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Ashkal Alwan

Ashkal Alwan is an association that promotes a critical intellectual assessment social, political and cultural contexts, as well as intra- and intercultural dialogue.
Ashkal Alwan has been founded 12 years ago with the aim to support creative alternatives to stagnation and paralysis produced by a sociopolitical environment which is marked by perpetual instability, disorientation and turmoil. Ashkal Alwan especially focuses its efforts on the promotion of practices and activities that do not only reflect on social, political and cultural realities, but also play an active part in shaping public experience and thinking:

• to promote diversity of voices and openness to other societies through intra-cultural and intercultural dialogue;

• to encourage critical theoretical reflection as well as involvement of the public on contemporary social, political and cultural realities of the Middle East and its relations to the international environment (including socio-political-cultural freedoms, democracy, nationalism, violence, individualism, modernity, rationalist scientific processes such as genetic engineering, globalization);

• to support young, innovative and experimental actors with an independent infrastructure of spaces and resources to present their work and to exchange with others.

Target Groups

The target groups of Ashkal Alwan’s activities include intellectuals, writers, cultural practitioners, academics, students, researchers, journalists, and curators. For those groups, Ashkal Alwan functions as a research and networking center and assists intellectual and cultural practitioners in producing and exposing their work (including publications) and in connecting them among each other and with international contacts. In particular, Ashkal Alwan implements and promotes the public forum entitled “Homeworks: A Forum on Cultural Practices” every year and a half. Homeworks is a multidisciplinary, international forum which brings together intellectuals and cultural practitioners for a week-long schedule of events to Beirut (including discussion panels, lectures, readings, exhibitions, film-screenings, and performances). Additional activities include retrospectives and screenings of films as well as exhibitions and publications tackling social and political issues, combined with public discussions.In 2007, Ashkal Alwan will organize the fourth edition of the “Home Works” cultural forum, exploring the dangers of political and artistic alienation, and in particular limits to expression created by internalized and normalized taboos and inhibitions. Furthermore, Ashkal Alwan will support the publication of a research project exploring divergent narratives on Lebanese history conducted by the Lebanese intellectual Fadi Taufiq and support the young Lebanese artist Zeina Maasiri’s work dedicated to the political esthetics of propaganda material throughout the Lebanese Civil war.

Zawaya

Zawaya is a periodical publication on alternative and emerging cultural production in the Arab world. While it is produced in Beirut, its contributors, as well as its readership are located throughout the Arab region, spanning from the Persian Gulf to North Africa. Zawaya was created in order to provide a much-needed platform within the cultural context of the Arab world for the cultural and alternative expression of contemporary issues in all its media forms, including the visual and plastic arts, performing arts, cinema, video, poetry and literature. Central to Zawaya’s mission is the choice of Arabic as its language.

Zawaya strives to implement this strategy based on three pillars:

• create an alternative space for critical expression;

• encourage an endogenous and creative transformation of the Arabic language and engender renewed discourse in Arabic which is able to express the contemporary reality of the Arab world, in all its complexity - spoken, scripted, and constructed;

• contribute to the networking and cooperation of Arab cultural actors, writers, intellectuals, and journalists, to engage in regional dialogue and to interact across the boundaries within the Arab world that often prevent them from meeting face-to-face.

Zawaya asserts its defiance to despotism, conformity and convention; and seeks cultural, social and political renewal and pluralism. It works towards the following objectives:

• to initiate a dialogue amongst various social actors, particularly on pressing cultural, social and political issues in Arab societies including gender relations, personal and civil liberties, democracy, nationalism, violence, freedom, globalization, and sovereignty;

• to create an open and ongoing work-in-progress for plurality, for diversity of voice, heterogeneity of affiliation and complexity of representation as represented by the contemporary Arab world;

• to combat barriers of prejudice and obscurity that divide societies in the Arab world;

• to inform readers about contemporary, alternative cultural practices in the Arab world

• to lend support and promote these experimental and innovative practices

• to build bridges between isolated instances of alternative cultural pro­duction within the Arab world and to create channels for contact and dialogue, using language and cultural production

Zawaya is being produced and published in Lebanon in 4-color tabloid format currently comprising of 24 pages, with the aim of expanding to 32 pages. The print run is currently 10,000 copies per issue, with the aim of expanding to a circulation of 15,000.  Until the present, five issues have been published and disseminated in the Arab world and amongst Arab-speaking communities in Europe. Zawaya is distributed by publishing houses and different cultural venues, and made accessible to public libraries, cultural festivals, theatres and other institutions.

Target Groups

The demographic bracket of Zawaya’s readership spans from the ages 18 to 45 years, including emerging or established artists, cultural actors, curators, activ­ists, intellectuals, journalists and university students. Zawaya seeks to increase its circulation along with its promotion strategies in order to attract a wider readership amongst ‘regular’ readers within the same age bracket, so as to expand the exposure to a broader audience.

Beyond the magazine, and flowing from the networks of cooperation and exchange established by it, Zawaya implements the annual conference/workshop “Zawaya Encounters” where contributors and supporters of the magazine gather to discuss strategy and future development, and where its readers and the general public are included through public lectures, round-tables and discussions and engaging them on the above mentioned central thematic issues (gender relations, personal and civil liberties, democracy, nationalism, violence, freedom, globalization, and sovereignty).

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