Fourteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

The Arab Spring marked a drastic transformation in the way that civic engagement and political protest was enacted and choreographed. One of the defining features of this transformation was the fact that digital technology and particularly social media platforms became the common method for the Arab people to define their vision for political and social change. Social media crystallized new forms of political participation through a rubric of online to offline political change. Amid this digital revolution was a burgeoning community of new media artists who sought to use digital media technology to create vibrant new art works that addressed the problems of political turbulence and Arab identity. The focus of my paper would be to explore how an independent Egypt art initiative named “Out of the Circle” is exploring the role, purposes, and intentions of digital artists in politically turbulent Egypt. One of the primary focuses of “Out of the Circle” is to map digital artists from across the Middle East and North African region, to foster a culture of engagement between artists. Many of the artists associated with this group explore the distinct intersection between digital art and politics, both telling a poignant story of Arab identity and a future for communities struggling with social and political difficulty. Some of the central themes of this presentation will include Arab identity, cross-cultural artistic engagement, and the intersection between digital art and contemporary models of collective action.