SanctionedArray issues a new call for video art entries focused on US sanctioned countries for a series of curated exhibitions and screenings entitled CuratorsArray. From 2011 through 2012, CuratorsArray shall focus on video art engaged specifically with the US sanctioned countries - Belarus, Cote d'Ivoire, Congo, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Myanmar/Burma and Zimbabwe. Each array is specific to each sanctioned country and shall be screened and exhibited in its origin as well as at museums and galleries around the world. New video submissions to the database should relate to these countries; this relationship is entirely self-determined. Curated selections and open call entries shall both feature in each array.
The open call for videos related to Belarus, Burma, Syria, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Cuba, Cote d'Ivoire, Congo, Somalia, Sudan, Zimbabwe and Lebanon. are now open! (SUBMISSIONS NEVER EVER END, FOR DEADLINES WE SHALL MEND!)
Submit your video entries online at www.sanctionedarray.specifyothers.com/submit
Image Courtesy: SanctionedResolution by CHOKRA, 2011
Message 02
Dear friends of SanctionedArray,
I would like to inform you that Sandra Skurvida is not associated with my project of SanctionedArray (www.sanctionedarray.specifyothers.com) or SpecifyOthers (www.specifyothers.com) as of 13 April 2011. She has been credited wherever applicable and is not assisting current or future projects at SanctionedArray or SpecifyOthers.
All correspondences and representations of my project SanctionedArray shall be communicated and mediated through me, Sidhant Bhagchandani - as sole owner of SanctionedArray (www.sanctionedarray.specifyothers.com) and SpecifyOthers (www.specifyothers.com), through the official mailing address of sanctionedarray@specifyothers.com.
Thank you for your understanding.
Sidhant Bhagchandani
Message 01
Dear friends of SanctionedArray,
As of 13 April 2011 my accounts of specifyothers@gmail.com and sanctionedarray@yahoo.com have been compromised.
All correspondences for SanctionedArray are limited to the official account of sanctionedarray@specifyothers.com
With warm wishes,
Sidhant Bhagchandani
03.Nov.2011
SanctionedArray: Curating Video Art beyond Youtube Play
By Video Vortex
The giant online video initiative “Youtube Play” is getting great attention, making it into news headlines, cultural magazines, and all over the blogosphere, including this very blog. With such a high-profile project, it’s not surprising to find a wide range of responses, some applauding Guggenheim and Youtube, while others turning a more detailed and critical eye to the specifics of the actual project.
SanctionedArray is one such project.
Put on by the collective Specify Others, SanctionedArray is a curated collection of video art placed online, with guidelines that explicitly open up the restrictions enforced during the “Youtube Play” project that excluded submissions from citizens or residents of countries sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)in the United States, which include Belarus, Cote d’Ivoire, Congo, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Myanmar/Burma and Zimbabwe.
While curating, or the selection of art works within a juried competition, is already understood and generally accepted as a practice of excluding some artworks in favour of others, the initial exclusionary eligibility criteria in the Youtube-Guggenheim “Youtube Play” collaboration raises a number of important questions: in particular, why shouldn’t artists from sanctioned countries be allowed to take part in an initiative that has been overtly expressed as a global project, particularly when Andy Berndt (Vice President, Creative Lab of Google and Youtube) expresses in a promotional video that “Any video creator, all around the world, anywhere, can nominate their work”? what does this exclusion say about not only the merit of artists who are residents or citizens of these countries, but also, who constitutes “the world”?; is the ultimate goal of this restriction to block the possibilities of circulating ideas that stem from within perceived “problematic governments”, and if so, is it not only the voices of these “problematic governments” blocked, but also the voices of people within these countries, further limiting their global presence.
Whatever the responses to these questions and others might be, one truth stands, and that is that both the amount of submissions to SanctionedArray (700) which were open to residents and citizens of all countries (OFAC sanctioned or otherwise), and the number of videos selected (100), show there is a definite creative voice to be heard from those countries. The numbers become even more significant when we take a further look at the list of countries, with places like North Korea, Myanmar or Zimbabwe, where connecting to the internet is far from trivial. At the same time, it shows the solidarity of creators from non-sanctioned countries that choose to submit their works as a way to support this initiative, and therefore give it greater importance, offering participants from sanctioned countries a deserved space to share their creations, voices, expressions and ideas.
The SanctionedArray project continues with its latest phase, CuratorsArray, which encourages invited curators to select videos through using, and expanding, the SanctionedArray database.
After all, and in spite of the restriction, perhaps a positive outcome for a number of video creators from sanctioned countries was that thanks to SanctionedArray, not only their works have a space, but attention has been drawn towards the difficulties and limitations they often experience in sharing and promoting their work through digital lines, enforced both from within their countries, and from outside in the allegedly free world.
