'Art in Iraq Today' Opening in Beirut Exhibition Center // Meem Gallery
Art in Iraq Today, organized and curated by Dia Al-Azzawi, Solidere, Charles Pocock of Meem Gallery and Rula Alami Zaki, brings together the works of a group of Iraqi artists with varying working methodologies, whom are united in their experience of exile. One of the major aims of this project is to highlight the enduring talent of contemporary Iraqi artists despite the circumstances that have forced them to relocate to various parts of the globe. Seeing that the artists included in this exhibition spent their formative years in Iraq, and have been profoundly shaped by such experiences, their work carries within it, along with their experience of exile, traces of what contemporary art in Iraq might have been today. Art in Iraq Today should therefore be seen as more emblematic than literal in its message. The title also needs to be understood in the context of the project's inception, which is dedicated to the memory of pre-eminent art critic Jabra Ibrahim Jabra and his seminal essay about modern Iraqi art, titled 'Art in Iraq Today' (1961). The exhibition series and corresponding publication, Art in Iraq Today (published by Skira and Meem Editions, sponsored by Crescent Petroleum), marks the fiftieth anniversary of Jabra's scholarly contribution, which was initiated in a different era, when Iraq was a very different country.
Presently, nothing in Iraq remains that can relate to the movements established by the modern art pioneers and the legacies of the Pioneers Group, Baghdad Group of Modern Art, New Vision Group, and what was expressed in Jabra Ibrahim Jabra's essay. All this can only be found in the work of displaced artists; it remains alive in their hearts and minds, wherever they may reside. What we hope to demonstrate through this project is that Iraq's modern cultural legacy lives on ideologically. Indeed, the history of modern Iraqi art, as documented in Jabra's essays, lives and breathes in the artists and the works that comprise this exhibition.
The exhibition was first launched at Meem Gallery, Dubai, as a five-part series, from October 2010 -- May 2011. The display includes works by Modhir Ahmed, Himat M. Ali, Dia Al-Azzawi, Ahmed Al-Bahrani, Amar Dawod, Ghassan Ghaib, Ali Jabbar, Halim Al-Karim, Nedim Kufi, Hanaa Malallah, Rafa Al-Nasiri, Mahmoud Obaidi, Kareem Risan, Delair Shaker, Ali Talib, and Nazar Yahya.
Evgenia Arbugaeva Interview: Returning to my Childhood
It was the moment when the Arctic was sleeping. But it will wake up again. Meet the young Siberian photographer Evgenia Arbugaeva in this interview about her project Tiksi, nostalgic postcards from the imagination of a young girl.
Is it possible to return to childhood? As a girl, Evgenia Arbugaeva (b. 1985) grew up in the Siberian town of Tiksi, which she then had to leave when she was just 8 years old. 18 years later she returned to search for the landscape of her childhood, where she had been as happy as never again, she says. It seemed like a fairy tale, but it was reality. The light, the scenery, the colors, and the moments of pure childhood imagination.
What started out as a personal trip, then developed into a photographic project. Evgenia Arbugaeva met the girl Tanya, that reminded her of herself as a young girl. Tanyas life and family became the personification of the past.
Tiksi though is much more than the personal hunt for a lost childhood. Since 1991, the year, Evgenia Arbugaeva and her family left the town of Tiksi, the Russian Arctic has changed dramatically. Once a symbol of Soviet ambition to conquer the arctic, the town of Tiksi today is nearly abandoned, the number of inhabitants has been reduced from 12.000 to 4.000. Tiksi thus also becomes a symbol of the decline of the Russian arctic, sharing that fate with many small town in the arctic region. The reality of the place is pretty sad, Arbugaeva states and reflects about her own images being almost too sweet and too naive a representation of reality. But this one time it is all right, she adds: I wanted to document the place from the perspective of a young girl, being unaware of the big politics around her.
Russian Evgenia Arbugaeva (b.1985) graduated from the International Center of Photography in New York in 2009. In 2012 she received the Bright Spark award in the Magenta Foundation's Flash Forward Competition for emerging photographers, and a Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund Grant. In 2013 she was named one of the award winning magazine Photo District National's 30 New and Emerging Photographers to Watch and she won the Leica Oskar Barnack Award at the Rencontres International de la Photographie festival in Arles, France.
Evgenia Arbugaeva was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner. Her series Tiksi is part of the exhibition ARCTIC at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.
Photography by Mathias Nyholm
Editing by Kamilla Bruus
Produced by Marc-Christoph Wagner
Music by Björk
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, 2013
Supported by Nordea-fonden
9 Russian Songs You´ve Heard And Don´t Know The Name
I played 9 Russian Songs that you´ve heard and don´t know the name. In fact, no on e knows their names. Learn on this video!
Be a Member of My Channel!
