Lit & Found: Histories and Archives of Arabic Publishing

All recordings from the recent series “Histories and Archives of Arabic Publishing” are now available online:

The series, co-curated by Hana Sleiman,and Daniel Lowe, brought together researchers, artists, designers and curators to explore Arabic publishing practices from the 1960s to the present, and ranged from looks at how researchers, publishers, bibliophiles, and others can relate to the archive to examinations of exciting publishing projects happening now, like Kayfa ta.

First was How to maneuver: shapeshifting texts and other publishing tactics, with artists and curators Ala Younis and Maha Maamoun, in conversation with art historian Hala Auji, talking about their series “Kayfa ta,” or “How to,” which they launched in 2012.

Next was Archives of design and designing the archive, with Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès, Founding Director of the Khatt Foundation and Khatt Books publishers, joined by Cairo-based multidisciplinary designer, researcher and writer Moe Elhosseiny who will speak on Arabic Cover Design Archive: Digital Archives as Design Activism..

Third came Visualising the archive: Arabic publishing during the Cold War, at which researcher Zeina Maasri spoke alongside Berlin-based artist collective Fehras Publishing Practices (Sami Rustom, Omar Nicolas and Kenan Darwich) about their respective projects on Arabic publishing during the Cold War.

And finally Fragmented archives and histories of solidarity, which brought together Refqa Abu-Remaileh and Kristine Khouri to speak about their respective archival and curatorial projects: Abu-Remaileh’s database for Palestinian literature and Khouri’s project, which “investigated the histories of art collections and museums built in solidarity with political causes for Palestine, Chile, Nicaragua and South Africa as well as unearthed histories of transnational artistic solidarity networks of anti-imperialist and anti-colonial liberation struggles from the 1960s to the 1990s.”