BLINDNESS AND DREAMS ~ JOINT LECTURE BY MEGUMI MATSUBARA & KENNETH BROWN
What do you see when you close your eyes? How far can your eyes see? And what about when you dream?
The American Language Center & Arabic Language Institute in Fez is hosting a joint presentation by artist Megumi Matsubara and scholar Kenneth Brown, who will speak about their understanding of blindness and dreams. Sharing the itineraries of their practice and research in Morocco and within Islamic cultures, they will consider the relation between memory and internal vision. Drawing upon poetry, imagery and history, they will also touch upon the worlds of Taha Husayn, Najib Mahfouz, Jorge Luis Borges, Junichiro Tanizaki or Henry Corbin within such themes.
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| Megumi Matsubara |
MEGUMI MATSUBARA is a Japanese artist whose practice spans from static
architecture to ephemeral situations, including installation, sound, photography and text.
She reconfigures existing environments and composes spatial narratives to question the
balance between presence and absence. Matsubara, originally from Tokyo, studied in
Tokyo and London, and has lived and worked between Fès and Tokyo since 2012. In
2015, she opened a year-long solo exhibition in Fès held in multiple places throughout
the year.
While she was a student at the University of Tokyo, Matsubara co-established the
interdisciplinary architecture firm Assistant with architect Hiroi Ariyama, of which she has
been director and founding member since 2002. She is a grant recipient of Agency for
Cultural Affairs Japan (2013-2014), Pola Art Foundation (2012-2013), Japan Foundation
(2009), Nomura Foundation (2008), among others, for her practices abroad, and two-year
winner of the Exploratory IT Human Resources Project Grant: MITOH Program (2002-
2004) for her socio-psychological project. Her work in Morocco includes four solo shows
in Marrakech and Fès: THE BLIND DREAM (Douiria Mouassine, 2014), WALK STRAIGHT
(Voice Gallery, 2014), RÊVEURS RÊVE RÊVES (La Maision de La Photographie de
Marrakech, 2012), UNE CHAMBRE ROUGE (Musée Batha, 6th Rencontres Internationales
de la Photographie de Fès, 2012), as well as VOID/BETWEEN (Theatre Royale, Marrakech
Biennale 4, 2012).
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| Kenneth Brown |
KENNETH BROWN, originally from Los Angeles, lives in Marseille. He has been director
and founding editor of the biannual review Mediterraneans/Méditerranéennes since 1991.
Formerly professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester (U.K.), Fellow
of the Committee for the Comparative Study of New Nations, and Research Associate in
the Middle East Center and the Department of History, University of Chicago, visiting
professor in Paris at the C.N.R.S and E.H.E.S.S., at the Universities of California,
Berkeley, Utah, and Arizona, as well as Fulbright Professor at the University of Dakar,
Senegal. He studied at the University of Chicago and completed his Ph.D. in Islamic
Studies at U.C.L.A in 1969.
He has carried out extensive research in the Maghreb—in the city of Salé and in the
Berber-speaking area of the Souss in Morocco, and in the town of Ksibet El Mediouni in
Tunisia, as well as in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. He is the author of
over fifty articles and several books, including “People of Salé: The Social History of a
Moroccan City (1830-1930),” Harvard University Press (Cambridge, Mass. 1976; French
version, “Les Gens de Salé,” EDDIF, Casablanca 2001), “Journey Through a Labyrinthe:
Israel-Palestine,” a photographic essay with Jean Mohr (U. of Penn Press, 1981) and the
SHUR Report for the E.U. on human rights in Israel and the OPT (Paris 2008). His latest
book, as editor, is “L’Iraq de la crise au chaos: Chroniques d’une invasion,” IBIS (Paris
2004).
DETAILS
Date: Saturday, 28 Feb, 2015
Time: 4:30 – 6:30 PM
Location: Auditorium of the American Language Center Annex, 22 Rue Mohammed Diouri, Fes Ville Nouvelle
Admission: Free
Language: English (with a summary in Arabic as needed)
Hosted by: American Language Center & Arabic Language Institute in Fez
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