For more information take a look at the SanctionedArray website.
Or Check the terms and conditions of Youtube Play.
Image Courtesy: Screening of INTER-VIEW by Esther Achaerandio at SanctionedArray, White Box, NY. Photo by Sidhant Bhagchandani, 2010
Article Courtesy: Video Vortex
02.Nov.2010
White Box, Black Screens
SancionedArray's interactive playlist of 100 and a curated selection of 52 videos entitled Others2Specify screen at White Box on 2nd and 3rd November 2010, New York City.
Photos by Sidhant Bhagchandani, 2010
Wafaa Bilal
Iraqi born artist Wafaa Bilal is an assistant professor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. He has exhibited and lectured world-wide, promoting awareness of the situation of the Iraqi people and stressing the importance of peaceful conflict resolution. Bilal's 2007 dynamic installation, Domestic Tension, placed him on the receiving end of a paintball gun that was accessible online to a worldwide audience, 24 hours a day. The month-long piece spurred on-line debates and intense conversations. The Chicago Tribune called it "one of the sharpest works of political art to be seen in a long time" and named him Artist of the Year in 2008. Newsweek's assessment was "breathtaking." . In the face of a war that stretches on, the 2004 deaths of his brother and father and the violence in his own history, Bilal nonetheless seeks to imbue his audiences with a sense of empowerment and hope. In fall 2008 City Lights published "Shoot an Iraqi: Art, Life and Resistance Under the Gun," about Bilal's life and the Domestic Tension project. In 2009 Booklist named it a top 10 arts books of the year. In the Spring 2010 ArtFourm named his show Agent Intellect among the best in the northeastern region. His spring 2010 project And…Counting used tattoo as a medium to represent Iraqi and American casualties in the war, creating dialogue around the invisibility of Iraqis killed in the war.
Image Courtesy: WBF by CHOKRA, 2011
Hamid Dabashi
Born on 15 June 1951 into a working class family in the south-western city of Ahvaz in the Khuzestan province of Iran, Hamid Dabashi received his early education in his hometown and his college education in Tehran, before he moved to the United States, where he received a dual Ph.D. in Sociology of Culture and Islamic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University.
He wrote his doctoral dissertation on Max Weber’s theory of charismatic authority with Philip Rieff (1922-2006), the most distinguished Freudian cultural critic of his time.
He is currently the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York, the oldest and most prestigious Chair in his field. He has also taught and delivered lectures in many North American, European, Arab and Iranian universities.
Professor Dabashi has written 20 books, edited 4, and contributed chapters to many more. He is also the author of over 100 essays, articles and book reviews in major scholarly and peer reviewed journals on subjects ranging from Iranian Studies, medieval and modern Islam, comparative literature, world cinema, and the philosophy of art (trans-aesthetics). A selected sample of his writing is co-edited by Andrew Davison and Himadeep Muppidi, The World is my Home: A Hamid Dabashi Reader(Transaction 2010).
An internationally renowned cultural critic and award-winning author, his books and articles have been translated into numerous languages, including Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Hebrew, Danish, Arabic, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Polish, Turkish, Urdu and Catalan.
In the context of his commitment to advancing trans-national art and independent world cinema, Professor Dabashi is the founder of Dreams of a Nation, a Palestinian Film Project, dedicated to preserving and safeguarding Palestinian Cinema. He is also chiefly responsible for opening up the study of Persian literature and Iranian culture at Columbia University to students of comparative literature and society, breaking away from the confinements of European Orientalism and American Area Studies.
A committed teacher in the past three decades, Professor Dabashi is also a public speaker around the globe, a current affairs essayist, and a staunch anti-war activist. He has two grown-up children, Kaveh and Pardis, who are both Columbia University graduates, and he lives in New York with his wife and colleague, the Iranian-Swedish feminist, Golbarg Bashi, their daughter Chelgis and their son Golchin.
Image Courtesy: EkDabashiDoDabashi by CHOKRA, 2011
Shayana Kadidal
Shayana Kadidal is senior managing attorney of the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City. He is a graduate of the Yale Law School and a former law clerk to Judge Kermit Lipez of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. In his eight years at the Center, he has worked on a number of significant cases in the wake of 9/11, including the Center's challenges to the detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay (among them torture victim Mohammed al Qahtani and former CIA ghost detainee Majid Khan), which have twice reached the Supreme Court, and several cases arising out of the post-9/11 domestic immigration sweeps. He is also counsel in CCR's legal challenges to the "material support" statute (decided by the Supreme Court last term), to the low rates of black firefighter hiring in New York City, and to the NSA's warrantless surveillance program.
