ART DUBAI GLOBAL ART FORUM JANUARY 9, 2016 DUBAI PROGRAMME
ARTDUBAI.AE
PRESENTED BY
SUPPORTED BY
GLOBAL ART FORUM THE FUTURE WAS January 9, 2016 Dubai Design District (d3), Hai d3, Dubai January 14, 2016 Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) Theatre, London March 16-18, 2016 Art Dubai, Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai Co-directors: Amal Khalaf Uzma Z. Rizvi Commissioner: Shumon Basar
Image courtesy of: Abu Dhabi Media - Al Ittihad Newspaper
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Founded and produced by Art Dubai, the Global Art Forum brings together a diverse line-up of artists, curators, musicians, strategists, thinkers and writers to present and debate ideas around a curated theme. Typically featuring around 50 speakers, and running over five days, the Global Art Forum has become known as one of the largest and most significant annual arts conferences in the Middle East and Asia. The Forum is also recognised for its particularly collaborative, innovative approach, drawing on other disciplines and experiences to take a broad ‘helicopter view’ of the artworld; the programme typically includes performance, music, commissioned research and projects alongside the live talks. Over the years, the Forum has toured to Qatar, Kuwait, France and the UK, and grown to include publications, workshops and other educational initiatives.
THE FUTURE WAS The tenth edition of the Global Art Forum explores the ways in which artists, writers, technologists, historians, musicians and thinkers have imagined—and are shaping — the future. Titled ‘The Future Was’, the Forum is conceived by Shumon Basar as Commissioner, with Amal Khalaf and Uzma Z. Rizvi as Co-directors.
Does it feel as if the future was once ahead of us, far away, but now the future surrounds us in our present, on our screens, with each compulsive finger-swipe? What were the great dreams of what was to come? What will they be? In customary fashion, the Global Art Forum convenes the most compelling minds from across and above planet Earth to tell untold histories and share speculative stories. The 21st century continues to measure new modernities - from Mumbai to Tehran to Dubai and beyond - with skyscrapers, satellites and space races, even as new futures are imagined, invented and rejected. Because the future is always unevenly distributed in its meaning, its memory and emotive draw. What else might the word “future” mean and why does it resist ever being fully understood?
GLOBAL ART FORUM
The Forum takes place in Dubai and London in January 2016, and at its home at Art Dubai, March 16-19, 2016. Art Dubai’s Global Art Forum is presented by the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority and supported by Dubai Design District (d3).
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GLOBAL ART FORUM CO-DIRECTORS Amal Khalaf is an artist, researcher and curator. She is the Projects Curator at the Serpentine Galleries and has been working on the Edgware Road Project since its inception in 2009. She is currently Commissioning Editor of Projects for online platform, Ibraaz and a founding member of artist collective GCC, as well as a trustee of the Crossway Foundation. Uzma Z. Rizvi is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Urban Studies at the Pratt Institute of Art and Design, Brooklyn and a Visiting Scholar in the Department of International Studies at the American University of Sharjah. Recent publications include ‘Crafting Resonance: Empathy and Belonging in Ancient Rajasthan’ (2015), ‘Decolonizing Archaeology: On the Global Heritage of Epistemic Laziness’ (2015) and World Archaeological Congress Research Handbook on Postcolonial Archaeology (2010). COMMISSIONER Shumon Basar was Director of Global Art Forum 6, Commissioner of Global Art Forum 7 and 8 and Director-at-Large of Global Art Forum 9. Co-author with Douglas Coupland and Hans Ulrich Obrist of The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present, he is also a founding member of the Fondazione Prada’s ‘Thought Council.’
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INTRODUCTION & WELCOME THE FUTURE WAS By Global Art Forum co-directors Amal Khalaf and Uzma Z. Rizvi with Commissioner Shumon Basar.
