Monira Al Qadiri's sculpture and film works show how the oil industry affects the Arabian Gulf In Empire Dye, Berlin-based Kuwaiti artist and filmmaker Monira Al Qadiri (born 1983) investigates the implications of the oil industry on the Gulf region in her sculpture and film works--including drill bits made from pearls and videos examining connections between the fossil fuel and pearl-diving industries.

Future Imperfect critically 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 offers 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 an in-depth critique of 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. Based on collective input from numerous contributors and interlocutors, this volume brings together internationally renowned academics, critics, activists, filmmakers, artists, and other independent cultural practitioners to consider how new infrastructures and institutions can effectively emerge within such fraught and dynamic contexts.

When Madian Al Jazerah came out to his Arab parents, his mother had one question. 'Are you this?' she asked, cupping her hand. 'Or are you this?' she motioned with a poking finger. If you're the poker, she said, you aren't a homosexual.For Madian, this opposition reveals not who he is, but patriarchy, power, and society's efforts to fit us into neat boxes. He is Palestinian, but wasn't raised in Palestine. He is Kuwaiti-born, but not Kuwaiti. He's British-educated, but not a Westerner. He's a Muslim, but can't embrace the Islam of today. He's a gay man, out of the closet but still living in the shadows: he has left Jordan, his home, three times in fear of his life.Madian has searched for acceptance and belonging around the world, joining new communities in San Francisco, New York, Hawaii and Tunisia, yet always finding himself pulled back to Amman. This frank and moving memoir narrates his battles with adversity, racism and homophobia, and a rich life lived with humour, dignity and grace.

The effect of immigration on individual lives is not short lived. Those who stay in an adopted country permanently go through a continual process of adjustment and learning both about their new country-and about themselves. The four women profiled in Carol Kelley's poignant "Accidental Immigrants and the Search for Home" challenge immigrant stereotypes as their lives are transformed by moving to new countries for reasons of marriage, education, or career--not economics or politics. The intimate stories of these accidental immigrants broaden conventional notions of home. From a Maori woman who moves to Norway to the daughter of an Iranian diplomat now living in France, Kelley weaves together these stories of the personal and emotional effects of immigration with interdisciplinary discussions drawn from anthropology and psychology. Ultimately, she reveals how the lifelong process of immigration affects each woman's sense of identity and belonging and contributes to better understanding today's globalized society. a

Dhooleka S. Raj explores the complexities of ethnic minority cultural change in this incisive examination of first- and second-generation middle-class South Asian families living in London. Challenging prevalent understandings of ethnicity that equate community, culture, and identity, Raj considers how transnational ethnic minorities are circumscribed by nostalgia for culture. Where Are You From? argues that the nostalgia for culture obscures the complexities of change in migrant minority lives and limits the ways the politics of diversity can be imagined by the nation. Based on ethnographic research with Indian migrants and their children, this book examines how categories of identity, culture, community, and nation are negotiated and often equated.

The contrast between Kuwait and the UAE today illustrates the vastly different possible futures facing the smaller states of the Gulf. Dubai's rulers dream of creating a truly global business center, a megalopolis of many millions attracting immigrants in great waves from near and far. Kuwait, meanwhile, has the most spirited and influential parliament in any of the oil-rich Gulf monarchies. In The Wages of Oil, Michael Herb provides a robust framework for thinking about the future of the Gulf monarchies. The Gulf has seen enormous changes in recent years, and more are to come. Herb explains the nature of the changes we are likely to see in the future. He starts by asking why Kuwait is far ahead of all other Gulf monarchies in terms of political liberalization, but behind all of them in its efforts to diversify its economy away from oil. He compares Kuwait with the United Arab Emirates, which lacks Kuwait?s parliament but has moved ambitiously to diversify. This data-rich book reflects the importance of both politics and economic development issues for decision-makers in the Gulf. Herb develops a political economy of the Gulf that ties together a variety of issues usually treated separately: Kuwait's National Assembly, Dubai's real estate boom, the paucity of citizen labor in the private sector, class divisions among citizens, the caste divide between citizens and noncitizens, and the politics of land.

After the discovery of oil in the 1930s, the Gulf monarchies--Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Bahrain--went from being among the world's poorest and most isolated places to some of its most ostentatiously wealthy. To maintain support, the ruling sheikhs provide their subjects with boundless cheap energy, unwittingly leading to some of the highest consumption rates on earth. Today, as summertime temperatures set new records, the Gulf's rulers find themselves caught in a dilemma: can they curb their profligacy without jeopardizing the survival of some of the world's last absolute monarchies? In Energy Kingdoms, Jim Krane takes readers inside these monarchies to consider their conundrum. He traces the history of the Gulf states' energy use and policies, looking in particular at how energy subsidies have distorted demand. Oil exports are the lifeblood of their political-economic systems--and the basis of their strategic importance--but domestic consumption has begun eating into exports while climate change threatens to render their desert region uninhabitable. At risk are the sheikhdoms' way of life, their relations with their Western protectors, and their political stability in a chaotic region. Backed by rich fieldwork and deep knowledge of the region, Krane expertly lays out the hard choices that Gulf leaders face to keep their states viable.

