Mariam Ghani

syllabi + class projects 2005-10

You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader (a free download here) to download these documents.

PDF syllabus for Artists and Dialogue (Spring 2009) in the Art + Public Policy program at NYU / Fall 2010 revision

PDF syllabus for Video I (S09 - F10) at the Cooper Union School of Art

Online syllabus for Video I (F05 - F08) in the Stevens Art + Technology program

Online syllabus for Digital Imaging III (Fall 2008) at Stevens ARTC

Online syllabus, resource page, and class links for Intro to Media Culture and Theory (F06/S08) at Stevens ARTC

Online syllabus and resource page for Video II (S06/F07) at Stevens ARTC

Online syllabus and class links for Net Art & Design (Fall 2007) at Stevens ARTC

Editing Video in the Media Arts Center (MAC) Lab: A Quick Start PDF Guide for Stevens ARTC

Updated FCP/DVDSP quick start PDF guide for Cooper Video 1 F09

Class project and resource page from Girls-Eye-View after-school program for junior high girls at Eyebeam (Winter 2005)

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critical writing + text-based projects

You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader (a free download here) to download these documents.

Through the Screen: Notes to Permanent Transit (2002)

Appendix: Permanent Transit: net.remix statement for artwurl (2004)

Diasporic Networks & the Collaborative Construction of Identity in Kabul: Reconstructions (2004)

Towards a Visual Language of Resistance: Notes on the Disappeared (collaborative text with Chitra Ganesh for Bare Acts: The Sarai Reader 05)

Unwritten Histories and the Digital Divide: On Critics, Archives and Networks (2005)
Excerpts from an IM roundtable with Jeanette Ingberman (Exit Art), Richard Rinehart (Berkeley Art Museum / Pacific Film Archive, CIAO, Archiving the Avant-Garde), Beth Rosenberg (Eyebeam Atelier), and Martha Wilson (Franklin Furnace Archives), July 2005. Moderated by Mariam Ghani for Arts + Leisure, a tabloid newspaper on art, criticality and complaint, published by e-flux and Art in General. A longer selection of excerpts from the roundtable appears here than in the published text.

Divining the Question: An Unscientific Methodology for the Collection of Warm Data (2006)
Essay written for issue Viralzerosix of Viralnet, the online journal published by the Center for Integrated Media at CalArts.
Updated version with excerpts from Points of Proof postcards and Polaroids prepared for the Conversation Pieces exhibition reader in 2009.

Writing Politics on Your Flesh (2006)
PDF download of an interview with Tom Leeser and Beth Rosenberg for Viralnet, conducted in spring 2005 and published in spring 2006.

Afghanistan: Between the Tiger and the Precipice (2007)
"News-collage" article commissioned for the 25th anniversary issue of FUSE, Cultural Change in Real Terms.

Kabul: Constitutions: Annotated Guide to the Interactive Map (2008)
A 21-page text that serves as a guide to both the web-based and installation versions of the interactive map that is the heart of the project Kabul: Constitutions. A booklet with this text and photographs of the installation process by Rick Vogels was produced by Gemak when the Kabul project was exhibited there in February 2008.

New World Borders (2008)
Essay and "corrective redaction" project commissioned from Index of the Disappeared as a contribution to the newspaper Common Possibility, produced for the exhibition How to Talk About Utopia Without Saying Utopia (a project by Anthony Marcellini +Matthew David Rana) and distributed in San Francisco in April 2008.

Bidoun Questionnaire (2009)
Questionnaire sent by Bidoun, editors of the Sharjah Biennial 9 catalogue project (three books in total), to artists in the Provisions for the Future exhibition, several months before we produced our projects. Erin and I describe our goals for the new video that SB9 commissioned in alternating blue (EEK) and green (MG) handwriting. This version was published along with a partial shooting script in the first Provisions catalogue, which focuses on the production process.

The Trespassers: FAQ, Notes, Interview (2011)
Includes an interview with Chitra Ganesh for the Sharjah Biennial X catalogue, source notes for the documents used in the Trespassers video, and an FAQ presented in the installation.

Introduction to an Index (2011)
Collaborative text and print project with Chitra Ganesh, commissioned from Index of the Disappeared for the 30th anniversary issue of the Radical History Review. Presents a condensed history of the Index archive and research through layered and annotated images constructed from materials in the archive.

Artist Statement (2010)

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recently, now, + soon:

*Work-in-progress notes, stills, etc. from A Brief History of Collapses now online here.
*Upcoming talks: with Ashraf Ghani and Maybe Education in Kassel, Germany, on March 1st; with Leeza Ahmady at Independent Curators International in NYC on May 8th, and at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco on July 21st.
*The Index has a new text project in the 30th anniversary issue of the Radical History Review. You can find the published version here and a lo-res version here.
*My notebook for dOCUMENTA (13), Afghanistan: A Lexicon, is now available as a print and e-book from Hatje Cantz and other retailers.
*I have an article about shooting and teaching film in Afghanistan in the fall issue of Filmmaker magazine (print only).
*I've been uploading HD / full-size SD versions of (or excerpts from the longer) videos to Vimeo. You'll find the newer videos there and some of the older ones as well.
*If you didn't make it to the MoMA talk, Art on Air recorded it for their radio program, archived here.

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Bio:
Mariam Ghani is a Brooklyn-based artist whose research-based practice examines places, spaces and moments where social and political structures take on visible and tangible forms. She has been awarded the NYFA and Soros Fellowships, grants from CEC ArtsLink, the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation and the Experimental Television Center, and residencies at LMCC, Eyebeam Atelier, Smack Mellon, and the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart. Her work in video, installation and photography has been exhibited and screened internationally, including at the Sharjah Biennial, the Liverpool Biennial, the Beijing 798 Biennial, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, the National Gallery in DC, the New York Video Festival, the Asia Society, the Danish Film Institute, transmediale and PLAY in Berlin, Smart Project Space, Gemak and the Stadsgalerij Heerlen in the Netherlands, Futura in Prague, Curtacinema in Rio de Janeiro, EMAP in Seoul, d/Art in Sydney, Bodhi Art in Mumbai, and the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens Museums. Her public, community-based and interactive projects have been commissioned by Creative Time in New York, CEPA in Buffalo, the Arab American National Museum in Detroit, Visual Correspondents in Berlin and Amsterdam, and Turbulence, artwurl, and the Longwood Digital Matrix online. Her critical writing on disappearance, warm data, and networked archives has been featured in FUSE, Viralnet, Pavilion, the Sarai Reader 05, Samar, the Radical History Review, the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, and the artist newspapers Common Possibilities and Arts and Leisure. Press coverage includes the New York Times, New York Sun, Brooklyn Rail, CBS and WNYC, locally; Germany's Die Zeit and Stuttgarter Zeitung, Beirut’s Daily Star, Brazil’s O Globo, Turkey's Hurriyet, New Delhi’s Economic and Political Weekly, the Prague Post, the Gulf News, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and the VOA and BBC Persian radio services, internationally; and Artforum, Art Papers, Art Asia Pacific, Afterimage, the Art Newspaper, Canvas, Studies in Documentary Film, the Independent, the Fader, Viralnet and RES, in the art press. Index of the Disappeared, her collaboration with Chitra Ganesh, has also been discussed in a number of academic journals, dissertations, essays and books. Ghani also lectures widely and organizes/moderates exhibitions, workshops, and discussions. She has a B.A. in Comparative Literature from NYU and an MFA in Photography, Video + Related Media from SVA, and currently teaches in NYU's Art + Public Policy program.

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