Exercises in collective reading
A workshop by Marwa Arsanios
January 2013
Contemporary Image Collective (CIC)
Cairo, Egypt
Participants in this workshop at Cairo’s Contemporary Image Collective were invited to re-read and reflect on copies of the Arab cultural magazine al-Hilal, which dates back to the 1950s. Lebanese artist Marwa Arsanios asked attendees to select articles or themes of interest from back issues of the magazine in order to conceptually re-present them, in addition to considering their formats and designs. The results of these exercises are fascinating, providing a glimpse into particular moments in the region's cultural history that are often overlooked.
In this video, Arsanios discusses the theoretical strategies behind the workshop and its relation to a larger al-Hilal-inspired project, which she began at her Beirut-based 98Weeks Project Space.