lay the Remarkable Supply Shop for Demanding Donut Dunkers, an interactive display staffed by a student worker.

William E. Jones