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two North African cities on focus in Berlin
The House of World Cultures Exhibition In the Desert of Modernity. Colonial Planning and After examines the colonial fantasies of the West(/Europe) using the north-african city Casablanca as an experimental playground of modernistic ideas and the consequent impact of this enforced transformations.From the 1930s on, colonial North Africa was transformed into a laboratory for European ...
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Youssef Chahine – Egyptian Film-maker
Youssef Chahine – Egyptian film-maker who championed nationalism and Arab concerns with an independent eyeJean Renoir once remarked that in the work of his Egyptian fellow film director Youssef Chahine, “reality is always enchanting”. Chahine, who has died at the age of 82 following a brain haemorrhage, made more than 40 feature films: his work ...
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Mahrem – Footnotes on Veiling
The current art project ‘Mahrem – Footnotes on Veiling’ at Berlin Tanas Gallery explores the concepts such as hidden and revealed, visible and invisible, public and private around the on-going contemporary discussions on the veil, the show tries to unfold several differing viewpoints related to Islamic covering and its public perceptions through the works of ...
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Habermas explores the post-secularist society
In a recent article for the german Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, which luckily got translated by sightandsign.com, Habermas contemplates about religious developments and tendencies, the tradition of tolerance, multiculturalism and the notion of ‘post-secularism’: ... what interests me in the present context is the question of whether a secularist devaluation of religion, if ...
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waltz with bashir
The animated film by Ari Folman, which slowly starts to hit theaters, caused some interest at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It introduces itself as a very personal narration about a soldier’s memory loss. From the synopsis: One night at a bar, an old friend tells director Ari Folman about a recurring nightmare in which ...
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Augusto Boal: Theater and sensitive thinking
During the last week the renown theater director and writer Augusto Boal held an event on invitation of the berlin biennale. It was a very special evening introducing himself through a longer speech, and then followed by some pieces with invited actors, his son and the participating audience to give a a lively impression of ...
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The voices of Küba
Berlin’s Tanas Gallery (Gallery for Contemporary Turkish Art) shows currently the prize-winning 2004 work “Küba” of Kutlug Ataman. The installation of 40 interviews on old-fashioned TV models, each supplied with an individual 2 second hand chair, creates a chorus of voices each telling their own story. In front of the monitor one is solely confronted ...
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some insight – No Forbidden Zone in Reading?
NEW LEFT REVIEW publishes in its recent issue a longer essay by Zhang Yongle on the history of the important and influential intellectual Chinese magazine Dushu. Reason for the review is delivered by the current (July 2007) publication of a six-volume Chinese edition featuring the most important texts from 1996 to 2005, a time in ...
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Tibet – suggestions by Some Chinese Intellectuals
Twelve Suggestions for Dealing with the Tibetan Situation by Some Chinese Intellectuals Editor’s Note: On March 12, a group of Chinese intellectuals including prominent dissidents, lawyers, rights activitise and writers circulated a petition supporting calls for an independent investigation in Tibet by the United Nation, and urging the government to reconsider its policies in Tibet, ...