Decolonising the Page: The Visual Politics and Poetics of Postcolonial Arabic Publications

“页面去殖民化”调查了从20世纪50年代到80年代的非殖民化和反帝国主义解放斗争过程中平面设计和视觉文化的重要但未被充分研究的政治作用。该研究侧重于后殖民时期的阿拉伯出版物，关注它们的设计，视觉和物质性如何帮助表达政治意愿，动员跨境反殖民团结和塑造新的审美情感。在迫切揭示现代阿拉伯世界的同时--在平面设计和视觉文化的历史编纂中代表性不足--该项目还与全球南方的现代性和（后）殖民主义的共同历史条件进行了比较。作为印刷文化的可复制和移动的对象，插图书籍和期刊是知识、想象力和影响力去殖民化的重要场所，因此，它对后殖民身份的构建至关重要，旨在增加阿拉伯语读者群和更广泛的跨国团结网络。与此项目相关的是阿拉伯出版物如何成为现代主义美学实验和视觉艺术家，作家，诗人，知识分子和活动家之间创造性编辑合作的平台。作为媒介技术，书籍和期刊是全球现代性对印刷文化和视觉经济的标准化影响的产物。然而，出版物也是特定语言习俗和阅读与写作文化的产物，也是创造性劳动的产物，可进行跨地区的创造性调整。特别是，作为伊斯兰丰富的图书制作、应用艺术和书法传统遗产中的文物，阿拉伯出版物通过美学复兴和对阿拉伯文化传统的现代主义解释，为“页面非殖民化”提供了理想的场所。在阿拉伯艺术家和更远的全球南部地区，这种非殖民化努力的核心是现代主义作为一种流动的文化形式如何被创造性地重新配置，以服务于非殖民化的未来。这项研究的重点是来自埃及，伊拉克，黎巴嫩，巴勒斯坦和叙利亚的一群受过学术训练的新兴艺术家的作品，他们创造性地探索了阿拉伯出版物的视觉性和物质性，包括Dia al-Azzawi（B. 1939，巴格达），Kamal Boullata（B. 1942年耶路撒冷- 2019年柏林），Mohieddine Ellabbad（1940-2010开罗），Helmi el-Touni（B. 1934 Cairo），Waddah Faris（B. 1940年阿勒颇），Seta Manoukian（B. 1945年贝鲁特）和莫纳沙特（B。1945年安曼）。他们中的一些人认为自己是阿拉伯非殖民化斗争中的积极分子，并努力通过将他们的艺术与阿拉伯新闻界和激进出版项目的平面设计和插图实践相结合来革命和民主化艺术在社会中的地位。虽然一些艺术家现在在现代阿拉伯艺术史上得到了认可，但他们在印刷出版物中的作品仍有待记录和审查。该项目的核心论点是，这些丰富的档案使我们能够恢复阿拉伯非殖民化进程中被压抑的历史和遗产;一个承载了这一代阿拉伯艺术家和设计师的后殖民想象力，美学关注和政治主张的历史。在这样做的过程中，“非殖民化页面”有助于理解非殖民化的历史：其受挫的项目和未完成的遗产在今天重新开展的非殖民化努力和团结项目中产生共鸣。该项目将建立合作研究网络，并产生学术，创意和数字人文成果，促进艺术和设计历史和中东研究领域的知识，并直接使学者，创意从业者和生活社区受益，对他们来说，这构成了直接相关的重要文化遗产。

'Decolonising the Page' investigates the significant, yet understudied, political role of graphic design and visual culture during processes of decolonisation and anti-imperialist liberation struggles from the 1950s to the 1980s. Focussed on postcolonial Arabic publications, the study is concerned with how their design, visuality and materiality helped articulate political imaginaries, mobilise cross-border anticolonial solidarities and shape new aesthetic sensibilities. While urgently shedding light on the modern Arab world -- under-represented in the historiography of graphic design and visual culture -- this project also draws comparisons with shared historical conditions of modernity and (post)coloniality in the Global South.As reproducible and mobile objects of print culture, illustrated books and periodicals were important sites for the decolonisation of knowledge, imagination and affect, and thus crucial for the construction of postcolonial identity, aimed at a growing Arabic readership and broader networks of transnational solidarity. Pivotal to this project is how Arabic publications emerged as platforms for modernist aesthetic experimentation and creative editorial collaborations between visual artists, writers, poets, intellectuals and activists. As media technologies, books and periodicals are products of global modernity's standardising effects on print cultures and visual economies. Nonetheless, publications are also artefacts of particular linguistic conventions and cultures of reading and writing, as well as products of creative labour that lend themselves to translocal creative adaptations. In particular, as artefacts within a rich Islamic heritage of bookmaking, applied arts and calligraphic traditions, Arabic publications presented ideal sites for 'decolonising the page' in and through aesthetic revivals and modernist interpretations of Arab cultural traditions of the book. Central to this decolonising endeavour, amongst Arab artists and further afield across the Global South, is how modernism, as a travelling cultural form, was creatively reconfigured to serve decolonial futures. The study is focussed on the works of a group of academically trained emerging artists from Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria who have creatively explored the visuality and materiality of Arabic publications, including Dia al-Azzawi (b. 1939, Baghdad), Kamal Boullata (b. 1942 Jerusalem - 2019 Berlin), Mohieddine Ellabbad (1940-2010 Cairo), Helmi el-Touni (b. 1934 Cairo), Waddah Faris (b. 1940 Aleppo), Seta Manoukian (b. 1945 Beirut) and Mona Saudi (b. 1945 Amman). A number of them understood themselves as activists in Arab decolonisation struggles and strove to revolutionise and democratise art's place within society by hyphenating their art with graphic design and illustration practices for the Arabic press and radical publishing projects. While some artists are now recognised in modern Arab art history, their work in printed publications remains to be documented and examined.It is the project's central contention that this rich archive enables us to recover a suppressed history and heritage of Arab decolonisation processes; one that takes on board the postcolonial imagination, aesthetic preoccupations and political contestations of Arab artists and designers of this generation. In doing so, 'Decolonising the Page' contributes to understanding histories of decolonisation: its thwarted projects and unfinished legacies resonate in renewed decolonial endeavours and solidarity projects today. The project will build collaborative research networks and produce academic, creative and digital humanities outputs which advance knowledge in the fields of Art and Design History and Middle East Studies and directly benefit academics, creative practitioners and the living communities for whom this constitutes an important cultural heritage of immediate relevance.