The name says it all, really. Take a moment to savor it, as it rolls word by word off your tongue. The. House. Of. World. Cultures. Like sweet fruit, faintly exotic, yet familiar-a kiwi perhaps, whole and unpeeled. The skin’s furry surface tickles the roof of your mouth. It’s too much to swallow. In a […]

Let’s not create a mythology here,” says Walid Sadek, with a gentle smile and an inward laugh. “We didn’t always meet on Tuesday.” Sitting in the back corner of the Benedorme Cafe, a coffee shop tucked into a lackluster strip facing Beirut’s sea-swept Corniche, Sadek is recounting the past and possible future of Group Tuesday, […]

I vowed to write upon water, I vowed to bear with Sisyphus his speechless rock. I vowed to stay with Sisyphus suffering the fevers and the sparks, and seeking in blind eyes a last plume that writes for autumn and grass the poem of dust. I vowed to live with Sisyphus. -Adonis, “To Sisyphus” The […]

In 1973, I was ten years old, my best friend was Ashish Deshpande, and our favorite activity was dreaming. In our favorite dream, we would acquire a large airplane and fly away in it. We researched our dream-scripts in the pages of Hamlyn’s Pocket Guide to Aircraft. For some inexplicable reason, we selected the Fairey […]

I am hurt when I find a black American fighting the Muslims under the American flag. -Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy chief of al-Qaeda, May 5, 2007 I am Suleyman Lindh. Eater of much wheat crop, drinker of much buffalo tea. -John Walker Lindh, madrassa guestbook, Bannu, Pakistan, June 2001 The Messenger of Allah, may peace be […]

…[to] all the Youth of the Al-Murrah who face probably the greatest changes of any people in the world. -Donald Powell Cole, dedication to Nomads of the Nomads, 1975 In a darkened room of the Qatari National Museum, three screens play silent films of Bedouin life. The images are washed out and damaged from thirty […]

This conversation took place after a screening of We will live to see these things (The Speculative Archive, 2007) at the Images Festival in Toronto, where it won the award for Best New International Video. Naeem Mohaiemen: This was the second time I saw the film, and again [I] was struck by its pitch-perfect observational […]

I have never believed the innovators who maintain that pillars and portals are no longer permissible. -Albert Speer, from Spandau: The Secret Diaries During his 1946 Nuremberg trial for war crimes, Albert Speer, Hitler’s chief architect and minister of armaments, gave calm, rational testimony that hinted at remorse. He claimed that Nazi Germany’s vast apparatus […]

Bury yourself in Arab circles. -TE Lawrence Death has had no noticeable effect on Bryn Jones’s musical output. If anything, he’s releasing music faster than ever. No fewer than fifty posthumous albums have hit the market since the passing, eight years ago, of the percussionist and electronic musician better known as Muslimgauze. There are now […]

LETTER

PREVIEWS

MUSEUM
The Kiwi
Tirdad Zolghadr

CURATORIAL
The Limits of Tolerance
Charles Esche

TRAVEL
Chungking Mansions
Samantha Culp

INFRASTRUCTURE
A Defense of Culture
Omar Al-Qattan

WORK IN PROGRESS
Group Tuesday
Kaelen Wilson-Goldie

WORK IN PROGRESS
Yael Bartana
Emily Speers Mears

PROFILE
Sislej Xhafa
Jacob Proctor

FAILURE
The Muse of Failure
Anand Balakrishnan

Manifest Destiny
Babak Radboy

Slow Speed
Kai Friese

Collapsing Foundations
Haig Aivazian

Mad Love
Nimco Mahamud-Hassan

Floodlighting
Artist Project by Mona Marzouk

A Portrait of the Jihadist as a White Negro
Gary Dauphin

Senegal of the Mind
Binyavanga Wainana

The Way of the Ostrich or How Not to Resist Modernity
Sophia Al-Maria

A Dream Deterred
Hakim Bey

Petrova Gora Memorial Park
Artist Project by David Maljkovic

Building Blocs
Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss

INTERVIEW
But will we live at all?
Naeem Mohaiemen and
The Speculative Archive

ARCHITECTURE
Dear Catastrophe Architect
Benjamin Tiven

The Magic Kingdom
Shumon Basar

MUSIC
Loud, Insistent, and Dumb
Hassan Khan

Muslin Gaze
Jace Clayton

FILM
Film Festival Diary

Indie Blues
Samirah Alkassim

BOOKS
Make Everything New
Nader Vossoughian

Tal’aat El Badan
Yasser Abd El Latif

Creative Reckonings
Clare Davies

REVIEWS

COOKING

ARMENIAN PHRASE BOOK

AFTERTHOUGHT
Notes on the group show as format
Hassan Khan

CONTRIBUTORS