Closing Reception for Meter & Light: Night

For the closing night of the residency, Session artist Zain Alam will screen Meter & Light: Night, a work-in-progress and the second part of his installation series that was produced during Session with collaborators Sam B. Jones, Zeerak Ahmed / SLOWSPIN, and Warren Hilldebrand.

After the premiere, Zain will be joined for an artist talk/Q&A with Syed Shiraz Ali, an intellectual historian of early modern Muslim South Asia at UC Berkeley. His interests include the history of rationalist disciplines like philosophy, astronomy, and logic during the postclassical period of the Islamic world.

Zain will close out the night DJing Sufi music and inspirations for Zain will close out the night DJing Sufi music and inspirations for Meter & Light.

S Shiraz Ali is a scholar of Islamic intellectual and cultural history. He is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at U.C. Berkeley, where he researches the development of philosophy and rhetoric between early-modern Iran and India. He is broadly interested in the interplay of doctrine, language, and change in Muslim societies.

Ali was born and raised in Karachi. He has contributed to initiatives like Zer Zabar Paesh, The Second Floor (PeaceNiche), Matnsaz, and the 2018 documentary Salam: The First ****** Noble Laureate. He holds a Masters in the study of religion from Harvard University.