Images from the Internet streaming live from Morocco of human chain formations to protect national treasury, bodily performances in front of parliament to issue a political statement, and calls for change chanted in local dialects are heard loud and clear from the streets of Morocco. The rise of new media such as social networks, blogs, and YouTube has brought new changes of representation for collective memory, especially in a state controlled media country such as Morocco. The capacity for interactivity and relatively easy access has given an opportunity for the protestors to voice their opinions, share their stories, and constitute an audience that is empathetic and willing to mobilize. It impacted and redefined the public sphere by producing alternative political and social discourses, which have produced endless possibilities. In particular, this paper examines the Moroccan February 20th social movement’s mediated modes of resistance. Activists in Morocco have embedded themselves in popular culture and utilized not only social media but also performativity and moving images in demonstrations to negotiate and navigate between the different publics. Rather than adopting singular forms of protests and resistance, the groups made use of assemblage models of protest and organizing; wherein each is articulated and emphasized within the particular political and media institutions. As such, the cultural media practice of the movement revives a "Moroccan Collective Identity" that challenges nationalist and monolithic narratives. This paper traces and contrasts particular forms of mediated resistance, gender dynamics, and modes of political expressions and looks at how they are translated into virtual settings and then rendered into the spatial reconfigurations in the street. It critically draws on the relationship between offline and online activism in the creation of a democratic engagement, a global imaginary of the community and the negotiation and navigation of vernacular voices across these sites of struggle while examining dialectics of inclusion and exclusion as sites of potential knowledge building. By looking at the media and cultural practices, it interrogates formations like “the Muslim world” and the artificial binaries of “East and West.” The sites that saturate these two poles include not only the complex networks of power and politics but also the affective articulation of the local, global, and national that is animating them. Keywords: Cultural frames, Morocco, protests, Online and Offline activism, mediated resistance, publics,

Over the past four years, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Dubai and Abu Dhabi have collectively invested tens of billions of dollars in the construction of performing arts complexes. Amidst the unrest of the Arab Spring, 2011 also witnessed the star-studded inauguration of the opulent Royal Opera House Muscat, the hosting of the Doha Tribeca film festival at the recently-opened Opera House in Qatar, and the commencement of construction of the National Theater in Manama. The ubiquity of these projects and their lavish scale invite the following questions: What purpose(s) are these structures intended to serve? Who constitutes their intended audience--nationals, expats, tourists? What image(s) of the nations’ governments and/or society are they intended to convey to the world at large? Most importantly, in a region where freedom of expression remains such a fraught and contentious issue, what opportunities can these spaces offer to artists who wish to express opinions that run counter to prevailing religious, social, and political ideologies? This paper will propose answers to these questions based on an examination of the types of performances taking place at these new venues. For instance, an Arabic musical adaptation of the Lysistrata of Aristophanes, whose eponymous female heroine organizes a sex strike to protest the Peloponnesian War, will be performed at the Royal Opera House Muscat in March. This piece will be of interest both in how openly it presents the central controversy, and also in terms of its reception in Oman, where a prominent Islamic cleric has already taken exception to the perceived foreign influence the Opera House represents. In Manama, the year-long celebrations of the city’s designation as Capital of Arab Culture for 2012 include an entire month dedicated to drama, with a series of performances to be held in the currently uncompleted National Theater. This paper will therefore examine what Bahrain places on this stage, whether it attempts to rehabilitate its reputation in the eyes of the world through a campaign of censorship and propaganda, or by condoning freedom of artistic expression. Research methodology will include scrutiny of publicity materials as well as performance reviews in the region’s significant English and Arabic newspapers (The National, Gulf News, and The Peninsula, among others); interviews with authors, actors, and venue managers on subjects including censorship (self- and official); and attendance at and analysis of selected performances, to be grounded in performance theory.

