Uncommon Grounds: New Media and Critical Practices in North Africa and the Middle East

Table of contents: Introduction Anthony Downey 2011 is not 1968: An Open Letter to an Onlooker Philip Rizk
The Paradox of Media Activism: The Net is not a Tool, It's an Environment Franco Berardi Revolution Triptych Mosireen For the Common Good? Artistic Practices and Civil Society in Tunisia.
Anthony Downey Citizens Reporting and the Fabrication of Collective Memory
Jens Maier-Rothe, Dina Kafafi, Azin Feizabadi
Performing the Undead: Life and Death in Social Media and Contemporary Art Nat Muller Art's Networks: A New Communal Model Derya Yücel When the Going Gets Tough… Hamzamolnàr Potential Media The Appropriation of Images Commercial Media and Activist Practices in Egypt Today Maxa Zoller A Critical Reflection on Aesthetics and Politics in the Digital Age Dina Matar Digital, Aesthetic, Ephemeral: A Brief Look at Image and Narrative Sheyma Buali New Media and the Spectacle of the War on Terror Maymanah Farhat The Magnetic Remenances: Voice and Sound in Digital Art and Media Nermin Saybaşılı Re-Examining The Social Impulse: Politics, Media and Art after the Arab Uprisings Omar Kholeif Arab Glitch Laura U.Marks The Many Afterlives of Lulu Amal Khalaf Cardboard Khomeine: An Interrogation Annabelle Sreberny The Art of the Written Word and NewMedia Dissemnitation Across the Borders between Syria and Lebanon Tarek Khoury On Revolution and Rubbish. What has changed in Tunisia since Spring 2011 Timo Kaabi-Linke Saadiyat and the Gulf Labor Boycott Gulf Labor

In this groundbreaking book, a range of internationally renowned and emerging academics, writers, artists, curators, activists and filmmakers critically reflect on the ways in which visual culture has appropriated and developed new media across North Africa and the Middle East. Examining the opportunities presented by the real-time generation of new, relatively unregulated content online, Uncommon Grounds evaluates the prominent role that new media has come to play in artistic practices - and social movements - in the Arab world today. Analysing alternative forms of creating, broadcasting, publishing, distributing and consuming digital images, this book also enquires into a broader global concern: does new media offer a 'democratisation' of - and a productive engagement with - visual culture, or merely capitalise upon the effect of immediacy at the expense of depth?Featuring full-colour artists' inserts, this is the first book to extensively explore the degree to which the grassroots popularity of Twitter and Facebook has been co-opted into mainstream media, institutional and curatorial characterisations of 'revolution' - and whether artists should be wary of perpetuating the rhetoric and spectacle surrounding political events.
In the process, Uncommon Grounds reveals how contemporary art practices actively negotiate present-day notions of community-based activism, artistic agency and political engagement.