New Podcast – JAOU Tunis: Sultan al Qassemi talks to Chris Weaver

After the Bardo Museum attacks on tourists earlier this year, JAOU festival and symposium is more than ever set to hold its annual arts events at the Tunis museum in Tunisia. Sound artist Chris Weaver interviews founder of the Barjeel Foundation, UAE and renowned Arab affairs commentator Sultan Al Qassemi about his participation in JAOU … Continue reading →

This week’s Six Pillars – Peace From the Bottom of My Art

Is there such a thing as a justified war? “A bomb, sheathed in condoms, explodes in a childlike paradise.”(1) From Picasso to Chagall, the struggle for peace has been one that is constantly and necessarily represented in the arts; peace as something worth striving for, whose presence we must keenly endeavour to decipher in the … Continue reading →

A Shahnameh for the Digital Age

We have often covered productions and exhibitions around the Persian Book of Kings or The Shahnameh: from our show on Drinking Arak of an Ayatollah’s Beard, a novel about travelling around Iran and Afghanistan with a copy of the classic in hand, to the major Shahnameh exhibition at Cambridge’s Fitzwiliam Museum via an interview with … Continue reading →

Vice in Iran (It’s Not What You Think)

Vice Magazine brings its trademark irreverent humour to Iran and digs briefly into the film industry. “Iranians love the school of their children and the cinema” they are told. To be fair presenter, Shane Smith’s pronunciation isn’t that bad. A Canadian who’s made films for Vice looking at for example, Mexican cinema, Smith has a … Continue reading →

Shirin Season – Berlinale 2013 and The Louvre with Kiarostami

Shirin Neshat was one of the International Jury for 2013 Berlinale (the 63rd International Film Festival in Berlin) alongside actor/director Tim Robbins in February. This is a great year for Neshat, partly because she is taking part in an historic new season at the newly opened Islamic Arts Department of the world-renowned Paris Museum The … Continue reading →

Rostam in Wonderland – A Six Pillars Interview

Unusually we’ve gone text only for this interview. The animation we are discussing brings to life the Persian classical hero Rostam of The Book of Kings (Shahnameh), in the cartoon Rostam in Wonderland a collaboration between two young men one based in USA (Pouya Afshar) creator, and one in Iran (Souroush Rezaee) writer and animator. … Continue reading →

Hologram Revives Dead Singer Umm Kulthum

As was previously done with the also deceased rapper Tupac at the Coachella festival, the Arab world’s most adored diva is revived for a ‘live’ performance in front of a captive audience on NBC TV. The technology is not archive footage, nor is it found footage but an illusion projected inside a truss box. Egyptian … Continue reading →

Approached by A Quinn Flotilla

The usual open skyline, dotted with green trees flourishing on tiny islands off the main port of Venice, was suddenly filled with an astounding sight: as if materialised from a dream a large flotilla carrying a huge pair of disembodied hands playing with life-size tanks and toy soldiers appeared alongside us, unexpectedly and momentarily altering … Continue reading →