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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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Religion
Hear from blasphemes, sceptics and free-thinkers in this ‘tour of medieval unbelief’
52 minutes
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Ecology and environmental sciences
The ancient Hawaiian myth that sparked a modern ecological breakthrough
10 minutes
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Music
‘Dun dun dun duuun!’ Why Beethoven’s Fifth sticks in the head and stirs the heart
5 minutes
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Art
The irreverent duo who thumbed their noses at the Soviet Union and the US art world
11 minutes
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Computing and artificial intelligence
A scientist’s poor eyesight helped fuel a revolution in computer ‘vision’
9 minutes
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Thinkers and theories
Henri Bergson on why the existence of things precedes their possibility
3 minutes
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Future of technology
Is this the future of space travel? Take a luxury ‘cruise’ across the solar system
6 minutes
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Metaphysics
Why mathematical truths exist with or without minds to consider them
8 minutes
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Fairness and equality
A tragicomic account of how the Los Angeles Police Department blew up a city block
19 minutes