Poem: Ammar Alshukry
Animation: Belal Khan

Leechon, Inc.

Official music video

 
Director: Ridwan Adhami

For the beginning of Ramadan Belgian photographer Rachid Lamrabat send us this great image titled ‘Evolution’. Thank you for sharing Rachid and Ramadan Mubarak 1431 everyone!

See more of Rachid’s work: Lamrabat Photography

Source: Art Dubai

Abraaj Capital website

Art Dubai Journal: Interview with Abraaj Capital Art Prize 2010 winning artist, Hala Elkoussy
Spiky Penguin: Lebanon’s Marwan Sahmarani wins popular vote in 2010 Abraaj Capital Art Prize
Nafas Art Magazine: Kader Attia’s History of a Myth – The Small Dome of the Rock

Hich-Kas: Wikipedia | MySpace

Director, Screenwriter, Cinematographer: Malik Hassan Sayeed, 2008
Editor: Carlos Arias

Caution: Some makrooh imagery.

Caution: Some makrooh imagery.

Caution: Some makrooh imagery.

Finding Allah through Hip-Hop

Back in the 1980′s, Brother Ali was a teenager named Jason Newman, cutting school and beefing on the streets of North Minneapolis. He loved hip-hop’s energy and joy, and its criticism of harsh social systems.

Rappers talked about people he’d never heard about in school or church — like Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan. “You know, a kid like me from the Midwest, who was so enthralled by the poetry and artistry of people like Rakim… It made me want to know, what’s he talking about?” Brother Ali says.

Brother Ali converted at the age of 15. He followed Imam W. Deen Mohammed, who moved the Nation of Islam away from black nationalism and toward a more global, conventional Muslim identity. Mohammed was forward-thinking, a champion of interfaith relations.

“When I was a kid, there was a group of people that he sent to Malaysia to study the way that a more liberal Islamic society could have this peaceful coexistence between different religions,” Brother Ali says. “I was one of the people he picked to go over there and study.”
 

Overcoming insecurities

Hip-hop and Islam tend to get caught up in the same misconceptions, he says — that they’re somehow inherently violent, disrespectful of women and homophobic. Brother Ali says these attitudes are much bigger than either hip-hop or Islam.

“They come from weaknesses and insecurity within human beings,” he says, adding that he’s faced those weaknesses and insecurities himself.

Source: National Public Radio

Soul-searching lyrics and passionate delivery

“Hip-hop introduced me to Malcolm X, and I read his biography, and I got really interested in ‘What is this thing that made him who he was?’ So I started studying Islam.

I realized that when I actually started meeting Muslims, I had all of these pre-conceived notions of what I thought Islam was: I thought it was really strict and dogmatic, I thought it was really race-based. The more that I actually started talking to Muslims and reading the Koran for myself I realized that this is what I believe in.”

Ali’s ascent in the Minneapolis music world started in a place that really lacked a hip-hop scene. He performed shows in coffee houses and in the rock clubs, since there were no exclusive hip-hop venues.

Ali credits the birth of the hip-hop scene with a his current backing DJ on a radio show on the local university’s radio station; it brought together elements from different parts of town that separate, were not creating enough momentum.

After some shows with rappers from other parts of the city, Brother Ali was able to get away from some past efforts, true to his DIY roots: cleaning bathrooms in the clubs in order to get to perform there, and carrying gear and equipment for others also in exchange for the opportunity to perform.

Source: Public Radio International

Caution: Some makrooh lyrics.

‘Uncle Sam Goddamn’ Controversy

Brother Ali has been under pressure from the recording industry due to lyrics from his song ‘Uncle Sam Goddamn’. The song is notably critical of the United States government, with accusations that the political system is addicted to war. Its lyrics harshly condemn the United States government for its past involvement in slavery and the crack cocaine trade, and its failure to provide for the poor.

Source: Wikipedia

Website | MySpace | Facebook | Twitter | Rhymesayers Entertainment | Rhymesayers YouTube

The Empty Quarter Fine Art Photography Gallery press release

What is this entity that is known to the world as Dubai? An invented city? A large-scale congregation of architecture in urban form? A real home to 1.5 million people?