CONVERSATION: THE FUTURE WAS GLOBAL/ART/FORUM What did the future look like in the mid2000s? In the Mid-East? Why did a talks programme at a new regional art fair decide to be “global” and a “forum”? Art Dubai’s Director, Antonia Carver, and the Global Art Forum’s Commissioner, Shumon Basar, introduce the evening by travelling ten years in ten minutes. Antonia Carver is Director of Art Dubai, overseeing the fair’s diverse programme, including three gallery programmes, the Global Art Forum, Art Dubai Projects and Campus Art Dubai. Based in the UAE since 2001, she has written extensively; was an editor and projects director at Bidoun (2004-2010); and programmed for the Dubai and Edinburgh film festivals. Previously, she was an editor at Phaidon; in development and projects at the Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva); and in publishing at G+B Arts International.
DISCUSSION: THE FUTURE WAS SPACE To commemorate the golden jubilee of the founding of the United Arab Emirates in 2021 the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre in
Dubai will be launching a probe to Mars. The Red Planet probe named Al Amal (Hope) is the first space program ever launched by an Arab state and marks a milestone in the nation’s history. This special panel discussion is chaired by commentator (and previous Global Art Forum director) Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi and features the team behind the Mars probe discussing live, for the first time, the hold ‘space’ has over our imaginations, globally, and the way that space travel is associated with national ambition.
GLOBAL ART FORUM
Ibrahim Hamza Al Qasimi leads the education and media outreach programme at Mohammed bin Rashid Science Centre. Al Qasimi started his career at EIAST, joining the Space Program Department as the first non-engineer. He worked as a representative of international affairs and was in charge of managing EIAST’s international agreements and collaborations. He then moved to the Project Management Office where he was assigned as project manager of the high school satellite initiative, CanSat. In 2014, he was assigned as the Head of Strategic Research at EIAST. Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi is a commentator on political, social and economic issues in the Middle East. His columns appear in the Financial Times, Foreign Policy, the Independent and the Guardian. Al Qassemi is an MIT Media Lab Director’s Fellow and the Founder of the Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. Sarah Amiri is currently the Deputy Project Manager and Science Lead of the Emirates
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Mars Mission (Hope); she is also the manager of the Space Science Section at the Mohamed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC). Sarah specializes in capability and functionality development at MBRSC and has spent the last 5 years working in this field. In 2015 Sarah was selected as one of 50 young scientists by the World Economic Forum for her contribution to the development efforts in the fields of Science, Technology and Engineering. Saeed Al Gergawi is a member of the Emirates Mars Mission’s Strategic Planning Team. The team’s duties are to ensure that the impact of the UAE’s journey to the red planet will be sustainable, leaving an everlasting effect as the UAE moves towards becoming a knowledge based economy. At the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre, Saeed’s is a part of the Strategic Research team, which acts as the science and technology consultants for the space centre and for the government. Additionally, Saeed is a columnist, in which he discusses concepts and ideas of futurology, as well as all trends related to science, technology and space.
CONVERSATION: THE FUTURE WAS A ROUNDABOUT The Flying Saucer Roundabout is one of the most beloved landmarks in Sharjah. The Sharjah Art Foundation is currently engaged in a research project related to this part of the built environment. In this conversation, Hoor Al Qasimi and Murtaza Vali talk through the memories, nostalgia, heritage, and futuristic design of the Flying Saucer Roundabout in Sharjah.
Hoor Al Qasimi, President and Director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, is a practicing artist who received her BFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London (2002), a Diploma in Painting from the Royal Academy of Arts (2005) and an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art, London (2008). In 2003 she was appointed curator of Sharjah Biennial 6 and has continued as the Biennial’s Director since that time. Murtaza Vali is an independent critic and curator based in Sharjah, UAE, and Brooklyn, USA. He is a Lead Tutor for Campus Art Dubai 4.0 and a Visiting Instructor at Pratt Institute. GLOBAL ART FORUM
PERFORMATIVE PRESENTATION: THE FUTURE WAS UNDERWATER What happens when islanders stop looking out to sea and instead look back in land? What are the cultural effects of a changing coastline? In this audio-visual performance, artist Hasan Hujairi introduces us to fidjeiri songs or ‘sea music’. Featuring samples of fidjeri songs, traditionally sung by pearl diving communities in the Gulf, and consisting of an all-male chorus and solo singer with minimal percussion, the performance will also feature video archive of early fidjeri performances and the changing coastline of Bahrain. This performance follows a conversation between Hujairi and Amal Khalaf as they trace the resonances of fidjeri featuring anecdotes of the myth of the origin of the music form, its close links to zaar music, how Concorde effected music production on the island and the effects of land reclamation on Bahraini culture.
