Youssef Chahine – Egyptian Film-maker

Youssef Chahine – Egyptian film-maker who championed nationalism and Arab concerns with an independent eye Jean 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 […] Read More

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 […] Read More

MediaArtHistories Archive

Another site to explore might be MAHArchive (MediaArtHistories Archive): Welcome to the digital repository of scholarship examining the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology! Our collections are currently being fleshed out and added to. Archive Goals :: world wide access – create a place for classic texts, cross-pollinated, cutting-edge scholarship – items submitted and […] Read More

liminalities – journal for performance studies

Recently I came across this peer-reviewed online journal’s March issue ‘On the City‘ and kind of liked especially its web-related multi-media access. Here is a description of the journal in its own words: Liminalities is an open-access peer-reviewed journal for performance studies, theory and praxis. Our goal is to embrace the possibilities for presenting performance […] Read More

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 […] Read More

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 […] Read More

lure of past Times and change in present POV

The Times newspaper opened their archive beginning with 1785 publications as a digital storage and made it for an introductory period freely accessible: For any historical writer, the prospect of being able to search 200 years of The Times at the push of a button from anywhere in the world is both thrilling and slightly […] Read More

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 […] Read More

IN TRANSIT 08: Singularities

IN TRANSIT 08 – titled Singularities – is coming to Berlin next week. The event, now heade by a new artistic director: curator André Lepecki from the New Yorker Tisch School of the Arts will take place at the House of World Cultures from 11.06.2008 – 21.06.2008. Here is an excerpt of its self-description: New […] Read More

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 […] Read More

Welcome to Nollywood and This is Nollywood

Two recent films will help everyone interested to get information and some insight into the phenomenon of ‘Nollywood‘ – the nigerian video feature film industry – a not so recent, but increasingly developing cinema of its own standards. The 2006 production This is Nollywood by Franco Sacchi describes itself as a documentary film that captures […] Read More

The Living Theater showing The Brig

These days The Living Theater started it’s 2008 tour with a new production of ‘The Brig’ by Kenneth Brown. The piece was first presented at The Living Theater at 14th St. and Sixth Avenue in 1963, but has gained new actuality not only by the remembrance of 40 years since 1968, but by hitting the […] Read More

SOP – aka – standing operating procedure

So there is two subjects which can be connected with this acronym – SOP: First there is the leaked document ‘Standard Operating Procedure’, which has been published by Wikileaks last winter … December 4, 2007, New York – The manual detailing Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for Guantánamo’s Camp Delta in 2004 was leaked to today […] Read More