Slavs And Tatars

This form of political writing often called 'advice literature', shared by Christian and Muslim cultures alike, 'mirrors for princes' attempted to elevate statecraft ('dawla') to the same level as faith/religion ('din') during the Middle Ages.These guides for future rulers - Machiavelli's The Prince being a widely known example - addressed the delicate balance between seclusion and society, spirit and state, echoes of which we continue to find in the US, Europe, and the Middle East several centuries later.Today we suffer from the very opposite: there is no shortage of political commentary, but a notable lack of intelligent, eloquent discourse on the role of faith and the immaterial as a valuable agent in society or public life.This publication brings together the writing of preeminent scholars and commentators using the genre of medieval advice literature as a starting point to discuss fate and fortune versus governance, advice for female nobility, and an Indian television drama as a form of translation of statecraft. The illustrated essays are accompanied by an interview with Slavs and Tatars.Mirrors for Princes is edited by Anthony Downey, Editor-in-Chief of Ibraaz, and is published with NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery.

Slavs and Tatars is a multi-artists' collective which is fascinated by the area east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China. Through their often-playful art they delve into the riches of this cultural crossroads, the romantic sphere of influence between Slavs, Caucasians, and Central Asians. Here they plunge into the fables and myths of the mountainous Caucasus region: the first part addresses the complexity of languages and identities on the fault line of Eurasia, and the second part, slyly titled Steppe by Steppe, explores the region's seemingly reactionary approaches to romance. Whether they're looking at art, fashion, lifestyle or science, Slavs and Tatars bring a new point of view to the table.

The internationally renowned art collective Slavs and Tatars is devoted to the area known as Eurasia: east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China. Considering themselves as "archeologists of the everyday", the collective focuses on the interplay of religion, power, language and identities. In books, exhibitions, and performances, they investigate mentalities, myths, traditions, and transitions, through a combination of scholarly research, polemics, and low-brow humor. Wripped Scripped continues the collective's investigation of alphabets as an equally political and affective platform. While the roll-out of new alphabets has often accompanied the rise and fall of empires, the artists attempt to liberate not so much peoples and nations but rather the sounds and letters that make up langauge. Chapters include a look at the phoneme [kh] as a sacred perspective in the Hebrew, Arabic and Cyrillic alphabets; Germany's relationship with Orientalism through the tetragraph [dsch]; and a study of nasal phonemes in constructing Polish and Turkish identity. Exhibition: Albertinum (Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau), Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, 2.6.-14.10.2018Kunstverein Hannover, 17.11.2018-20.1.2019

Defining an area 'east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China' as their remit, Slavs and Tatars repeatedly creolize, craft and collide a political and imagined geography to topple our brittle notions of identity, language, and beliefs. Throughout their 10 year practice, the artist collective has turned to Turkic language politics, medieval advice literature, the relationship between Iran and Poland, and transliteration, to name but a few of their areas of research. The artists' work (from sculptures to lecture performances, installations to publications) similarly overturn the traditional hierarchies of understanding, seeing, and listening. Slavs and Tatars aim to free knowledge from the Enlightenment confines of the mind. Exhibition: Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Poland (Nov 2016 - Feb 2017) / Pejman Foundation, Tehran, Iran (Apr 2017) / Salt Galata, Istanbul, Turkey (Jun 2017) / CAC Vilnius, Lithuania (Sep 2017) / Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, Serbia (Nov 2017) / Albertinum, Dresden, Germany (Winter 2017-2018).

Published between 1906 and 1930, Molla Nasreddin was a satirical Azeri periodical edited by Jalil Mammadguluzadeh and named after the legendary Sufi wise man-cum-fool of the Middle Ages (who reputedly lived in the thirteenth century in the Ottoman Empire). With an acerbic sense of humour and realist illustrations, Molla Nasreddin attacked the hypocrisy of the Muslim clergy, the colonial policies of European nations, and later the United States, towards the rest of the world and the corruption of local elites, while at the same time arguing for Westernisation, educational reform and equal rights for women. The publication was an instant success-selling half of its initial print run of 1,000 in the first day-and within months would sell 5000 copies per issue, which was record-breaking for the time. It became one of the most influential publications of its kind and was read across the Muslim world. Slavs and Tatars, a leading art collective focusing on Eurasia, has brought together this collection of sketches, caricatures and satirical writings from Molla Nasreddin, in the process revealing an unusual manifestation of nationalism in the Caucasus and its surrounding regions.

A detailed academic treatise of the history of nationality in Tatarstan. The book demonstrates how state collapse and national revival influenced the divergence of worldviews among ex-Soviet people in Tatarstan, where a political movement for sovereignty (1986-2000) had significant social effects, most saliently, by increasing the domains where people speak the Tatar language and circulating ideas associated with Tatar culture. Also addresses the question of how Russian Muslims experience quotidian life in the post-Soviet period. The only book-length ethnography in English on Tatars, Russia’s second most populous nation, and also the largest Muslim community in the Federation, offers a major contribution to our understanding of how and why nations form and how and why they matter – and the limits of their influence, in the Tatar case.

The Cumans and the Tatars were nomadic warriors of the Eurasian steppe who exerted an enduring impact on the medieval Balkans. With this work, István Vásáry presents an extensive examination of their history from 1185 to 1365. The basic instrument of Cuman and Tatar political success was their military force, over which none of the Balkan warring factions could claim victory. As a consequence, groups of the Cumans and the Tatars settled and mingled with the local population in various regions of the Balkans. The Cumans were the founders of three successive Bulgarian dynasties (Asenids, Terterids and Shishmanids) and the Wallachian dynasty (Basarabids). They also played an active role in Byzantium, Hungary and Serbia, with Cuman immigrants being integrated into each country's elite. This book also demonstrates how the prevailing political anarchy in the Balkans in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries made it ripe for the Ottoman conquest.