"An excellent study of U.S. policy on creating and maintaining a state of energy security."--Hafeez Malik, Villanova University The United States is the world's largest oil consumer and importer. Here Gawdat Bahgat examines the nation's growing dependence on fossil fuels--particularly oil--and the main challenges it faces in securing supplies from two energy-rich regions, the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. He argues that long-term U.S. energy strategy must be built on diversity of both the fuel mix and the geographic origin of that fuel. It should include a broad combination of measures that would stimulate domestic production, provide incentives for conservation, promote clean technologies, and eliminate political barriers to world markets. Bahgat also contends, however, that the goal should not be energy independence, but finding new ways of managing dependence on oil supplies from abroad. He maintains that despite increasing reservoirs of oil and natural gas throughout the world, including the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf will continue to be the main source of U.S. fossil fuel. Bahgat analyzes both recent and historical challenges to the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer and exporter, including the Arab-Israeli peace process. He also discusses the hostility between the United States and Iraq and the tense relationship between the United States and Iran, including such sensitive topics as the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism, as well as developments in the wake of September 11, 2001. In his assessment of the underdeveloped Caspian Sea reservoir, Bahgat suggests that energy experts and policy makers have exaggerated the region's potential, citing logistical, economic, and political obstacles that must be overcome before the region plays a major role in producing fossil fuels. These obstacles include domestic ethnic divisions, disputes over the legal status of the Caspian, disagreements over the most cost-effective transportation routes, and changes in the region in the aftermath of the war on terrorism. Gawdat Bahgat, director of the Center of Middle Eastern Studies at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, is the author of The Gulf Monarchies: New Economic and Political Realities; The Future of the Gulf; and The Persian Gulf at the Dawn of the New Millennium.

As the first Gulf city to experience oil urbanization, Kuwait City's transformation in the mid-twentieth century inaugurated a now-familiar regional narrative: a small traditional town of mudbrick courtyard houses and plentiful foot traffic transformed into a modern city with marble-fronted buildings, vast suburbs, and wide highways. In Kuwait Transformed, Farah Al-Nakib connects the city's past and present, from its settlement in 1716 to the twenty-first century, through the bridge of oil discovery. She traces the relationships between the urban landscape, patterns and practices of everyday life, and social behaviors and relations in Kuwait. The history that emerges reveals how decades of urban planning, suburbanization, and privatization have eroded an open, tolerant society and given rise to the insularity, xenophobia, and divisiveness that characterize Kuwaiti social relations today. The book makes a call for a restoration of the city that modern planning eliminated. But this is not simply a case of nostalgia for a lost landscape, lifestyle, or community. It is a claim for a "right to the city"--the right of all inhabitants to shape and use the spaces of their city to meet their own needs and desires.

This book is an analysis of how oil has affected governance and human, political, and economic development in the countries of the Persian Gulf and shaped these countries' relations with the rest of the world.

Film and Video Art is an exciting, comprehensive volume that traces the history of artists' involvement with the moving image from the earliest experiments with film to the latest digital and video streaming techniques on the Internet. Accompanied by striking imagery, leading international critics discuss major developments in the unfolding dialogue between artists and moving image media. Starting with the work of the Lumiere brothers in the late 19th century and progressing through the Surrealist, Dadaist, Russian Constructivist, and Pop Art movements to the prominence of documentary in recent contemporary art and the advent of big-budget art films, this engrossing and thorough survey is an invaluable resource. Major artists featured include Luis Buñuel, Man Ray, Douglas Gordon, Bruce Nauman, Sam Taylor-Wood, Richard Serra, and Andy Warhol.

Media screens--film, video, and computer screens--have increasingly pervaded both artistic production and everyday life since the 1960s. Yet the nature of viewing artworks made from these media, along with their subjective effects, remains largely unexplored. Screens addresses this gap, offering a historical and theoretical framework for understanding screen-reliant installation art and the spectatorship it evokes.   Examining a range of installations created over the past fifty years that investigate the rich terrain between the sculptural and the cinematic, including works by artists such as Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Doug Aitken, Peter Campus, Dan Graham, VALIE EXPORT, Bruce Nauman, and Michael Snow, Kate Mondloch traces the construction of screen spectatorship in art from the seminal film and video installations of the 1960s and 1970s to the new media artworks of today's digital culture.   Mondloch identifies a momentous shift in contemporary art that challenges key premises of spectatorship brought about by technological objects that literally and metaphorically filter the subject's field of vision. As a result she proposes that contemporary viewers are, quite literally, screen subjects and offers the unique critical leverage of art as an alternative way to understand media culture and contemporary visuality.