The recent photo works of Cédric Delsaux, the final installment of his Dark Lens trilogy dealing with the fact and fiction of modern urban space, can be viewed as an attempt to approach this enigmatic, emblematic city, using cinematic futurism as a tool to get a grasp on the present.

Cédric describes the feeling he had as if walking around in a gigantic set for a science fiction film: “I instantly knew that all the characters from the Star Wars galaxies would be at home here.” Seen through his Dark Lens, Dubai appears to be finally welcoming the guests it has been built for from the beginning.

Delsaux collapses the realm of fiction and the realm of the real onto a single image plane: film characters are inserted into photographs of existing locations that often appear less real than the iconic crew and vehicles of the Star Wars films, whose adventures we have witnessed with our own eyes on screens around the globe.

What the artist aims for is not a photographic rendering of the raw reality of Paris, Lille, and now Dubai, but an exploration of the dream potential these cities hold within. He feels we are unable to truly see the world that surrounds us; we can only ever have a perception of it, filtered through the prism of our own culture, history, our sensitivity.

Cédric explains: “Since I cannot convey reality, I’ll show the perception, the fiction, I have of it.” Simultaneously facetious game, dark joke and mise en abyme, Cédric Delsaux has developed what he calls “an aesthetic of the in-between”, inextricably interweaving fantasy with real objects.

This new world, accurate, swarming with objective details, is absolutely false, yet totally truthful in so far as it reveals the essentially retro-futuristic characteristic of modern urban spaces, which are simultaneously too early and far too late.

However tempting, the work of Delsaux ought not be reduced to a mere game of digital manipulations that tap into the visual language of commercial advertising and myth-making film history. Despite moving in the territory shared by both film and advertising, Cédric Delsaux’s work remains firmly rooted in contemporary landscape photography.

The starting point of his Star Wars trilogy was a project exploring the nature of urban architecture, called La Vitrine des Choses, set in the north of France. Cédric recounts: “I photographed ordinary places, warehouses, harbours and houses that I tried to render extraordinary by setting them in a particular frame and experimenting with lighting.

I continued this project in the suburbs of Paris, but realized there was something missing, since the images no longer seemed that extraordinary. It was at this point that I decided to introduce sci-fi characters. Star Wars was a part of my childhood like many kids my age, but I wasn’t a fan. It wasn’t necessarily my chosen genre – nevertheless, the power of Star War films overtakes the sci-fi genre by a mile.”

The insertion of sci-fi characters was to be the key to a hidden door of perception, transforming our quotidian surroundings into places where anything might happen. For instance, travelling around Dubai after seeing this exhibition will never be the same again.

One day you may find yourself looking up at the sky, expecting to see speeder bikes chasing each other around the Burj Tower, only to realize you were fooled for a second by the sound of traffic around you. Rejoice and shiver, imagination has invaded everything.

The Empty Quarter Fine Art Photography Gallery in association with acte2galerie:
The Dark Lens – The Dubai Invasion by Cedric Delsaux
December 8. – 31. 2009, Dubai

The Empty Quarter Fine Art Photography Gallery | acte2galerie

Cédric Delsaux lives and works in Paris, France. After studying cinematography and journalism, he worked as a bookseller and in advertising. He has devoted himself to photography full-time since 2003. In 2005 he received the 27th Kodak scholarship for landscapes and architecture with his Star Wars on Earth series and in the same year was attibuted a prize by Photographie for his series “Things on display, the suburbs”.

Official website: cedricdelsaux.com

Random House, Inc.: A Common Destiny
Yellow Korner: La Partie de Foot
Wanted Paris: La Vitrine des Choses

Spec Ops: The Line unfolds within the destroyed opulence of Dubai. Once the playground for the world’s wealthiest elite, Dubai has fallen victim to a series of cataclysmic sandstorms. The city’s ultramodern architecture lies half-buried under millions of tons of sand.

The very sand that blankets the city plays a marquee role in altering combat situations and serves as a powerful but unpredictable force that will both help and hinder players throughout the course of the game.

(Via L. Al A.)

Developer: 2K Games
Website: specopstheline.com

Caution: Some makroh imagery.

