Future Imperfect: Contemporary Art Practices and Cultural Institutions in the Middle East
Downey, Anthony (2016) Future Imperfect: Contemporary Art Practices and Cultural Institutions in the Middle East. Visual Culture in the Middle East, 03 . Sternberg Press, Berlin, Germany. ISBN 978-3-95679-246-5
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Future Imperfect: Contemporary Art Practices and Cultural Institutions in the Middle East examines the role played by cultural institutions in producing present-day and future contexts for the production, dissemination, and reception of contemporary art in the Middle East and North Africa. It provides critical contexts for a discussion that has become increasingly urgent in recent years—the role of culture in a time of conflict and globalization—and critiques the historical state of cultural institutions in an age of political upheaval, social unrest, exuberant cultural activity, ascendant neoliberal forms of privatization, social activism, and regional uncertainty.
Future Imperfect draws attention to the ongoing demands and antagonisms that have affected cultural production across the region, in both historical and recent post-revolutionary contexts. In doing so, the book offers an in-depth discussion of how cultural producers have developed alternative institutional models to negotiate the constraints placed on their practices. How cultural institutions operate within the conditions of a global cultural economy, and alongside the often conflicting demands they place on cultural production in the region, is likewise an overarching point of reference throughout this volume.
While the politics of contemporary cultural production and institutional practices in the Middle East can tell us a great deal about local and regional concerns, one of the cornerstone ambitions of this volume is to inquire into what they can also impart about the politics of global cultural production. This involves exploring the multiple ways in which contemporary art practices are being reduced, willingly or otherwise, to the logic of global capital. What is needed in terms of infrastructure for cultural production today and how can we speculatively propose new infrastructures and institutions in the context of current realities?
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