Offering historical and theoretical positions from a variety of art historians, artists, curators, and writers, this groundbreaking collection is the first substantive sourcebook on abstraction in moving-image media. With a particular focus on art since 2000, Abstract Video addresses a longer history of experimentation in video, net art, installation, new media, expanded cinema, visual music, and experimental film. Editor Gabrielle Jennings--a video artist herself--reveals as never before how works of abstract video are not merely, as the renowned curator Kirk Varnedoe once put it, "pictures of nothing," but rather amorphous, ungovernable spaces that encourage contemplation and innovation. In explorations of the work of celebrated artists such as Jeremy Blake, Mona Hatoum, Pierre Huyghe, Ryoji Ikeda, Takeshi Murata, Diana Thater, and Jennifer West, alongside emerging artists, this volume presents fresh and vigorous perspectives on a burgeoning and ever-changing arena of contemporary art.

Installation is arguably the most original, vigorous, and fertile form of art today. No large-scale survey or festival of contemporary art would be complete without examples of installation, and it is these that usually attract the greatest attention and cause the most controversy. Yet this is the first book ever to describe the tradition and explore the achievements and ambitions of the installation artist." "Michael Archer's illuminating introduction traces the history of installation art from Duchamp's first readymade through the Pop tableaux of Kienholz, Oldenburg, Kaprow, and Dine to more recent developments such as Land Art and Process Art. This is followed by a global range of installations, presented and documented by Nicolas de Oliveira, Nicola Oxley, and Michael Petry. All these works share a theatrical power and an insistence that the viewer be involved, from Christian Marclay's floor carpeted with LPs and Jenny Holzer's pulsating LED screens with their enigmatic messages, to Lothar Baumgarten's haunting memorial to Native American tribes and Hiroshi Teshigahara's tranquil tunnels of bamboo. The pieces are grouped into four sections, with more than 260 illustrations: site works from artists such as Christo, Richard Wilson, James Turrell, and Hans Haacke; media works by Wolf Vostell, Meg Cranston, Joseph Kosuth, Nam June Paik, and others; the museum works of Barbara Bloom, Mike Kelley, Cary Leibowitz, Ange Leccia, and their peers; and architectural works by practitioners including Rachel Whiteread, Daniel Buren, Mario Merz, and Vong Phaophanit. Authoritative reference material includes a chronology which details the history of installation from its roots in the late nineteenth century to today and an extensive bibliography." "Installation is a rich art form, often heroic in scale, sometimes witty and subversive, usually impermanent. This pioneering volume captures fully the variety and scale of these many-layered works - the essential contemporary record of a vibrant, fast-changing discipline.

Multi-media charts the development of multi-media video, installation and performance in a unique dialogue between theoretical analysis and specially commissioned documentations by some of the world's foremost artists. Nick Kaye explores the interdisciplinary history and character of experimental practices shaped in exchanges between music, installation, theatre, performance art, conceptual art, sculpture and video. The book sets out key themes and concerns in multi-media practice, addressing time, space, the resurgence of ephemerality, liveness and 'aura'. These chapters are interspersed with documentary artwork and essays by artists whose work continues to shape the field, including new articles from: Vito Acconci The Builders Association John Jesurun Pipilotti Rist Fiona Templeton. Multi-media also reintroduces a major documentary essay by Paolo Rosa of Studio Azzurro in a new, fully illustrated form. This book combines sophisticated scholarly analysis and fascinating original work to present a refreshing and creative investigation of current multi-media arts practice.

Hotter and dryer than most parts of the world, the Middle East could soon see climate change exacerbate food and water shortages, aggravate social inequalities, and drive displacement and political destabilization. And as renewable energy eclipses fossil fuels, oil rich countries in the Middle East will see their wealth diminish. Amidst these imminent risks is a call to action for regional leaders. Could countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates harness the region's immense potential for solar energy and emerge as vanguards of global climate action? The Power of Deserts surveys regional climate models and identifies the potential impact on socioeconomic disparities, population movement, and political instability. Offering more than warning and fear, however, the book highlights a potentially brighter future--a recent shift across the Middle East toward renewable energy. With his deep knowledge of the region and knack for presenting scientific data with clarity, Dan Rabinowitz makes a sober yet surprisingly optimistic investigation of opportunity arising from a looming crisis.