Director: Mehdi Norowzian
Production company: Chelsea Pictures
Editor: Kirk Baxter
Post-production: Final Cut

Design / Animation: Mohamed ben Othman
Production company: Al Jazeera Documentary Channel

Art Direction / Design / Animation: Rania Baltagi
Production company: Dubai Media Incorporated

New Muslim Cool takes viewers on Puerto Rican-American rapper Hamza Perez’s ride through the streets, projects and jail cells of urban America, following his spiritual journey to some surprising places – where we can all see ourselves reflected in a world that never stops changing.

Source: YouTube

Thank goodness, this is the story of the new America that is unfolding – the one that young Americans across traditional divides are claiming every day as their own.

Enter Hamza Perez. The film traces the ups and downs in the life of this northeastern seaboard urban native who is transplanted to post-industrial Pittsburgh for a new start, just as the U.S. is on the verge of the most significant economic decline since the Great Depression.

Perez, a Puerto Rican-American hip-hop artist, is also Muslim. His conversion from Catholicism brings him face-to-face with what freedom of religion looks like in the throes of the war on terror. One of the film’s high points is an unprovoked FBI raid to the local masjid.

Absent of his other identities, Perez’s story is incomplete: A street hustler turned anti-drug counselor; a father embarking on a second marriage; a young man struggling to find a workable definition of masculinity; an unsigned hip-hop artist for whom hip-hop culture provides both the foundation for his anti-drug advocacy and a medium through which he projects his new faith.

The film is most powerful when it meets all of these varying and sometimes overlapping identities head-on. It does this best when embracing the complexities of the three-part axis on which New Muslim Cool turns.

Source: The Huffington Post

Download ‘Welcome Home’ by M-Team/Soy Sos from the website. NewMuslimCool | YouTube | Facebook

Laith Al Majali realized his interest in story telling through the visual arts from an early age. His entertainment career started in theatre and has moved towards photography and film.

“Captain Abu Raed” his first feature film as a producer/editor won the audience award for world cinema at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, and has picked up a number of other awards worldwide.

He graduated from Elon University in North Carolina with a degree in Communications and was the first recipient of the King Hussein Scholarship. Laith has been involved in TV/Video production in America and the Middle East and has served as an editor/producer on a number of programs and documentaries. His photographs have been published in local and regional magazines.

Laith currently lives in Amman, Jordan, and is available for hire for reportage work in the region. – Lightstalkers.org

“A year ago I began documenting in pictures the world of Arab Hip Hop, the project has taken me around the world so far shooting from Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut to shooting backstage with the Wu-Tang Clan in the context of Arab hip hop. The project is in its second year now.”

Music: Stereotypes Incorporated by Euphrates

Blog: lmajali.wordpress.com
Blog: Bataranzi
Flickr: flickr.com/photos/lmajali

Born in Paris, Kim Badawi is American photojournalist and documentarian of French, Egyptian, and Slovenian background.

Kim Badawi studied at l’Ecole Superieure des Arts Graphiques, in Paris. He graduated with a BFA in 2003, from the School of Visual Arts, in New York.

While working as a photo assistant at Magnum Photos and Time Inc. he participated in various group exhibitions in both Manhattan and Washington DC. In 2005, he covered the plight of surviving refugee families from Mississippi to Texas during the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

He recently graduated from the Documentary and Photo-journalism program at ICP while interning at Contact Press Inmages. Kim’s work appeared in 25 Under 25: Up-and-Coming American Photographers (PowerHouse Books, 2008) and The Taqwacores – A history of the American Muslim punk genre by (PowerHouse Books, 2009). – Verve Photo

“Although I often work as a journalist, I feel that to all events there are different truths. In photography, capturing an instance can legitimize an occurrence, or help construct a perspective on a specific “truth”. I believe that all other possibilities do remain possible.

In light of the above, I have chosen for mission to create purposely ambiguous images; images that not only that make us ask questions but by consequence lead to stories.” – Saatchi Gallery

Official website: kimbadawi.com

Kim Badawi – Publications: kimbadawiphotographytears.blogspot.com
Unofficial Photo Story Blog: urbanbedouinonthemove.blogspot.com

New York Times ArtsBeat: Taqwacore Documented – Images of Muslim American Punk