Michele Nastasi Arabian Transfer

A photo-tour through six cities on the Arabian Peninsula Photographer Michele Nastasi (born 1980) pictures the boomtowns of the Arabian Peninsula, including Abu Dhabi, Doha, Dubai, Kuwait City, Manama and Riyadh. Set against rapid urban development, avant-garde architecture and desert landscapes, the cities are also connected by tourism and a transient workforce.

Cities of the Arabian Peninsula reveal contradictions of contemporary urbanization The fast-growing cities of the Persian Gulf are, whatever else they may be, indisputably sensational. The world’s tallest building is in Dubai; the 2022 World Cup in soccer will be played in fantastic Qatar facilities; Saudi Arabia is building five new cities from scratch; the Louvre, the Guggenheim and the Sorbonne, as well as many American and European universities, all have handsome outposts and campuses in the region. Such initiatives bespeak strategies to diversify economies and pursue grand ambitions across the Earth. Shining special light on Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha—where the dynamics of extreme urbanization are so strongly evident—the authors of The New Arab Urban trace what happens when money is plentiful, regulation weak, and labor conditions severe. Just how do authorities in such settings reconcile goals of oft-claimed civic betterment with hyper-segregation and radical inequality? How do they align cosmopolitan sensibilities with authoritarian rule? How do these elite custodians arrange tactical alliances to protect particular forms of social stratification and political control? What sense can be made of their massive investment for environmental breakthrough in the midst of world-class ecological mayhem? To address such questions, this book’s contributors place the new Arab urban in wider contexts of trade, technology, and design. Drawn from across disciplines and diverse home countries, they investigate how these cities import projects, plans and structures from the outside, but also how, increasingly, Gulf-originated initiatives disseminate to cities far afield. Brought together by noted scholars, sociologist Harvey Molotch and urban analyst Davide Ponzini, this timely volume adds to our understanding of the modern Arab metropolis—as well as of cities more generally. Gulf cities display development patterns that, however unanticipated in the standard paradigms of urban scholarship, now impact the world.

How and why do spectacular buildings get commissioned and procured? What are their visible urban effects? What can urban planners, architects, and policymakers learn in order to engage in more successful citymaking? In recent years, media and critical attention has been lavished on famous architects, and the contributions of their designs to the branding of cities. The post-“Bilbao effect” global landscape is one where cities compete for the highest-profile skyscrapers, cultural projects, and high-profile developments designed by star architects whom even casual readers know by first name: Frank Gehry, Bjarke Ingels, Jean Nouvel, Zaha Hadid, Norman Foster, Rem Koolhaas. Far less is known about the decision-making processes behind these projects and their subsequent urban effects. A unique combination of urban studies and photography, Starchitecture investigates projects designed by star architects in cities including Paris, New York, Abu Dhabi, Bilbao, and the architectural microcosm of the Vitra campus in Weil am Rhein, Germany. Author Davide Ponzini and photographer Michele Nastasi seek to explain and critique a growing global condition by revealing how starchitecture has been and continues to be deployed in cities around the world. The arguments they raise are vital to understanding the urban landscapes of today, and tomorrow.

How to understand propaganda art in the post-truth era—and how to create a new kind of emancipatory propaganda art. Propaganda art—whether a depiction of joyous workers in the style of socialist realism or a film directed by Steve Bannon—delivers a message. But, as Jonas Staal argues in this illuminating and timely book, propaganda does not merely make a political point; it aims to construct reality itself. Political regimes have shaped our world according to their interests and ideology; today, popular mass movements push back by constructing other worlds with their own propagandas. In Propaganda Art in the 21st Century, Staal offers an essential guide for understanding propaganda art in the post-truth era. Staal shows that propaganda is not a relic of a totalitarian past but occurs today even in liberal democracies. He considers different historical forms of propaganda art, from avant-garde to totalitarian and modernist, and he investigates the us versus them dichotomy promoted in War on Terror propaganda art—describing, among other things, a fictional scenario from the Department of Homeland Security, acted out in real time, and military training via videogame. He discusses artistic and cultural productions developed by such popular mass movements of the twenty-first century as the Occupy, activism by and in support of undocumented migrants and refugees, and struggles for liberation in such countries as Mali and Syria. Staal, both a scholar of propaganda and a self-described propaganda artist, proposes a new model of emancipatory propaganda art—one that acknowledges the relation between art and power and takes both an aesthetic and a political position in the practice of world-making.

Frank Horvat (*1928 in Abbazia, today Opatija, Croatia), a pioneering fashion photographer and one of the first professional photographers to use Photoshop, can meanwhile look back at around seventy years of activity and a dazzling career. The grand seigneur now allows us very personal insight into his private life: the autobiography in pictures reveals personal moments from all phases of his life. We encounter the great themes of humankind, such as birth and death, are witness to his ability to play, and to handle animals, we see his family, his friends. They are everyday images like anyone could have assembled in an album. However, there is one slight difference: a master was clearly at work here early on, the quality of the photographs speaks for itself. In the appendix, Horvat comments, in most cases at length, on each of the chronologically ordered pictures.

Brad Downey is a Berlin-based, Kentucky-born artist who has made radical and inspiring artworks all across the globe. This book presents the first full assessment of his works: sculptures, architecture, performances, installations, films, drawings, collages and activism, all inspired by the objects and activities of daily life. With humor, sensitivity, and insight, Downey examines the fabric of our cities and our forgotten margins and disputed borders. In doing so, he weaves new narratives into their chaotic patterns and makes vague the divisions between art and the everyday. Through an abundance of texts, photos, film-stills, drawings, sketches, collages, portraits and self-portraits, Downey becomes comprehensible as both a conceptual and a performative artist who is not the least bit concerned about the distinction between high- and lowbrow culture. In addition, the wealth of collaborative productions that is shown in this book and that distinguishes and informs, Downey's own artistic practice opens up a view of the broad and international network in which the artist operates across the globe. The book was conceived in close collaboration with the artist, edited by Lukas Feireiss and contains texts by Jimmie Durham, Hrag Vartanian, Alain Bieber, Rafael Schacter, Matthew Murphy, Angelique Spaninks, Jennifer atcher, Marc Wellmann, and Ed Zipco.

American photographer Richard Avedon captured stars with their 'masks dropped'. This publication presents over 100 of his most beautiful classical images.

This is the first comprehensive International Handbook on the History of Mathematics Education, covering a wide spectrum of epochs and civilizations, countries and cultures. Until now, much of the research into the rich and varied history of mathematics education has remained inaccessible to the vast majority of scholars, not least because it has been written in the language, and for readers, of an individual country. And yet a historical overview, however brief, has become an indispensable element of nearly every dissertation and scholarly article. This handbook provides, for the first time, a comprehensive and systematic aid for researchers around the world in finding the information they need about historical developments in mathematics education, not only in their own countries, but globally as well. Although written primarily for mathematics educators, this handbook will also be of interest to researchers of the history of education in general, as well as specialists in cultural and even social history.

For his photographs and films, the Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf creates a world that has been staged down to its smallest detail. It seems very similar to ours, but its artificiality give it an enigmatic sense. Still, with their visuals borrowed from the film and advertising industries, the works are only flawlessly striking on the surface; in fact, they deal with questions of democracy, equality, or self-determination. Marking Olaf's first comprehensive solo exhibition in Germany, the companion publication deals with essential aspects of Olaf's art and offers an attractive survey of his multifaceted oeuvre from the past forty years. Olaf's most recent works, some of which were created especially for the exhibition at the Kunsthalle Munich, will also be shown.