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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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The ancient world
Petty squabbles and bloody battles – the life of an ancient Roman soldier
18 minutes
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Astronomy
The remarkable innovations inspired by our need to know the night sky
5 minutes
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Knowledge
Why it takes more than a lifetime to truly understand a single meadow
11 minutes
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War and peace
‘She is living on in many hearts’ – Otto Frank on the legacy of his daughter’s diary
12 minutes
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Art
Why Diego Velázquez needed a lifetime to paint his enigmatic masterpiece
31 minutes
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Earth science and climate
There’s a ‘climate bomb’ ticking beneath the Arctic ice. How can we prepare?
8 minutes
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Political philosophy
The radical activist couple who fought for social change in the courtroom
21 minutes
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Human rights and justice
When a burial for slave trade victims is unearthed, a small island faces a reckoning
29 minutes
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Ecology and environmental sciences
GPS tracking reveals stunning insights into the patterns of migratory birds
6 minutes