Kamel Lazaar Foundation Projects: new artists announced

The Kamel Lazaar Foundation announces the launch of the second installment of its research project's initiative. The Kamel Lazaar Foundation Projects (KLFP) was launched in 2013 with the purpose of offering an online platform for creative practitioners producing material that is either inspired by North Africa and the Middle East, or engages with the region in some way. The initiative seeks to encourage artists to think of the web as a generative space for the creation of new artistic and curatorial projects. In documenting the artworks in question, KLFP seeks to explore how the production of art operates as a thought process rather than just a theoretical gambit or an abstract, relatively privatised event of production and acquisition. The online element also involves a laboratory of sorts for understanding broader issues around knowledge production and the role of the archive in contemporary culture. Participating artists for 2014–15 include Adelita Husni-Bey, Basim Magdy, Faycal Baghriche, Lamia Joreige, Maryam Jafri, Neil Beloufa, Paul Vanderbroek, The Palestine Film Foundation (Nick Denes) and Sibel Horada. This second cycle of projects will see artists producing knowledge through their practice around themes of the archive, national and personal histories, archaeological discovery and the issue of land rights. Each artist will provide three updates over the year of the Foundation's support, with each update presenting a new, more developed iteration of the project. Full details about the artists and their projects can be found here. In its first year, 2013–2014, the Foundation invited artists including Ala Younis, Amina Menia, Haig Aivazian, Marwa Arsanios,Mariam Ghani and Wafaa Bilal to showcase their research. Over the course of the last 12 months, the artists have been producing and documenting their research on the Foundation's website in the form of images, notes, videos, sketchbook scans and audio files. Slavs and Tatars and Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige used the online platform as an incubator for their ideas, and their projects will materialise into book publications in 2015, in part supported by the Kamel Lazaar Foundation and its publishing initiative Ibraaz. www.kamellazaarfoundation.org