Image Courtesy: SuitCase by CHOKRA, 2011
Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga approaches art as a social practice that seeks to establish dialogue in public spaces. Having been born of immigrant parents and grown up between Nicaragua and San Francisco, a strong awareness of inequality and discrimination was established at an early age. Themes such as immigration, discrimination, gentrification and the effects of globalization extend from highly subjective experiences and observations into works that tactfully engage others through populist metaphors while maintaining critical perspectives. Ricardo has established a socially investigative creative practice that utilizes whatever media possible to present content in a manner that may generate interaction and discussion by others. Ricardo has a Masters of Fine Arts from Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelor of Arts in Practice of Art and English Literature from the University of California at Berkeley. He is based in Brooklyn, NY and is an Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at CUNY Hunter.
Ricardo’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Recent exhibitions include:
Portables, 2010, Museo de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile; RETRO-TECH, 2010, San Jose Museum of Art; Return to Function, 2009 Madison Museum of Contemporary Art; Im_polis, 2007, Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City; Russia: Significant Other, 2006, The National Center for Contemporary Art, St. Petersburg, Russia; FALLOUT: What’s Left, 2005/06 Momenta Art, Brooklyn, NY, USA; inSite_05: Tijuana Calling; Time Shift Ars Electronica 2004, Linz, Austria; Digitafogia, tactical media festival at Museum of Image and Sound, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Counter Culture at The New Museum of Contemporary Art, NYC; artport, gatepage web initiative of the Whitney Museum.
Ricardo has also been awarded several awards and honors including a 2008 Eyebeam Artist in Residence, New York Foundation for the Arts 2007 Fellowship, Tides Foundation Lambent Fellowship (2006-2009), Turbulence Commission, New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. Commission (2004); Future of the Present Artist Fellowship from Franklin Furnace (2003); Artist in Residence at Harvestworks Media Center (2002); Electronic Media and Film Program, New York State Artists Grant Award (2003).
Image Courtesy: Meranda by CHOKRA, 2011
BigscreenProject
25th October 2010, 4:30-9 pm: Launch of SanctionedArray and reception, BIG SCREEN PROJECT, 6th Avenue and 29th Street, New York City
CHANGE OF PROGRAM
November 2nd 2010, 6-10 pm, and November 3rd 2010, 11-7 pm: interactive screening of 100 jury-selected videos, WHITE BOX, 329 Broome Street, New York City
November 2nd 2010 at 7 pm SanctionedArray roundtable discussion at WHITE BOX, 329 Broome Street, New York City
SanctionedArray is an online database of video art conceived in response to the restrictions of artists' submissions to The Guggenheim Museum's and YouTube's video biennial, Play (www.youtube.com/play). Artists' submissions to Play were limited by OFAC sanctions (www.ustreas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/programs/) - citizens or residents of Belarus, Cote d'Ivoire, Congo, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Myanmar/Burma and Zimbabwe were not eligible to submit their work. We maintain that the application of OFAC sanctions to virtual transmissions of video art perpetuates the conditions that led to the imposition of these sanctions. In protest to the continuity of such restrictions, artists of any origin - including those from the sanctioned countries – were invited to submit their work to SanctionedArray in an open call for video entries that endede October 22nd. Submission guidelines to SanctionedArray followed online video formats proposed by YouTube and The Guggenheim, except for Eligibility 1.d. (www.sites.google.com/site/ytplayterms/all).
SpecifyOthers are pleased to announce CuratorsArray, an ongoing series of video exhibitions and screenings by invited curators utilizing and expanding SanctionedArray database, to be presented at museums and galleries around the world and online. The first iteration of CuratorsArray is Others2Specify, a playlist of 52 videos curated from the first call for submissions to SanctionedArray. It was first presented at Big Screen Project, 6th Avenue and 29th Street, New York City on October 25th, 2010 (http://www.bigscreenproject.org/), and will be screened again at WHITE BOX on November 2nd, 6-10 pm and November 3rd, 11-7 pm .
One hundred of the most notable and varied video entries will be selected for the SanctionedArray online database and announced on November 2nd on www.sanctionedarray.specifyothers.com. An interactive screening of all 100 SanctionedArray’s selected entries will be held on November 2nd from 12 to 10 pm and November 3rd from 11 to 7 pm at WHITE BOX, 329 Broome Street, New York City, with a roundtable November 2nd at 7 pm, including Wafaa Bilal, artist; Hamid Dabashi, author and professor, Columbia University; Shayana Kadidal, attorney, Center for Constitutional Rights; and Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga, artist. SanctionedArray events shall coincide with Play biennial at The Guggenheim New York, extending representation of video entries considered not eligible by Origin, by YouTube and The Guggenheim, and challenging a status quo.
At SanctionedArray, we look forward to having "everybody play."
SpecifyOthers, New York City & United Arab Emirates (www.specifyothers.com) in collaboration with WHITE BOX, New York (www.whiteboxny.org) and co-presented by ArteEast (www.arteeast.org).
