Arts & Literature
Akiba Cafe: Your manga escape in Saudi Arabia
Monitoring Desk JEDDAH: Japanese comic books, known as manga, have captured the hearts of some Saudis so much that a 31-year-old citizen decided to give the genre’s fans a specialist Jeddah cafe so that they can pursue their passion as well as meet others who share it. Akiba Cafe is the brainchild of Mohammed Saeed…
Read MoreYemen’s UNESCO-listed Old Sanaa houses collapse in heavy rains
Monitoring Desk SANAA: Houses in Yemen’s UNESCO-listed Old City of Sanaa are collapsing under heavy rains, as months of floods and storms assail a country already reeling from war, food shortages and disease. The distinctive brown and white mud brick houses of Sanaa’s historic neighborhoods, which date from before the 11th century, have long been…
Read MoreNigerian boy earns scholarship after his enchanting ballet goes viral
Monitoring Desk LAGOS: The video caught the eye of the elite American Ballet Theatre, which gave him a scholarship and arranged internet access for virtual training this summer. Gracefully spinning among a group of dancers clad in pink, 11-year-old Anthony Mmesoma Madu stands out in black leggings, a white turtleneck and poise beyond his years.…
Read MoreIslamic painting meets contemporary art: Onur Hastürk’s 1st solo show at Dusseldorf gallery
Monitoring Desk ISTANBUL: Anna Laudel’s Istanbul location on the old finance street of the late Ottoman Empire in Karaköy is a prominent gallery that provides a contemporary exhibition platform for the works of both Turkish and international artists. Aiming to expand its reach, the group opened its second venue in Germany’s Dusseldorf in 2019. The…
Read MoreFamed V&A Museum reopens with strict Covid-19 measures
Monitoring Desk LONDON: London’s famed Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum reopens its doors to the public with hand sanitiser dispensers and protective screens. Only mask-wearing visitors are allowed to tour and visit the museum’s 5,000-year-old art and design history exhibits along with a few contemporary displays spread across only two floors. Further sections of the…
Read MoreGenerative Social Science
Author: Joshua M. Epstein Agent-based computational modeling is changing the face of social science. In Generative Social Science, Joshua Epstein argues that this powerful, novel technique permits the social sciences to meet a fundamentally new standard of explanation, in which one “grows” the phenomenon of interest in an artificial society of interacting agents: heterogeneous, boundedly…
Read More‘Art, literature encourage reconciliation’
KABUL (Pajhwok): As he sits on a footway, the young Taliban fighter put his Kalashnikov on a big stone and sadly said: “I did not know I had no other option. I got angry about the novel, but then I thought yes many people suffered due to my activities.” This is the saying of a…
Read MoreHungarian waves in Karaköy: From the Danube to the Bosporus
Monitoring Desk ISTANBUL: An exhibition of model ships, trilingual texts and historical images organized partly by the Hungarian Cultural Center at Istanbul’s coastal Karaköy quarter has been set up to remind passersby of Hungarian-Turkish collaboration across the Black Sea In the 19th century, travelers embarking from Budapest to Istanbul felt at one point that they…
Read MoreRated Agency: Investee Politics in a Speculative Age
Author: Michel Feher The hegemony of finance compels a new orientation for everyone and everything: Companies care more about the moods of their shareholders than about longstanding commercial success; governments subordinate citizen welfare to appeasing creditors; and individuals are concerned less with immediate income from labor than appreciation of their capital goods, skills, connections, and…
Read MoreArt and passion: Creative secrets of the Kiswa calligrapher
Monitoring Desk RIYADH: With a steady and sturdy hand, a calligrapher’s passion and commitment to the art of the written word can be displayed through various mediums, but none more honorable than displaying that passion on the Holy Kaaba’s Kiswa (curtain). Mokhtar Alim Shokder, a calligrapher at the Kiswa Factory of the Holy Kaaba in…
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