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Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s worldview was shaped by the complexities of her experience of growing up and rejecting Israeli citizenship and the ‘settler colonial identity’ that she had been assigned. Now, as a writer, art curator and professor of comparative literature and modern culture and media at Brown University, she works to reframe the past to challenge concepts of knowledge, art, history and human rights as they’ve been framed by imperialism. Made on the occasion of her being awarded the International Center of Photography’s 2023 Infinity Award for Critical Writing, Research and Theory, in this video Azoulay draws from her writings to argue for the collective imperative to ‘unlearn’ the omnipresent colonial constructs that surround us. In particular, she focuses on the need to view photographs as part of ongoing conflicts and questions that can still be grappled with today, rather than just past documentation of an inevitable, settled present and future.
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Death
Even in modern secular societies, belief in an afterlife persists. Why?
9 minutes
video
Design and fashion
The mundane becomes mesmerising in this deep dive into segmented displays
14 minutes
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Architecture
Tour the European architecture that dreamed of a wondrous, fictitious China
16 minutes
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Spirituality
Trek alongside spiritual pilgrims on a treacherous journey across Pakistan
6 minutes
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Animals and humans
An artist and ants collaborate on an exhibit of ‘tiny Abstract Expressionist paintings’
5 minutes
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Mathematics
How a curious question about colouring maps changed mathematics forever
9 minutes
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Meaning and the good life
The world turns vivid, strange and philosophical for one plane crash survivor
16 minutes
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Cities
The rise and fall of Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong’s infamous urban monolith
18 minutes
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Art
Inside the unique creative space where ‘outsider’ artists find their form
14 minutes