ART DUBAI GLOBAL ART FORUM JANUARY 14, 2016 LONDON 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. The Forum takes place in Dubai (at Dubai Design District (d3)) and London (in partnership with the ICA) in January 2016, and at its home at Art Dubai, March 1619, 2016. Art Dubai’s Global Art Forum is presented by the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority and supported by Dubai Design District (d3). 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?
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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.
CONVERSATION: THE FUTURE WAS UNCERTAIN How are technologies of simulation transforming the nature of violence, politics,
power and the image in the contemporary world? Artist John Gerrard asks these questions through the complex virtual worlds he creates through a combination of photography, 3-D modeling and gaming software. His painterly images make you feel as if you are standing inside an image and viewing it as a slow pan. Mesmerising and disorienting, Gerrard presents his realtime portraits of physical locations, harnessing advanced simulation and motion capture technologies to create a temporal collage shifting our understanding of the real and the record and the representation of our present and future.
CONVERSATION: THE FUTURE WAS RATIONAL Can science fiction only exist once the rationalism of science is fully understood and integrated into a way of imagining life? Why does modernity rely so heavily on rationality? In order to excavate these issues, we must look to the relationship between tonic bottles and cyclones, feminist utopias,
GLOBAL ART FORUM
John Gerrard is best known for his commitment to large-scale works that take the form of real-time computer simulations. These frequently refer to structures of power and networks of energy that have made possible the expansion of human endeavor in the past century. Recent solo presentations of Gerrard’s work include Solar Reserve, installed at Lincoln Centre in association with the Public Art Fund in 2014. In June 2016 a survey of recent work opens at UCCA, Beijing.
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and travels to Venus. All, perhaps, in an effort to reaffirm the necessity of the irrational to instigate change, which is at the heart of science and its many fictions. Nada Raza is from Karachi and researches art from South Asia at Tate Modern in London. Raza was guest curator of the Abraaj Group Art Prize (2014) and her past lives include Iniva, Green Cardamom, and projects in the UAE and Pakistan. Her curatorial project for the Dhaka Art Summit, The Missing One, flirts with the convergence of futurism, sci-fi, dystopia and enchantment via works of art made between 1922 and the present.(Feb 5-8 2016 www.dhakaartsummit.org).
CONVERSATION: THE FUTURE WAS DESERT Sophia Al Maria’s time-travelling alter ego SFW makes pilgrimages to desert petroglyphs and other sites of deep human history in Namibia, Oman and Australia. Points of interest include the desert as time machine, as future dream and as Tatooine. Sophia Al Maria is an artist and writer. In 2015 she was a fellow at the Sundance Screenwriting Lab and her book The Girl Who Fell to Earth was published in Arabic translation. She is currently working on her first solo show in North America for the Whitney Museum curated by Christopher Lew.
PRESENTATION: THE FUTURE WAS ZZZZZZZZ A short talk on a long repose. Theologians, activists and poets have told of people who sleep for 300 years and then awaken into a transformed world, as a way to critique the present and imagine the future. From 6th century Syriac eschatology to medieval Islamic futurisms, socialist sci-fi to the 1930s Egyptian theatre, it seems the quickest way to get to the future is to sleep. But will you like it when you get there?
GLOBAL ART FORUM
Anna Della Subin is an essayist and a contributing editor at Bidoun. Her work has appeared in the London Review of Books, The New York Times, The White Review, Harper’s, and Tank, among other places. Her e-book Not Dead But Sleeping is published by Triple Canopy in January 2016.
PERFORMATIVE PRESENTATION: THE FUTURE WAS SPACE IS THE PLACE Musician and composer André Vida channels Afrofuturist space-traveler Sun Ra via the vibrations, thoughts and music of the 22nd century as made humanly audible today: what Sun Ra Arkestra leader Marshall Allen refers to as, “doing skillfully wrong... the key to all spiritual things.” André Vida collaborated with Anri Sala in the making of To Each His Own In Bridges premiered at The Havana Biennial and Frieze Sculpture Garden in 2015. His saxophonic work can be sampled in the seven volume
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box set with Anthony Braxton of the music of Lennie Tristano, And his singing voice heard in the songs of Lullabies for Monsters in installation with Eva Vida, for the Insomnia Festival 2015.
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.
Dubai Design District, better known as d3, is dedicated to fostering the growth of the Emirate’s design, art 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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Founded in 1946, the Institute of Contemporary Arts is a membership institute that promotes and encourages an understanding of radical art and culture. Through a vibrant programme of exhibitions, films, talks and events, the ICA examines recent impulses in artistic production while stimulating debate surrounding the arts. With its criticallyacclaimed exhibition and film programme, as well as its Off-Site and Touring strands, the ICA continues to engage new generations of artists and audiences alike.
SPECIAL THANKS TO Sally Alhamad Harriet Anscombe Lucy Attwood Leo Barrameda Rosalie Doubal Uns Kattan Gregor Muir Lujaine Rezk
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Global Art Forum continues 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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