Global Art Forum 9: Dubai (English)

ART DUBAI GLOBAL ART FORUM MARCH 14-21, 2015 DUBAI PROGRAMME

Artdubai.ae

ART DUBAI 18-21.3.2015

PRESENTED BY

SUPPORTED BY

Global art forum download update?

How have technologies transformed the way we work, think, interact, learn and create?

March 14-15, 2015 Kuwait March 18-20, 2015 United Arab Emirates Co-directors: Turi Munthe Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi Director-at-Large: Shumon Basar

Founded and produced by Art Dubai, the Global Art Forum is presented by the Dubai Culture & Arts Authority and supported by Dubai Design District (d3)

09

INTRODUCTION

15

GLOBAL ART FORUM

39

DAILY SCHEDULE

47

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Contents

INTRODUCTION

9

10

Dubai Culture & Arts Authority On behalf of the Dubai Culture & Arts Authority, it is my pleasure to welcome you the ninth edition of the Global Art Forum.

The Forum is compelling platform for lively discussion on arts, and promoting art appreciation and education.

We are delighted that the Forum commences in Kuwait alongside special exhibitions in the city, before it is showcased at Art Dubai.

This year, the Global Art Forum presents an insightful theme – ‘Downtown Update?’ – which explores the impact of technology on arts and culture.

INTRODUCTION

This is a strong example of regional collaboration in the arts scene, and how by working together we can attract and encourage more talents to build the Arab world’s arts identity even further.

In an increasingly tech-savvy world, it is only befitting to discuss how a connected youth generation can be actively engaged in our arts narrative.

With talks by experts, presentations, discussions and commissioned projects, the Global Art Forum is a must-attend event for every stakeholder in the arts scene.

I look forward to your participation, and I am confident that the Global Art Forum will be an enriching experience that offers new and interesting insights on arts scene.

11

12

Dubai Design District (d3) Dubai Design District (d3), is delighted to welcome you to the ninth edition of the Global Art Forum. Technology is an integral part of our everyday lives, whether we are working or playing. By exploring the relationship between art, culture and technology, we can predict future trends and identify barriers that are currently hindering growth of the creative industries.

INTRODUCTION

We believe this conversation is vital to the development of the art and design industry, it is also central to our vision of nurturing and facilitating the growth of the sector. The idea behind establishing a dedicated ‘home of design’ in Dubai, is to provide an innovative community that is able to foster and nurture growth of the region’s design, fashion, art and luxury talent for the benefit of the industry and the wider consumer base.

By understanding the interplay between art, culture and technology, we can ensure that artists and designers have the opportunity to become part of this evolution, so that they may innovate their designs and assemble a strategy for the benefit of their business, and the wider economy.

13

GLOBAL ART FORUM

16

Featuring live talks guided by a curated theme, the Global Art Forum brings together a diverse line-up of participants, including artists, curators, musicians, strategists, thinkers and writers.

The Global Art Forum was launched by Art Dubai at its inaugural fair in 2007. In 2015, it is presented by the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority and supported by Dubai Design District (d3).

GLOBAL ART FORUM

The Global Art Forum Kuwait is supported by The Tamdeen Group and takes place at Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah, in association with Sultan Gallery and Nuqat.

The International New York Times is the international media partner of the Global Art Forum.

89PLUS The Global Art Forum also features the launch of a two-year partnership with 89plus, the long-term, international, multi-platform research project co-founded by Simon Castets and Hans Ulrich Obrist, investigating the generation of innovators born in or after 1989.

Workshops and a presentation at Art Dubai 2015, where Obrist and Castets are joined by artist and 89plus collaborator Abdullah Al-Mutairi, are geared towards developing a collaborative project – the first in the region – to be presented at Art Dubai 2016.

DIGITISING ARCHIVES WORKSHOP Relating to the Global Art Forum’s theme of technologies and their impact on the world of art, culture and society, and coinciding with the first Global Art Forum in Kuwait, Art Dubai hosts a two-day Digitisation Workshop led by The Sultan Gallery (Kuwait) and Asia Art Archive (Hong Kong).

Global Art Forum 9 is a search engine through technology’s progress. ‘Download Update?’ scans the past and present looking for the designed and unintended effects of innovation. Technology is never just a man-made product, but a feedback process of re-making who we are, our relationship to each other and the world between.

Technologists, entrepreneurs, CEOs, historians, philosophers, filmmakers, artists, and museum directors will take measure of technology’s dreams and the ensuing changes in artistic, social and political reality.

