Ahla friends,
A note to event organizers and business owners: please stop using AI to design your promotional assets.
I mean this with love and with every fiber of my being.
It hurts my eyes. It hurts my soul. It hurts your work.
Same color treatment, the same warm-dark gradient, the same faces, the same clichés, the same fake feel. AI's strength is not in art direction, but it is everywhere right now and everything is quite ugly.
Your event has a specific feel. Your art has its own world. The rooms you’re creating have their own people. These spaces you’re creating are meant to inspire and excite. Your AI assets don't do that. At best they are crashing my soul, at worst they are diluting your value. AI will give you the average of everything, which is the opposite of what makes a space worth showing up to.
Free tools exist. Just use them.
Samar
THE SHORTLIST
The Ones Worth Your Time
WELLNESS
Alignment: Body + Smile
Wednesday, July 15 | 7:00–9:00 PM
269 Canal St, SoHo
BESA Movement Studio and Dr. Myers team up for a session on movement, breath, jaw, and pelvic alignment, how the body holds itself and what that costs us. Pilates, conversation, education, community.
COMEDY
Arabic Improv Workshop
July 17–26 | 7:00–9:00 PM
A.R.T./New York Studios, Hell's Kitchen
Egyptian actor and improv coach Ahmed Radwan, founder of Improv4all in Cairo, leads a four-day workshop entirely in Arabic. For performers, for Arabic speakers, for anyone who's been waiting for a room like this.
POETRY
Mountains of Poetry Listening Session with Muyassar Kurdi and Jason Evans
Saturday, July 18 | 4:00 PM
CARA, Greenwich Village
Interdisciplinary artist Muyassar Kurdi presents her record Mountains of Poetry, voice, electronics, and improvisation on memory, longing, displacement, and the body's relationship to land. Oil paintings projected as graphic scores, followed by a conversation with filmmaker Jason Evans
WELLNESS
The Healing Hour
Saturday, July 18 at 12:15pm
106 Calyer St, Williamsburg
An intimate gathering of around 15 women, astrology overview, guided journaling, group Reiki, and community sharing, all under a Jupiter in Leo theme
MUSIC
Disco Dreams: A Sunset with Theodora
Saturday, July 18 at 6pm
Barzakh Cafe, Crown Heights1
Theodora is Anatolian Greek and a proud SWANA artist. She is gorgeous and carries Fairuz in her bones along with all of her Greek and Mediterranean roots, and wraps it all in disco. Two sets of originals and reimagined classics, an intimate setting and a unique evening.
PARTY
Cenote Project [Open-Air Sunset Party] x Haus of Joon
Sunday, July 19 | 5:00–10:00 PM
Somewhere Nowhere, Midtown
Haus of Joon takes the rooftop, live sets as the sun goes down over the city, open air, all summer. Sunday at its best
CINEMA
American Doctor
Tuesday, July 21 | 7:00–9:00 PM
IFC Center, Greenwich Village
A verité documentary following three American doctors, Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian, bound by friendship and a shared oath to save lives. A reminder of what solidarity actually looks like, not in theory but in a shift.
THE FREE ONE
Free and Delightful
MUSIC
SummerStage: Morocco – From Dakhla to Casablanca
Wednesday, July 15, 6:00PM - 10:00PM
Rumsey Playfield, Central Park
A full sweep of Moroccan sound in Central Park, Hoba Hoba Spirit, Hamid El Kasri Dakhla, Casa Xpress, and Mr. ID on one bill. From the Atlantic coast to the streets of Casa, free and outdoors
EVENT HIGHLIGHT
Special Event To Attend
Zidane, At The Guggenheim
The Guggenheim is currently screening "Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait" — a 2006 film by artists Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno that is, as far as I can tell, one of the most unusual things ever made about a footballer. It runs through July 19. Go this week.
Here is what the film is: 17 synchronized cameras. One match. Ninety minutes of watching Zinedine Zidane, and only Zidane, during a real La Liga game at the Bernabéu. Not the ball. Not the score. Him. His feet, his face, the way he moves when the play is nowhere near him. In 90 minutes of football, he touches the ball for about two to three minutes total. The rest is just a man existing in a stadium while the world watches.
The directors walked their camera operators through the Prado before filming, studying Velázquez and Goya. They weren't making a sports documentary. They were making a portrait, in the oldest sense.
And the subject of that portrait: Zinedine Yazid Zidane, born in La Castellane, a housing project on the edge of Marseille, youngest of five children of Smaïl and Malika, who came from Aguemoune, a village in the Kabylie region of Algeria, and arrived in France in 1953. He is Kabyle Berber, Amazigh, from the indigenous people of North Africa whose culture long precedes the Arab arrival in the Maghreb. He has said it himself: "I am first a Kabyle from La Castellane, then an Algerian from Marseille, then a Frenchman."
But what he became, for North African and Arab families across the diaspora, goes beyond labels. When France won the 1998 World Cup, Zidane's face was projected onto the Arc de Triomphe. A son of immigrants from an HLM, the best footballer on earth, and the country celebrated. Scholars have called him the first North African icon who was truly undisputed. "To be accepted, to be recognised," one researcher wrote, "you have to do the impossible. You have to be Zidane."
This exhibition was timed for the World Cup. Free with museum admission, through July 19. info here
PROJECT HIGHLIGHT
Interesting Initiatives To Support
A Petition For An All Arab American Parade In NYC
Someone slid into my DMs recently and I'm so glad she did.
Eva is Egyptian-Palestinian, born and raised in New York. She reached out with a simple message and a link, she's working on a petition to bring an All Arab American Parade to NYC next April, during Arab American Heritage Month. The petition is called "Uniting the NYC Arab Community One Zaghrouta at a Time,"
New York City has a parade for almost everything. The Puerto Rican Day Parade fills Fifth Avenue. The West Indian Day Parade shuts down Eastern Parkway. The Lunar New Year fills lower Manhattan. And as you probably know, there is also an Israeli parade in this city. And us, 22 Arab-speaking nations, a century of community here, one of the most culturally rich diasporas in New York and nothing.
The vision is a parade that celebrates Arab culture, heritage, unity, music, food, traditions, and pride, all of us, together, in the streets of New York. Not a vigil. Not a protest. A celebration. The kind of joyful and visible moment we get to have as a community that is just here, and proud of it.
She's collecting signatures and building the case to bring this to the NYC City Council. She needs 200 to start, and petitions that reach 1,000+ are significantly more likely to actually move. Right now she has 123. I think we could do so much better than 123
Sign it. Share it. Here
Samar
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