Moroccan women musicians historically have treaded on questionable ground. Traditionally perceived as prostitutes who used music and dance as a way to open men's desire, women musicians and singers have numerous hurdles to overcome. The shattering of accepted gendered norms presents itself in complex and layered examples when music and dance are concerned. This paper is a preliminary presentation and analysis of a collection of audio-visual interviews with women singers and instrumentalists spanning different musical styles, regions, languages and social classes throughout Morocco since 2011. The social, personal and emotional consequences of their career choice elucidate the delicate territory that they navigate as women in the public eye.

The trailer of the 1970 film, “The City’s Dancer” (Raqqasah-yi-Shahr), presented its leading character as follows: “…Who was this woman who captured everyone’s attention? ...A devious heartbreaker, a young untamed beauty gone astray and become wild and rebellious …the starlet who yielded herself to the appetite of her rowdy spectators. The dancer, the dancer, the city’s best… Everyone has had a piece of this popular hand-me-down, but now this man’s hands will lead her down an unknown path…” As in many films of the pre-revolutionary cinematic genre of film-farsi, the cabaret dancer as a character type at once attracted viewers, incited them, and was condemned by them. In the social imagination and as a fictional character, the cabaret-dancer had been doomed by certain pre-existing myths: a failure of urban modernity, this deceived, needy woman deployed her sexuality to earn money to feed her family. Only a super-hero could save her from such public shame and transform her into a private family woman. The recurring presence of her seditious dancing body was a selling-factor that not only sustained the commercial film-i farsi, but saved the private-sector theatre of lalehzar, where her dance was presented as part of variety-shows or atraksion, since the mid 1950s. Some café and cabaret owners furthered their profit by vending their male customers the right to drink (fish-khuri) with her. The government also regulated her as a sex-worker, with routine medical exams a pre-requisite for her work permit. The media’s fascination with her and their fetishizing of her condemnation in the last years prior to the Revolution of 1979 made her an emblem of social corruption under Pahlavi’s Westernized cultural policies in the revolutionary discourse. Focusing on the multi-layered character of raqqas, this article explores her emergence in the context of rapid urban expansion as well as monetarisation of public entertainment in early 20th century Iran. Deploying interviews; visual, textual and movement analysis; and tracing the cabaret-dancer across multiple milieus of entertainment and adult industries, this article examines the construction of her fictive self onstage and in films. Shedding light on the dialogic relation between the myths surrounding the cabaret-dancer in her quotidian life and her fictive character, this paper also examines the social, bio-political and economic factors that conditioned the aesthetics and semiotics of her dancing body on stage and screen.

Scholarship, travel accounts and emigre testimonies often depict late Ottoman Smyrna/Izmir as a vibrant, 'Europeanized' port city. With its wharf renovated in the last quarter of the 19th century based on European urban planning, the port indeed presented an array of European-style entertainment venues, consulates, banks and commercial enterprises to seaside viewers. This paper will join recent research interrogating the concept of 'Europeanization' in relation to Izmir, specifically in urban cultural life. Taking a conceptual view not only from the Mediterranean but also from the mainland, it will explore the significance of the Ottoman architectural, artistic and migratory environment surrounding the port. Specifically, this cultural hinterland boasts the Byzantine and Ottoman imperial seat of Manisa, an overlooked site of historical Ottoman arts and architecture with increasing ties to Izmir through the late 19th century rail system. Whereas scholarship has fruitfully mined Izmir's hinterland as an agricultural basis of the port's economy, this study will chart the networking of multireligious leaders, musicians and intellectuals between Manisa and Izmir as well as the wider province. Untapped sources (Ottoman newspapers, memoirs and music publications) depict Mevlevi-Jewish musical collaboration, a burgeoning Ottoman and European art music scene, 'gated' music venues, and multifunctional liturgical spaces. A wider lens on Izmir situating the port in its ambient cultural geography suggests an ambiguous cosmopolitanism that proves surprising longlasting. Versatile musicians respond to the demands of a diverse music marketplace sustained through WWI and the Greek occupation by the port's relative independence from the capital, musicians immigrating under pressure of war, and a governor conciliatory to its minority entertainers and economy.