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Hasan Hujairi is a composer, sound artist, and researcher who lives and works between Seoul and Manama. His works explore his interest in historiography, maritime cultures, technology, and the dissemination of knowledge.
PROJECT: THE FUTURE WAS A COMPUTER GENERATED IMAGE If you drove down Dubai’s arterial highway, Sheikh Zayed Road, in 2006, you’d see the largest number of continuously running adjacent billboards in the world. Each one promised a brilliant, bright future under brilliant, bright skies. Hoards of hijabi and hipster inhabitants in jaw-locked joy. Photoshop Utopias of the better beyond. WTD collate the most iconic and most telling of these real estate image manifestoes. WTD is an independent publication that uses narratives, conversations and visual essays to reflect on the built environment of the present-day Middle East. These temporary parameters represent an attempt to initiate a discourse that highlights architecture, urban thought processes and their relationship to the societies in which they are created. Promoting wishful thinking and cynical critique since 2012.
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PARTNERS
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PARTNERS The Dubai Culture and Arts Authority was launched on March 8, 2008 by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice President & Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai. Dubai Culture plays a critical part in achieving the vision of the Dubai Strategic Plan 2015 of establishing the city as vibrant, global Arabian metropolis that shapes culture and arts in the region and the world. The organisation has announced several initiatives that strengthen the historic and modern cultural fabric of Dubai. These include: The Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Patrons of the Arts Awards: The first of its kind initiative in the Arab world honouring individuals and organisations who have made financial or in kind contributions through sustained support to visual arts, performing arts, literature and film in the region; Dubai Art Season: The city’s premier umbrella arts initiatives which encompasses of Art Week (Art Dubai, Design Days Dubai, and SIKKA Art Fair), and Middle East Film & Comic Con, to highlight the Emirate’s growing creative landscape within the international circuit; SIKKA Art Fair: An annual art fair aimed at promoting Emirati and local artists in the UAE; and Dubai Festival for Youth Theatre: An annual festival that celebrates and fosters the art of theatre in the UAE.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Dubai Design District, better known as d3, is dedicated to fostering the growth of the Emirate’s design, fashion and luxury industry. It offers businesses, entrepreneurs and individuals a creative community that will be at the very heart of the region’s design scene. d3 is the newest of TECOM Investments’ freezone business parks – with 11 buildings currently under construction. Once complete, d3 will be a purpose built environment with the vision of creating a world class creative community that engages, nurtures and promotes local, regional and global design talent. d3’s facilities will include everything from cutting-edge design institutes to residential, hospitality, retail and office space. The District will be characterised by distinct public areas, unique street furniture and shaded walkways. Located close to Mohammed Bin Rashid City, the District is in sight of the Creek, Dubai’s historic and mercurial trading epicentre, Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, and Dubai Mall, the world’s largest shopping complex.
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SPECIAL THANKS TO Sally Alhamad Leo Barrameda Uns Kattan Lujaine Rezk Umran Shah Saadia Zahid
The Global Art Forum continues in London on January 14 and then at its home at Art Dubai, March 16-19, 2016, with three days of discussions, presentations and performances around the theme of ‘The Future Was’. In total, the tenth edition of the Global Art Forum will feature around 50 speakers. We look forward to welcoming you to Art Dubai and the Global Art Forum.
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