Lecture Series

“Politics and the Visual in the Middle East and North Africa since the Arab Uprisings”

Institute for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Societies (ISNO), University of Bern

From 15 March to 31 May 2022, 4:15-6 pm

 

The Arab uprisings, the Gezi Protests in Turkey and the Green Movement in Iran have been accompanied by an upsurge of cultural manifestations of meaning-making and dissent. Numerous songs, novels, movies, graffities, and memes have been produced, whereas par- ticularly visual expressions have become iconic. These moments of creativity underscore that these processes of upheaval cannot be contextualized thoroughly by focusing only on formal political trajectories. Instead, artistic productions will provide a more profound picture of values, aims, narratives, images, and icons which mattered to individuals and societies.
In this lecture series we will explore in detail this diversity of creative manifestations which has been produced in the last decade in the Middle East and North Africa by focusing on the interaction between the visual and the political.
The lecture series is open to the public and will be streamed entirely via Zoom or take place on-site at the University of Bern with the option of joining it online.

Don't miss the lectures of our Manazir members – Silvia Naef (Unige) and Nadia Radwan (Unibe) – as well as other lecturers and the lecture by the incredible artist Huda Lutfi who made this visual.

On-site: Room: F 023, Unitobler, Lerchenweg 36, 3012 Bern

and online via Zoom: https://unibe-ch.zoom.us/j/64258263868

Full information on the flyer, here.

 

15.03.2022 - Politics and the Visual in the Middle East and North Africa since the Arab Uprisings: An Introduction into the field - Ali Sonay (University of Bern)

29.03.2022 - Narrating the recent past of modern Turkey through popular media - Lea Nocera (University of Naples "L'Orientale")

12.04.2022 - TBA - Mohamed Anwar (CORRECTIV, Berlin)

26.04.2022 - Unleashing the Arabesque. The Politics of Abstraction and the Ornament in the Middle East - Nadia Radwan (University of Bern)

03.05.2022 - The Politics of the Visual in Contemporary Egyptian Literature - Teresa Pepe (University of Oslo)

17.05.2022 - What’s left? Activist artists a decade after thawra - Silvia Naef (University of Geneva)

31.05.2022 - Cut and Paste: An Archive of Absences - Huda Lutfi (Gender historian and visual artist, Cairo)