Dschinghis Khan & Jay Khan - Moskau, Москва, Moscú, Moscow (Internationale Version)
STREAM/DOWNLOAD ►
Watch the official german version ►
Moscow Moscow (The football-song for the World Cup)
The ultimate worldwide comeback of the group “Dschinghis Khan (Genghis Khan) with a completely new version of the evergreen Moscow.
For the Football World Cup 2018 in Russia, the title composed by Ralph Siegel, was given new lyrics and produced in four different languages by Siegel.
As special featuring Artists was signed the US 5 star Jay Khan for the English and German Version, for the Russian Version the international Superstar Alexander Malinin and his daughter Ustinya and for the Spanish Version the Mexican Tenor Jorge Jiménez and his wife Marifer Medrano.
All versions - now available von YouTube:
► German - 'Moskau Moskau':
► English - 'Moscow Moscow':
► Russian - 'Москва':
► Spanish - 'Moscú':
------------------------------------------
Artists:
Dschinghis Khan, Jay Khan, Alexander Malinin, Unstinya Malinina, Jorge Jiménez & Marifer Medrano
-------------------------------------------
Thanks 2: Mareike Förtsch, Veronika Jarzombek, Patrick Hellmann Schlosshotel, ASeven Club, Sportfreunde Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf 03 e.V., Bezirksamt Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf - Fachbereich Sportförderung, Andrew Efimov
MarArt Studio Мюзик фестиваль Ararat Valley Country Club:
Gulag | Wikipedia audio article
This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
Gulag
Listening is a more natural way of learning, when compared to reading. Written language only began at around 3200 BC, but spoken language has existed long ago.
Learning by listening is a great way to:
- increases imagination and understanding
- improves your listening skills
- improves your own spoken accent
- learn while on the move
- reduce eye strain
Now learn the vast amount of general knowledge available on Wikipedia through audio (audio article). You could even learn subconsciously by playing the audio while you are sleeping! If you are planning to listen a lot, you could try using a bone conduction headphone, or a standard speaker instead of an earphone.
You can find other Wikipedia audio articles too at:
You can upload your own Wikipedia articles through:
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
- Socrates
SUMMARY
=======
The Gulag (, UK also ; Russian: ГУЛаг [ɡʊˈlak] (listen), acronym of Main Administration of Camps) was the government agency in charge of the Soviet forced labor camp system that was created under Vladimir Lenin and reached its peak during Joseph Stalin's rule from the 1930s to the 1950s. The term is also commonly used in the English language to refer to any forced-labor camp in the Soviet Union, including camps which existed in post-Stalin times. The camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners. Large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of extrajudicial punishment. The Gulag is recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union.
The agency was first administered by the GPU, later by the NKVD and in the final years by the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). The Solovki prison camp, the first corrective labor camp constructed after the revolution, was established in 1918 and legalized by a decree On the creation of the forced-labor camps on April 15, 1919. The internment system grew rapidly, reaching a population of 100,000 in the 1920s. According to Nicolas Werth, author of The Black Book of Communism, the yearly mortality rate in the Soviet concentration camps strongly varied reaching 5% (1933) and 20% (1942–1943) while dropping considerably in the post-war years at about 1–3% per year at the beginning of the 1950s. The emergent consensus among scholars who utilize official archival data is that of the 18 million who were sent to the Gulag from 1930 to 1953, roughly 1.5 to 1.7 million perished there or as a result of their detention. However, some historians who question the reliability of such data and instead rely heavily on literary sources come to higher estimations. Archival researchers have found no plan of destruction of the gulag population and no statement of official intent to kill them, and prisoner releases vastly exceeded the number of deaths in the Gulag.Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, who survived eight years of Gulag incarceration, gave the term its international repute with the publication of The Gulag Archipelago in 1973. The author likened the scattered camps to a chain of islands and as an eyewitness he described the Gulag as a system where people were worked to death. Some scholars support this view, though this claim is controversial, given that the vast majority of people who entered the Gulag came out alive, with the exception of the war years. Although one writer, citing pre-1991 materials, claims that most prisoners in the gulag were killed, Natalya Reshetovskaya, the wife of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, said in her memoirs that The Gulag Archipelago was based on campfire folklore as opposed to objective facts. Similarly, historian Stephen G. Wheatcroft asserts that it is essentially a literary and political work. Numerous other accounts from survivors state otherwise and the Mitrokhin Archive claimed that Mrs. Solzhenitsyn's memoirs were part of a KGB campaign, orchestrated by Yuri Andropov in 1974, to discredit Solzhenitsyn. However, this archive itself has its veracity in doubt; among other, more practical issues, by the same token with which Vasili Mitrokhin claimed the Soviet government would obviously be interested in discrediting Solzhenitsyn, Western governments would have as much interest in lending him credence.
In March 1940, there were 53 Gulag camp directorates (colloquially referred to as simply camps) and 423 labor colonies in the Soviet Union. Today's major industrial cities of the Russian Arctic, such as Norilsk, Vorkuta and Magadan, were originally camps built by prisoners and run by ex-prisoners.