Art, culture and architecture

C?N U FEEL IT


It is a truism to observe that a cascade of big issues now dominates our lives and our consciousness as global citizens. This publication reflects the zeitgeist of an era – from 9/11 to COVID-19 – and tells the story through the pithy language of a protestor’s placard, the kind seen bristling over the crowds at mass protests across the world. Bridging the divide between the street and the tweet, the artist Mukesh Shah paints a thousand pictures with his created slogans, proving the extent to which words are capable of conveying the dystopian reality of this age.

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Unraveling Persuasion


Persuasion does not fit neatly into a category. It is baked into language, culture and notions of perception that have evolved over millennia and adapted to varying global contexts. It spans the purest of intents to the darkest depths of coercion and conspiracy, with differing connotations and levels of acceptance defining where one classification ends and another begins. Complex, multifaceted and contextualized, persuasion has many dimensions which overlap across a spectrum of theories and activities. This publication brings together voices and conversations from the UK, US, Qatar, Egypt, Greece, Belgium and Germany to reflect upon persuasion from a range of cultural and disciplinary perspectives. Interviews with leading academics explore the theories which underpin persuasion, while historians and creative practitioners explore its active application in publicity, advertising, typography, photography and design.

 

 

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This is the fourth publication in the Voices and Conversations series of the Media Majlis at Northwestern University in Qatar. With contributions from leading analysts and academics, this series explores and cross-examines the effects, opportunities and threats in a diverse number of areas.

First of the series

Second of the series

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The NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery: 2014-2020


When New York University Abu Dhabi opened on Saadiyat Island in 2014, it also launched The NYUAD Art Gallery, a museum-format space for scholarly, experimental, and envelope-pushing exhibitions. It has since been recognized for its growing contribution to the UAE’s cultural landscape, as museums spring up around it, including the Louvre Abu Dhabi in 2017, and more to come.

This dual-language English-Arabic publication tells the origin story of The NYUAD Art Gallery – the first of its kind in the Arabian Peninsula – giving voice to the founders and collaborators. Mariët Westermann writes about the role of exhibition-making and study of art in a university’s mission; H.E. Zaki Nusseibeh situates the arrival of The NYUAD Art Gallery in the history of the UAE’s cultural sector; while Maya Allison details the origins and development of the mission and vision for exhibition-making at NYU Abu Dhabi in the context of the UAE’s fast-changing cultural landscape.

With elegant cloth binding and slipcase, and extensive color images charting the timeline of exhibitions, this beautiful edition offers a retrospective of the Gallery’s exhibitions, book publications, and projects. Contributors include Sam Bardaouil, Guido Comis, Emily Doherty, Anthony Downey, Till Fellrath, Scott Fitzgerald, Bana Kattan, Salwa Mikdadi, H.E. Zaki Nusseibeh, Alistair Rider, Beatrix Ruf, Slavs and Tatars, and Mariët Westermann.

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Breaking News: How the Smartphone Changed Journalism


This edition of Voices and Conversations features a collection of interviews and essays from journalists, broadcasters, academics, critics, and creatives from around the world. Discussions explore the empowering, enabling and facilitation aspects of the smartphone in journalism, and hint at possible futures. This publication accompanies an exhibition that was hosted at The Media Majlis at Northwestern University in Qatar that opened in 2020. The exhibition revealed how smartphones are reshaping the practice of journalism and recasting the role of the audience. By using digital audio and visual media, physical objects, and interactive surveys, audiences could explore the opportunities, limitations and blemishes of mobile technology in relation to expanding journalistic platforms, a diminishing gap between consumers and producers of news, human behavioral shifts and technological design innovations.

 

Contributors to this edition of ‘Voices and Conversations’ are Martin Cooper, Everette E. Dennis, Rachel Davis Mersey, Richard Ling, Yusuf Omar, Corinne Podger, Rawya Rageh, Mandy Jenkins, Julia Leeb, David Guttenfelder, Hendrik Lehmann, Coleen Baik, Nat Gyenes, Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, Khalifa Saleh Al Haroon, Yasuomi Sawa, Elina Hiltunen, and James E. Katz.

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This is the third publication in the Voices and Conversations series of the Media Majlis at Northwestern University in Qatar. With contributions from leading analysts and academics, this series explores and cross-examines the effects, opportunities and threats in a diverse number of areas.

 

First of the series

Second of the series

Meissen Porcelain


This sumptuous dual-language Russian-English publication traces the history of Meissen porcelain and catalogues a very fine private collection, from vases and dishes to figurines and animals, using a design template inspired by the idea of the book as contemporary museum showcase.

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Visionaries to Vloggers: Media Revolutions in the Middle East


Social revolutions begin with an idea, the realization of which demands change. In the contemporary Middle East, the upheavals driven by revolutionary movements aiming to seize power and upend unpopular regimes have made media their accomplice. This publication depicts the multiple forms and expressions of the creative culture of dissent that are deeply embedded in Arab culture and daily life as an articulation of independence, dignity and respect, in spite of the restrictions of deep-rooted autocratic structures, before and after the 2011 uprisings.

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This is the second publication in the Voices and Conversations series of the Media Majlis at Northwestern University in Qatar. With contributions from leading analysts and academics, this series explores and cross-examines the effects, opportunities and threats in a diverse number of areas.

 

First of the series

Third of the series

Zimoun


The artwork of Swiss artist Zimoun is sculpture, music, composition, soundscape, and installation; it is minimalist, conceptual, expressive, technical, natural, open, rigid, and chaotic. The essays in this book each take different approaches to the question of how to frame, contextualize, and discuss Zimoun’s artwork, beginning with art historical framing, proceeding through music and soundscape, and finally concluding with an interview with the artist himself. There, Zimoun offers: “I like to think of my works as audible buildings that can be entered and explored as much with your ears as with your eyes.”

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This self-titled publication presents the first monograph on the nearly 25-year-long art practice of the US-Iranian artist Pouran Jinchi. Helping to reimagine the engagement of Persian calligraphy within a contemporary art discourse, this title follows a prolific career, examining work that has been exhibited across the world in solo and group presentations and produced across varied media.

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Ways of Seeing


Showcasing 26 internationally acclaimed artists and art collectives from the Gulf region and the world, and directly referencing John Berger’s seminal 1972 eponymous text on visual culture, this publication invites the viewer to actively engage with the artwork, and to explore the ways by which artists assign forms and concepts that seem familiar with renewed appearances and meanings.

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Arab Identities, Images in Film


This collection of essays and conversations sheds light on and discusses how images in films and animation have influenced identity portrayals in the Arab context. Published to accompany the first exhibition at the new Media Majlis at Northwestern University in Qatar, this beautifully crafted book discusses a spectrum of impressions and visual cues in film, both of and from the Arab world, that often unwittingly create distortions, in turn inspiring confidence or promoting stereotypes and even prejudices that have led to war or inter-regional conflicts of many kinds.

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9780995689053

Arabic edition

 

 

This is the first publication in the Voices and Conversations series of the Media Majlis at Northwestern University in Qatar. With contributions from leading analysts and academics, this series explores and cross-examines the effects, opportunities and threats in a diverse number of areas.

 

Second of the series

Third of the series

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