Mitra Azar

Notes On Media Activism In Cairo During The Post Revolution

The political impact of new media in relation to the Arab revolutions is complex and still evolving. First of all, it is worth remembering that in the Arab world we cannot take access to the internet for granted, as in most part of the Western world, be it for political reasons (censorship), and technological and geographical reasons (large desert areas, few and far between infrastructures).... READ MORE...

Notes on Realtime Tahrir. The Revolution Will Not Be Twitted

The light in Cairo is sandy and stratiform like the beige and grey nuances of its decadent buildings along each side of the wide streets, between bridges, underpasses, and railroads. The rays of sunshine penetrating the thin vapor surface bounce on the rusty air conditioners spotting the stochastic and implacable turmoil of the square, and intensify the amber nuance of the afternoon light... READ MORE...

Notes on the Un-documentary. Vision – Rapresentation – Ricreation

This article is the result of a series of theoretical discussions coming out from my research in the cinema-documentary field. These lines are meant to suggest a broader lecture of documentary-making activity. Through the relations that the idea of documentary establishes with photography, fiction, identity and performance, I would like to deconstruct its meaning and make it a source of philosophical research, opening discussions about technical matters that lead to new styles and methods of realization.... READ MORE...

Notes on Digital Icons And Death. Iran Vs Iran

The image of Neda's death appears compulsively in our brain. The eye, cannibal and hungry partner, looks at death through the satellite decongesting awareness that had to be deactivated like it happened to the building in our surroundings. CNN kept broadcasting the images of Neda's face. The big cathode eye feels the smell of blood, knows its bulimic, vampirized adepts, and uses them until the burning red becomes invisible and the moment of death becomes dream. Like in the chocking game, a ritual for wealthy American teenagers, in which they choke each others until they faint and gasp for few seconds, convulsing, and then wake up again, laughing with their friends without understanding where, or why or when it happened... READ MORE...

Notes On Online Middle East. The Infinite Potential Of The Masses

Middle East is burning. Syria is only one of the last pieces of this raging domino which exploded unpredictably from the inextinguishable flames of Tunisian and Egyptian revolution, both capable of overthrowing the existing regimes and reaffirming some old principle: the infinite potential of masses and the spontaneous political unmanageability of peoples, completely opposite to the automatic violence of authorities, which the more it ends, the faster it updates. (G. Agamben, Means Without End: Notes of Politics, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 1996).... READ MORE...

Notes On Time And The Net. Morphogenesis Of An Ongoing Relationship

This article is going to introduce a series of interventions around some of the major philosophical issues that need to be rethinked by the diffusion of Internet and the digital society. The goal is not to address these issues from a systematic point of view, but rather to re-interpret them in relation to generally accepted networking practices and to digital methods and tools through which they arise.... READ MORE...

Notes On Transmediale 2011: Hack:ability And Identity

The last edition of Transmediale, Berlin's festival for new media, welcomed like every year artists, curators, critics, activists and insiders under the enfatic title Response: Ability. In its 2011 edition, Transmediale has dealt with the political implications generated by the technological evolution in progress, with the skills which the hypermedial and overconnected subject should acquire in order to face the new matters that reality sets with urgency.... READ MORE...