Panayiotou Group Exhibition.

An exhibition in Seoul featuring an all star cast of fresh, young artists amongst others Christodolous Panayiotou will kick off its opening reception September 7th and continue until November 17th. This from the site:

To connect with the rest of the world, we invest a certain amount of trust in various relations. Trust is by default an ambiguous notion, it is one grounded in good faith as much as in doubt. As individuals we not only have these relations to our fellow citizens, but also increasingly with modes of connection. With proliferating forms of media, information comes to us in many guises, and the message is more and more opaque; marketing poses as friendship, solitude as community, populism as democracy.

Instead of simply stepping up to the speed of technology, the curatorial team of Media City Seoul 2010 proceeds from a desire to pause, reflect, and critique the transitions and transformations of our social contexts. The exhibition is propositional by nature. Trust interprets media broadly—as a tool for engagement within a shifting terrain where political, national or religious identities are being re-charted; where means of distribution creates real and imagined communities; and where private interpersonal space share the same platform as global political issues of the day. As forms of media become more accessible and varied, we enter an era that seemingly allows more room for self-expression and individuality. Yet, what is at stake when media channels are more concentrated and powerful? How do these networks create new spaces of alienation and control? How do we reconcile the desire for changing social models, with a desire for new communities?

The exhibition works against the rhetoric of technology as progress and promise, offering instead a recalibration of its definition. Many of the artists in the exhibition are not known as media artists, but use various forms of media (printed material, urban detritus, photographic and video technology, documentary and fictional forms) to counter the generalizing of experience by dominant narratives. Trust investigates notions of community, representation and perception in a world that is continuously being retold and reconfigured. In this light, how are stories, histories and myths construed? How is collective experience represented through multiplicity and difference? The exhibition emphasizes artistic practices that play with documentary conventions, fictional forms, espousing for imagination, subjectivity and localities as underpinnings of contemporary experience. Sometimes revealing the underlying constructs of mediated stories, and at other times obscuring them. Trust does not aim to meticulously dissect the matters at hand, or present a scientific or intellectual study of our current mediascape. Instead, Trust offers a broad interpretation of media and invests in a humanistic and individual response to contemporary experience.

Dick Cavett speaks out

can you blame him?

Googoosh

Tell me this isn't beguiling.

Anybody raised in the Middle East will certainly be aware of Googoosh, but (to our great discredit), to a western ear, it may be foreign. The Iranian pop singer and actress is a national treasure over in Iran and mayhaps the country's finest singer of all time.

In the 1960s and 70s, Googoosh was considered the most celebrated recording artist in Iran and much of the Middle East. In addition to music, Googoosh was also an actress in many Persian films of the 1960s and 1970s. She is more widely known as a singer than as an actress. After the Iranian Revolution in 1979, she is famously known for remaining in Iran until 2000 and not performing again due to the ban on female singers. Still, her following grew. Younger people have rediscovered her music via bootleg recordings. Outside of Iran, she has a significant following in many Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries, and has even caught the attention of western media and press.. Googoosh is rumored to reside in an estimated $16 million valued estate near Bel Air, Los Angeles, California, and continues her career, albeit in a limited manner.

“I have come here to be the voice for the sad mothers who lost their loved ones in peaceful demonstrations,” said the singer. “I have come here to be the just voice of the grass-roots and spontaneous movement among my compatriots and to show my solidarity.” Source New York Times.com

Can Bantam Books do no Wrong?

Kuwait Museum of Modern Art

It has no official website, no signs on the streets directing to it and no paved roads leading to it, but once you have reached your destination, you are magically transported into a world that not many people know exists

Located just off Arabian Gulf Road in the Sharq district of Kuwait in one of the very few surviving pre World War Two era structures in the old capital, the Modern Art Museum in Kuwait offers visitors one of the only permanent displays of modern Arab and international art in the region. This imposing buildinghas always been an educational institution; it was built in 1939 to house the Madrasa Al Sharqiya, or Eastern School in which generations of prominent Kuwaitis studied including the current Emir Sheikh, Sabah Al Ahmad

When the National Committee of Culture, Arts and Literature took over the building two decades ago it went about carefully restoring it from the heavy damage incurred during the 1990 invasion and transforming it into a fitting home for its art collection comprised of purchases and donations. Photos of the restoration process, which lasted until 2003, can still be seen along with black and white pictures of students from the various classes. Upon arrival, a traditional wooden doorway leads visitors to an open airhoash or lobby that can be found in most large houses in the region where the museum administration offices are located. Then walking through a short corridor through a glass door the visitor passes the temporary exhibition hall where artists are invited to hold exhibitions of their latest works. Then another large lobby appears, this one covered in a transparent roof as beneath it dozens of sculptures dating back several decades are on display. This lobby is surrounded by several classrooms on the ground and first floors with large rectangular windows overlooking it, these classroms have now been transformed into art galleries divided into themes

The ground floor lobby along with the classrooms is dedicated exclusively to Kuwaiti art including paintings and sculptures by Essa Sagr, Khazal Al Gaffas, Sami Mohammed and Thuraya Al Baqsami who are counted amongst the pioneers of the modern art movement not only in Kuwait but also in the Arabian Gulf region. An elevator that looks as though it has come out of a Mahmoud Hammad painting transports visitors to the first floor where Gulf, Arab and international art can be admired including the UAE's Abdul Qader Al Rais who studied in Kuwait, Lebanon's Paul Guiragossian, Syria's Nazir Nabaa and Bahrain'sJamal Abdul Rahim offering a different perspective on various issues in the Arab world. There must be at least a couple of hundred artworks showcased in this magnificent museum that has so far received scant attention from the region's media.

The Kuwait Modern Art Museum sadly offers very little explanation of the art on display and no book or audio guide, but it more than makes up for it for those who are willing to visit with an open mind and a little imagination allowing themselves to be enchanted by its unrivalled architectural, historical and artistic treasures.

Couldn't Resist

...I really couldn't.

An Isfahani in New York (1972)

An Isfahani in New York is the story of a young man (Nosratolah Vahdat) who, at the request of his father (Arham Sadr) travels to New York searching for his playboy brother to find out whether he is seriously attending school. New York is a very strange place for the young Isfahani. During and after his journey he encounters very funny and strange individuals and scenarios. 80% of the film was shot in New York and the other 20% was shot in Isfahan using real locations.

This humorous yet touching film became a great hit during the 1970’s. Even to this day it is still shown as a memorable film. The film’s cinematographer, Petros Palian, was awarded the first Persian film award in Cinematography(Sepas). The film was praised by critics such as Zane Rooz magazine and The Tehran Journal.