Oil Spill Environmental Forensics Case Studies includes 34 chapters that serve to present various aspects of environmental forensics in relation to "real-world" oil spill case studies from around the globe.   Authors representing academic, government, and private researcher groups from 14 countries bring a diverse and global perspective to this volume. Oil Spill Environmental Forensics Case Studies addresses releases of natural gas/methane, automotive gasoline and other petroleum fuels, lubricants, vegetable oils, paraffin waxes, bitumen,  manufactured gas plant residues, urban runoff, and, of course, crude oil, the latter ranging from light Bakken shale oil to heavy Canadian oil sands oil.   New challenges surrounding forensic investigations of stray gas in the shallow subsurface, volatiles in air, dissolved chemicals in water (including passive samplers), and biological tissues associated with oil spills are included, as are the effects and long-term oil weathering, long-term monitoring in urbanized and non-urbanized environments, fate and transport, forensic historical research, new analytical and chemical data processing and interpretation methods.  

This volume reveals the full extent of the 1991 Persian Gulf War's devastation (including oil spills seventy times larger than the Exxon Valdez disaster, how the West armed Iraq, the link between oil fires and the storms that devastated Bangladesh and China in 1991, and the impact on Iraqi, Kuwaiti, and Palestinian women and Desert Storm veterans) and how it has been deliberately played down and covered up in official accounts. arc/Arms Control Research Center is a public interest organization of scientists, economists, planners, and activists, based in San Francisco, California.

The invasion and occupation of Kuwait by the Iraqi forces and the resulting Gulf War in 1991 led to unprecedented environmental contamination, the effects of which will be felt for years to come. The air was polluted by emissions from hundreds of burning oil wells, the sea fouled by the largest oil spill in history, and the land scarred by massive bombardment and troop movement. Information regarding this environmental legacy of the Gulf War has hitherto been scattered throughout the popular and scientific press. This is the first book that brings together what is currently known about the environmental aftermath of this tragic war.

The ecological crisis the world is currently experiencing calls for an urgent rethinking of our relationship to nature, natural resources, and the entirety of life on Earth, as well as that of humans to each other. The time has come for repurposing coexistence, aided by post-human thought and technological advancement, and for realizing that humans are merely part of, rather than the center of, our world. Potential Worlds: Planetary Memories and Eco-Fictions, published in conjunction with group shows at Zurich's Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst and Baku's YARAT Contemporary Art Space, questions forms of knowledge developed in the course of annexation of the environment and asks what ideas of nature might emerge from the current crisis and how we might perceive nature in the future. Thirty-six artists from around the world featured in this book examine the ecological and social consequences of the past and ongoing conquests of land for purposes of accumulating power and resources. Essays by Benjamin H. Bratton, T. J. Demos, Reza Negarestani, and Jussi Parikka shed light on multiple different perspectives, such as colonialism, post-humanism, ecology, and artistic adaption of new technologies, and investigate the potential future of mankind living in alliance with nature and the role of art in this undertaking as a technological, scientific, and social experiment. Concise texts on the work of the participating artists and an introduction by curators Suad Garayeva-Maleki and Heike Munder round out this illustrated volume.

The new millennium has brought to the forefront a new generation of artists who use low-cost, low-tech media and often original techniques to produce work that defies categorization and pushes the boundaries of art itself. Some repurpose utilitarian or scrap materials such as flip-flops, broken bottles and skateboards. Others use established media such as paper, stone, concrete and steel, or are drawn to traditional craft techniques to make art that is tangible, tactile and highly skilled. The ingeniously crafted and thought-provoking results showcased in this book range across a broad spectrum, from intimate paper collages to large public sculptures constructed from discarded wood. Some of the artists have invented new techniques, while others have broken new ground in the presentation of their work, creating fresh, dynamic forms of display. Despite the diversity of the artists' methods and ideologies, their work shares an underlying current: it uses resources that would otherwise be wasted, reflecting contemporary concerns about the environment. Through their imaginative approaches to medium, method and technique, these artists are producing work that is ingenious, inquiring and conscious of its relationship to the natural world, and in the process redefining the materials of art for the 21st century.

A timely introduction to the fields of environmental art, art and ecology, art and climate change, art and activism, and art in the Anthropocene. Global awareness of climate change is increasing, and the scientific evidence is incontrovertible: an environmental crisis is upon us. Art and Climate Change presents an overview of ecologically conscious contemporary art that addresses the climate emergency, as artists across the world call for an active, collective engagement with the planet, and illuminate some of the structures that threaten humanity's survival. Across five chapters, curators Maja and Reuben Fowkes examine artworks that respond to the Anthropocene and its detrimental impact on our world, from scenes of nature decimated by ongoing extinction events and landscapes turned to waste by extraction, to art from marginalized communities most affected by the injustice of climate change. What guides the artists gathered together here is an ardent concern for the living, breathing subject of the Earth and all fellow terrestrials caught up in this fast-moving climate drama.