avantcaire » dxb

repost repose | dxb graffiti.

ra — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 21:06:34 +0000

museum me in the uae.

ra — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 01:12:36 +0000

Dear friends and fellow residents of the UAE,

Museum ME is a fantastic community art project that I think you would be interested in. What is your story of the city read like? Are you an old-timer (like me) or fresh off the plane? Why don’t you help write the history the UAE through 100 objects. Details are in the attachment, and the deadline is October 1st. If you have any more questions, feel free to get in touch on museumuae@thejamjardubai.com

Get involved!

refuse. [architectural tales of five cities] @storefrontnyc

ra — Sun, 09 May 2010 03:14:31 +0000

refuge, five cities ::: photography exhibition by bas princen

Refuge, Princen’s most recent project, could be described as a photographic fiction of sorts. Although it is the result of extensive travels and research in five cities of the Middle East and Turkey – Istanbul, Beirut, Amman, Cairo and Dubai – it could just as easily pass as the pictorial record of a drive through a single, imaginary city: a city without a center, populated by extraordinary and at times implausible architectural artifacts; an urban laboratory whose physical traits are defined by migratory flows, spatial transformation and geopolitical flux on a continental scale.

An architect by training, Princen has for many years used photography as a tool to observe, record and interpret the contemporary landscape. His photographs – themselves unmanipulated representations of reality – invite the viewer to construct an imaginary landscape that lies beyond the frame, outside the limits of the viewfinder.

Refuge is not, however, an exercise in abstraction. It is a documentation of the spatial products of refuge, ranging from migrant worker camps to gated satellite cities in the desert or the frequent proximity between abject poverty and extreme wealth, that at the same time sidesteps the cliches and the iconic emblems of segregation and seclusion. Starting from its peripheries, Princen’s photographs conduct the viewer through a cityscape that is both familiar and remote, ominous and beautiful.

OPENING: TUESDAY, MAY 11, 7PM @ storefront for art and architecture

stillborn. art censorship in dubai. [empty quarter | difc]

ra — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 16:59:18 +0000

my dubai eyes and ears writes:

Thought this might be perfect for avantcaire. Empty Quarter sent out this email invite, then sent a retraction an hour later…

“]

doha museum of islamic art. [iwan baan]

ra — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 01:36:46 +0000

seeing as how iwan baan has crossed my path twice in two days:

he showed a beautiful shot of burj ~~dubai~~ khalifa at pecha kucha over the weekend. go seek.

PechaKucha for Haiti, biggest distributed conference with smallest ecological footprint, raises money for Architecture for Humanity (treehugger.com)
Designers and architects brainstorm Haiti’s future (theworld.org)
A striking image of downtown Dubai (robertg69.wordpress.com)

dj/rupture [nettle] remakes the shining soundtrack set in dubai.

ra — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 02:41:25 +0000

the next nettle lp is the soundtrack to a re-imagined kubrik or stephen king‘s the shining set in dubai.

here’s a very fuzzy jayce talking to geoff manaugh about the project at the recent BLDGBLOG book launch at storefront architecture.

dubai dust to dust [james clar]

ra — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:38:37 +0000

super dubai talent james clar (part of the traffic clique – as anyone who’s doing anything of interest in dubai these days seems to be) emailed a few days ago:

Dear Friends,

If you’re on your way to work this morning heading from the Marina to Emirates Towers you might see some small words on your right side.

Noticing how dusty the construction gauze along the highway has become, I used cloth and water were used to wipe away the words “Dust to Dust”.

(photo-documentation by Mohamed Somji)

A simple non-destructive art installation. Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust. Nothing lasts forever. Soon these words will disappear too. The medium is the message.

i glimpsed the piece (aptly on my way back from traffic) and read it as a meditation on dubai’s current existential crisis. a common phrase i hear repeated by locals goes something like ‘we survived with dates and camels up until a generation ago and we’re quite prepared to do so again‘. whether or not the sentiment is a sign of strength or delusional defeatist denial is open to interpretation. whatever it means, i hope this sparks more guerilla street art, FRES has had that canvas to himself for too long.

more images here. it’s all reminded me of kevin kelly’s fossilized dubai image.

passover in dubai.

ra — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 05:00:41 +0000

the greatest thing about dubai has always been its rich mix of cultures, nationalities and religions. the day after i got back from zanzibar my sis and i went out for breakfast at a new friend’s bakery.

she came over to us excitedly as soon as we’d ordered. this place is incredible she starts. she’s jewish, she explains, and a few months ago she met a jewish family who advise the royal family in dubai. they had bumbed into each other a few days earlier at a shopping mall where the jewish family had just bought matzo! from the organic foods marke! they invited her to passover seder at their place where she mingled with locals, jews, arabs and other dubai expatriate tribes while the haggadah was read out.

we still have a long way to go in dubai towards being a truly accepting, inclusive society (recognizing israel would be a nice first step) but the dubai society is as usual two steps ahead of the silly political grandstanding.

So You Think You Know Matzo? (time.com)
Gossip Girl ‘Seder Anything’ spoiler video: Chuck and Serena (gossipgirlreport.com)

diff 08 ii. [river people]

ra — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 09:43:00 +0000

it’s telling that he jianjun‘s documentary’s credits roll bills the characters by their real life nick-names (that they use on screen) as well as crediting a screenwriter. the formally inventive blurring of fact and fiction in river people is much more overt than in most docs but although scripted is based on reality. shot over 3 years, in a mostly muddy palette of browns, the crew became an extended part of the fishing family that is dealing with over-fished rivers, kids wanting to leave for the city all at a hypnotically drawn out pace.

there is that very chinese poetically ambivalent concern for the unknowable consequences of uncontrollable, unstoppable, hyper-development.

scored by zhang yi. another best of diff08 highlight.

diff 08 i. one man village.

ra — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 13:49:57 +0000

simone el habre’s highly personal film about semaan, his highly unconventional uncle is set and beautifully shot (in HD-CAM) in the lebanese mountains (ain el hazaroun). it’s a poignant, lyrical, poetic, beautifullyl lit ‘family home video’ radically reinvented for a digital age.

semaan’s magnetic pull contributes greatly to the power of one man village but it is simone’s tender approach to his subject that makes the masterfully crafted documentary what it is. a singular vision of singular world where semaan who hogs the screen for most of the film, runs a one man farm and treats his animals as surrogate family members.

there’s a particulalry memorable scene where semaan is embarrassed when asked about love and his love life (he’ll marry when he’s finished building the bathroom he says fobbing the question) that brings to fore the fascinating insider-outsider status of the filmmakers and subject. this sincere almost-invisible filmed familial familarity is undeniably a prime factor in the doc’s success. it will be interesting to see how / what simone follows this up with.

filmed over three years one man village is an example of a new type of digital technology enabled film making that i think will be a major trend in the coming decades: enabling (increasingly well-crafted) minor (but of immense artistic merit), personal film projects (but with a global niche market).

at the post-screening q&a simone discussed briefly how he started making the film and then traveled to diff where he secured further funding (via dubai film connection) to complete it- great to see diff following through on its initial promise to create these types of opportunities for burgeoning filmmakers.

one of the 2008 dubai film festival‘s highlights.