sabaaskary

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Nov 2022 - present

I've joined the team at World Press Photo in the contest department - facilitating one of the world's oldest and most respected press photography competitions.

Photo: Ahmad Halabisaz, Untitled, Tehran (2022), depicts an Iranian woman defying the mandatory hijab law in front of a busy square in Tehran.

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September 2022

I was invited by the artist Narges Mohammadi to contribute a poem, Moulding Waves, to a special evening:

Op een eiland (On an island) is a multi sensorial dinner made by Narges Mohammadi and Yannik Güldner. As part of Mohammadi’s presentation for Waterwerken. A program that surrounds our relationship with water, and invites six different artists to dive into this relation and to create a new site-specific work. It highlights the notion of 'digesting', of recognisable and/or similar experiences, words of hope and hopelessness in relation to being land-, or waterless. The dishes are inspired by the texts of the acclaimed writers and artists Sahar Shirzad, Tina Farifteh, Mina Etemad, Saba Askary and Melisa Can. The texts will be shared during the dinner. Throughout the evening percussionist Christian Smith will perform a combination of live-, and recorded sounds inspired by the island, the texts and the dishes.

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May 2022

TEDx talk ‘A Tale of Two Spoons, How Ancient Artefacts Still Shape our Present’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZS-BotQTEs

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A sampling from the Dutch Creativity Awards 2022 campaign, content and ceremony. I was the Content & Platform Manager at ADCN between 2021-22. This included working on content/campaigns across the four pillars of the non-profit company (Awards, Festival, Club & Academy). 

ADCN is the Dutch Club for Creativity. Founded in 1966, ADCN works on the development of a more creative Netherlands based on the vision that creativity contributes to the progression of people and society.

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Recently I co-edited the book “Hybrids: Forging New Realities as Counter-Narrative” alongside Salvatore Vitale for Futures Photography ✨. Together we explored the world of experimentation across divergent fields and sectors in photography. The publication presents a collection of essays, interviews and visual narratives that respond to four points of departure: “The Speed of Narratives”, “An Evolution of Reality”, “Giving, Taking, and Stealing the Right to Narrate” & “A Textured Future”. With honest and provocative contributions by @morehshin, @hodaafshar, @maxpinckers, @valentinatanni, Mieke Bal, @jean_vincent.simonet Alan Butler, T. J. Demos, @hiennhoangg and many many more. Designed by @floris.studio at @vandejongcreates

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Nov 2021

The Prince Claus Fund is an NGO that receives an annual subsidy from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Over the past 4 years it conducted The Next Generation Programme, created specifically to endorse cultural expression for and with young people (ages 15-30 in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Caribbean that ran from 2018-2020). Using long term funded partnerships with 13 small but resilient cultural organisations, open calls for proposals, public programme activities, academic research and awards. 

I was asked to be the writer and editor for the publication that was to be made to record and celebrate the end of the programme. 

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Nov 2021

idfa Meets Narges Mohammadi. 

Images of siblings Diane Mahin and Manuel Groothuysen reciting my text ‘Seedling’, a meandering dialogue between people from history, the internet and myself, reflecting on themes of survival, circularity, and the macrocosms that can be found within tiny seedlings. You can read the full text that was performed here.

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Nov 2021

I was asked to contribute to a multidisciplinary programme curated by the artist Narges Mohammadi, around the documentary film Wild Relatives (by Jummana Manna), showing at idfa, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. 

My contribution will be a text called ‘Seedling’, performed by Iranian/Dutch siblings Diane Mahin and Manuel Groothuysen.

Here is the wider description of: to carry the sun at idfa. 

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Oct 2021 

You can watch my TEDx HERE

The ancient past may be long gone, but our origin stories still hold the key to our collective identities. If we start narrating them from a different perspective, one day we could find ourselves in a society where we openly respect and celebrate cultural difference, rather than deny and swallow it up.

Grateful for the opportunity a tell my story and hopefully change a mind or two.

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2021

I worked with Futures Photography to conceptualise their 2021 annual theme and follow up to the 2020 theme RESET. We developed “Hybrids: Forging New Realities as Counter-Narrative”. This was used as the base for Futures annual open call, the exhibition, programming of panel discussions and will also be the theme for the forthcoming interdisciplinary publication that I am co-editing with Salvatore Vitale.

The design and creative direction was developed by Dominique Kampman, by merging the initials of the artists involved she created new symbols as a play on the concept of going hybrid.

