"We cannot experience a cultural product if we don't understand the forces that affect its practice," says Mohammed Abdullah, a 39-year-old artist and curator who was born in Iraq and is now based in the Netherlands.

"Over the past three decades - an era marked by political upheaval, dictatorship, war, embargo, and exile - Iraqi intellectuals have had to practice (a) culture of necessity and survival."

The Daily Star, a Lebanese daily, describes In-Betweenity, a project that was launched earlier this summer - literally in cyberspace, as a bilingual website that will eventually develop into a concrete exhibition at the Witte de With, a contemporary art center in Rotterdam, in 2005. The title indicates "a hypothetical terrain," a space in between. According to Abdullah, the Arabic term baen baen emerged as "a diagnosis of Iraqi intellectuals' status in homeland and exile."

There are plans to the bring the exhibition - which will include visual art, architecture, film, poetry, music and more - to additional institutions in Europe, though nothing has yet been determined. In the meantime, Abdullah is seeking out proposals from contemporary Iraqi artists, wherever they may be, to present their work on the site (www.in-betweenity.com) as a sort of cultural dialogue and artistic exchange. The applications and "self-presentation" forms are available online, and Abdullah is drawing on his own network of contacts to publicize the project.

Categorie(s)/Catégorie(s): Iraq , Tech and Web

Feedback/Réaction(s): TrackBack & pings(0) | Comments/Commentaires(0) | Referring Web Pages, last 5 days