GLOBAL ART FORUM

DOWNLOAD UPDATE? The ninth edition of the Global Art Forum takes on the theme of technologies and their impact on the world of art and culture. Titled ‘Download Update?’, the Forum is co-directed

by Turi Munthe and Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, with Shumon Basar as Director-atLarge.

17

18

GLOBAL ART FORUM CO-DIRECTORS Turi Munthe is a media and journalism entrepreneur with an interest in social enterprise, politics and the Middle East. In 2007, he founded Demotix, the multi-award winning citizen newswire. He advises, works with and invests in new media start-ups. @turi 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. @SultanAlQassemi DIRECTOR-AT-LARGE Shumon Basar was Director of Global Art Forum 6, and Commissioner of Global Art Forum 7 and 8. His new book, co-authored with Douglas Coupland and Hans Ulrich Obrist, is called The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present. He is also advising Fondazione Prada on its new Milan cultural complex. @SB_ISR

Hans Ulrich Obrist Dan O’Hara The Otolith Group Gabriel PérezBarreiro Jack Persekian Anders Petterson Noah Raford Ruba Saleh Lana Shamma Troy Conrad Therrien Murtaza Vali

GLOBAL ART FORUM

CONTRIBUTORS 89plus Lawrence Abu Hamdan Georgina Adam Sabih Ahmed Taleb Alrefai Sulaiman Al Askari May Al-Dabbagh Manal Al Dowayan Joumana Al Jabri Dr. Saoud Al Mulla Abdullah Al-Mutairi Mai Al-Nakib Hessa Al Ossaily Al Anoud Al Sharekh Ayssar Arida Asia Art Archive Amar Bakshi Gala Berger Christopher Bevans James Bridle Simon Castets Sebastian Cwilich Roland Daher Cécile B. Evans Kate Fowle Thomas Galbraith Laurent Gaveau GCC Lara Khaldi Ayesha Khanna Parag Khanna Omar Kholeif Kristine Khouri Joanne Lisinski Nuqat

19

20

LIVE SESSIONS (DUBAi) STRANGERS, WELCOME: NEW INVISIBLE PUBLICS A new generation of institutions are figuring out ways to connect with far-flung, web-savvy publics that they may never meet in person.

Gala Berger’s Buenos Aires-based La Ene is a pop-up, itinerant museum – currently located at Art Dubai – courtesy of a usb; the Palestine Museum, directed by Jack Persekian, aims to embrace a diasporic public – via digital platforms and international partnerships – when it opens in 2016; the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, directed and curated by Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, fosters international dialogue about Latin American art and ideas, as much through online debate and research as temporary exhibition-making.

The discussion is chaired by Kate Fowle, Chief Curator at Moscow’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, which opens in June 2015.

Gala Berger is an artist based in Buenos Aires and co-founder of Museo La Ene, Galería Inmigrante and Urgente platform.

She completed residencies in South Korea, Finland, Brazil and Mexico. Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions in Argentina, Chile, Italy, USA, Germany, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico. Berger is also the co-founder of the first art book fair in Buenos Aires. @gellowgalica Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro is director and chief curator of the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros in New York and Caracas. He holds

a PhD in Art History and Theory from Essex University and was curator of Latin American art at the Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin, and chief curator of the 6th Mercosur Biennial. @CPPCisneros

Jack Persekian is a curator, founder and director of Anadiel Gallery and the AlMa’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art in Jerusalem. Persekian was born in and currently based in Jerusalem, and is now the Director and Head Curator of the Palestinian Museum. @jackpersekian ARCHITECTURE EFFECTS: MOVING ON AFTER PROGRESS As physical space is digitised, the architect is an increasingly endangered species. In order to participate in an era of acceleration, immateriality, ephemerality and globality, the architect must mutate. Yet, it is precisely through the anachronistic culture of this species–its processes, protocols and artifacts– that an opportunity to better understand the physics of the dark matter of digital

GLOBAL ART FORUM

Kate Fowle is chief curator at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow and director-at-large at Independent Curators International (ICI) in New York. Previously, she was executive director of ICI (200913), the inaugural international curator at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing (2007-08) and chair of the Master’s Program in Curatorial Practice, which she cofounded in 2002 for California College of the Arts in San Francisco. @garage_art

21

22

space presents itself. Troy Conrad Therrien discusses how a new series of experiments at the Guggenheim is testing how architecture can enter this space in order to expose its energy.

Troy Conrad Therrien is Curator, Architecture and Digital Initiatives at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Museum, New York. He is also an adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation where he co-founded the Architecture Online Lab and is an editor of the Applied Research Practices in Architecture Journal. @troytherrien TOO LONG; DIDN’T READ Christopher Bevans in conversation with Turi Munthe We have more access to more information of more kinds than ever before. Tech has changed what we can see. Who is going to own it, how will we deliver it, what will it look like? Is it going to matter?