Below is a short text that introduces the theme:

After a year of reckoning come and gone, in 2021 reality is anything but in balance. Waves of counter-narratives continue to bloom and subvert our knowledge base, flooding the frameworks that once navigated our senses of being and belonging. Driven by the fusion of the physical and virtual realms, Europe now watches as a young generation of makers attempt to foster a new cultural literacy; searching, breaking, and reworking their mediums and conceptual moulds. But can we define a direction in all this disorder? Within this climate of hybrid experimentation, we are witnessing the forging of new realities each day. 

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June 5, 2021

I presented a TEDx talk with AUCollege on June 5th 2021, on a personal research that is near and dear to my heart; the ancient world, collective origin stories, and how two spoons made me question it all.

The full video will become available on Youtube within the coming months. 

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2021

I’ll be working behind the scenes for ADCN this year as their freelance Systems Operation Manager, to redesign and redevelop their awards submission platform. I am also helping them scout for jurors and outstanding project submissions to their new ‘Culture’ category. If you’d like to be a juror or have a cultural project to submit (for free!) hit me up in my email. 

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2020 

Over the second half of 2020, I was managing editor for Futures Photography and alongside Salvatore Vitale as editor-in-chief, this is what we made:

RESET is a publication for the unsettled questioning eye, and those who believe in the collective strength of imagination to challenge the basic assumptions we hold for the image, the market and the role of representation.

Prompted by the critical junctures at which the arts and wider liberal societies found themselves in 2020, Futures Photography presents RESET: Questioning the Image, the Market and the Role of Representation. Developed with a defiantly postmodern attitude, it pushes past the dimensions of a yearly round-up or catalogue – to engage in debate on our splintered representations of reality and their revealing architectures of influence.

The exponential rise of nonhuman photography, our ambivalent – yet subversive – relationship with memes, emojis and digital communication at large, and how the forces of representation continue to shape our racial condition are just some of the topics explored by a host of cross-disciplinary contributors. Including scholars, curators and artists such as Mariama Attah, Joanna Zylinska, Geert Lovink, Sandrine Colard, Olav Velthuis, Lewis Bush, Rafal Milach, Ola Lanko, Salvatore Vitale and many more.

The structure of RESET – in a play on the world turned upside-down – is developed in two parts that must be flipped over to read. One side takes a step back, to analyse the role that photography plays in our collective situation and what implications we can trace in its social future; housing a collection of critical essays, visual interventions and discussions that took place during Futures Digital Festival in October 2020. While the reverse proudly presents the emergent practices of 57 image-based artists and collectives, annually nominated for the urgent stories they tell and their inventive processes by Futures’ member institutions across Europe. 

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November 2020

It was a wonderful journey developing the anticipated 12th (and final) issue of YET Magazine: What We Have Learnt About Publishing. I was brought onboard as an editor and overall coordinator for the project. 

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September 2020

I’ve been recruited by Futures Photography to be co-editor for their 2020 annual publication. 

Futures Photography is a platform focused on amplifying emerging talents in photography. Since 2017, the project has been offering a program to increase the capacity, mobility and visibility of artists nominated every year by some 12 prominent art institutions across Europe. They annually hold an event bringing these talents and institutions together - which this year is happening online through the month of October, under the theme: RESET. 

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July 2020

The third article for my series on AJAM is published.  

This article looks at the programming languages, games and pieces of conceptual code made by the critical Ramsey Nasser – a Brooklyn based, Lebanese born creative coder. 

‘Making art that is “in-fact impossible anywhere else” is a testament to Ramsey’s foresight. The key word being ‘making’. Ramsey is a critical maker whose projects challenge the basic assumptions we have about code itself.’  

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June 2020

We’ve released our preliminary cover and pre-order of the 12th issue of YET Magazine, What We Have Learnt About Publishing, entirely devoted to the passionate world of photography publishing, on and offline.

“The issue serves as a multi-faceted guide, its editorial structure ventures through the lifecycle of a publication; from an idea's first spark to its final distribution. Simultaneously YET presents the work and voices of this global community; artists, researchers, editors, curators, collectors, designers, publishers and printers explore urgent issues related to sustainability, securing funds, the current market, digital tensions and much more. The final aim of this issue is to be an inclusive open platform able to bring qualitative discussions around aspects related to the evolution of photography publishing. In this sense, YET has made sure to be inclusive, multi-faceted and accessible.”

More information including the well connected line-up here: https://yet-magazine.com/shop/product/issue-12-pre-order/12