Christopher Bevans is a Design Director for M3/Relativity Media and a Director's Fellow at MIT Media Lab. His client roster includes Pharrell Williams, Jay-Z, Daryl Hall, John Legend, Smithsonian Institute and Under Armour, among others. @cbevans1 AURAL CONTRACT: THE VOICE BEFORE THE LAW A presentation by Lawrence Abu Hamdan introduced by Lara Khaldi

Since 2010, Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s Aural Contract has been dedicated to understanding how we are being heard today and the changing nature of testimonies and interrogations in the face of new regimes of border control, algorithmic technologies, medical sciences, and modes of surveillance.

Lara Khaldi is an independent curator based between Ramallah and Amsterdam. She recently completed the de Appel Curatorial Programme, Amsterdam, and is pursuing her MA degree at the European Graduate School. Khaldi was director of Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre, Ramallah (2012-13) and Assistant Director for programmes at Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE (2009-11). She is the curator of Art Dubai Commissions and A.i.R Dubai residencies and projects 2015.

WE LIVE IN THE EXOSKELETON OF THE INTERNET In this illustrated conversation, writer and artist James Bridle discusses how human intentions shape technology, and in turn, the world around us. Together with curator and

GLOBAL ART FORUM

Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s work deals with the relationship between listening and borders, human rights, testimony, truth and law. Abu Hamdan is the commissioned artist for the 2015 Armory and with Umashankar and the Earchaeologists, is included in Art Dubai Commissions 2015-2016. Previous solo exhibitions include ‘The Freedom Of Speech Itself’ (2012) at Showroom, London, and ‘Tape Echo’ (2013) at Beirut in Cairo and Van AbbeMuseum, Eindhoven. @LAbuHamdan

23

24

writer Omar Kholeif, they discuss questions of aesthetics, agency, democracy and accountability in the information age.

James Bridle is a writer and artist based in London, UK. His writing on art, technology and culture is published by national newspapers and magazines, as well as online, and his work has been exhibited internationally. @jamesbridle Omar Kholeif is currently Curator at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, Senior Curator at HOME, Manchester as well as Senior Editor of Ibraaz Publishing. Previously he was Curator at FACT, Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, Liverpool. His books include Vision, Memory and Media (2010) and You Are Here: Art After the Internet (2014). Kholeif is The Abraaj Group Art Prize 2015 Guest Curator. @everythingOK LIVE TRANSMISSION: 50 YEARS OF MEDIA IN THE UAE Emirati media pioneer Hessa Al Ossaily joins Dr. Saoud Al Mulla on a panel that discusses media in the UAE. In 1965, while still in secondary school, Al Ossaily worked at 'Sawt Al Sahel'; the UAE's first radio station, as an announcer before moving to the Dubai studios of Kuwait TV, becoming the first national TV announcer. In December 2014, Al Ossaily was recognised by the UAE government for her pioneering role in media. UAE filmmaker and scholar Dr. Saoud Al Mulla holds a PhD on the history of cinema in the UAE, and now serves as the Director of the Higher Colleges of

Technology in Dubai. This panel, moderated

by Global Art Forum co-director Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, discusses the advent of technology on the UAE culture and the impact it has on shaping the identity of the UAE over the past 50 years.

The session is held in Arabic.

Hessa Al Ossaily is the first TV announcer in the country and is known as the “mother of UAE media”. She was Director of the Ministry of Information and Culture's Exhibition Department for more than 30 years and Expo General Commissioner for the UAE at its pavilions at World Expos.

VALUES, VIRTUES AND THE VIRTUAL An early wave of “art dotcoms” in the ‘90s was followed in the ‘10s by a second surge of online dealers, matchmakers, auction houses and analysts. The likes of Artsy and Paddle8 have become household names in the art world, but rarely have the protagonists of internet marketplaces been brought together to discuss ideas around selling art online, and the impact of the ‘jpeg revolution’ on existing

GLOBAL ART FORUM

Dr. Saoud Al Mulla is Director, Higher Colleges of Technology-Dubai Colleges and holds a PhD in Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, University of Gloucestershire, UK with a research focus on UAE cinema history and culture identity. Dr. Saoud spent over 10 years in teaching and management in the applied media field and remains passionate about media and film making. @saoudAlMulla

25

26

art market structures and how we view and interact with works of art. Financial Times columnist and art market reporter Georgina Adam leads Art Tactic founder Anders Petterson, Artsy President Sebastian Cwilich and Paddle8 Managing Director Thomas Galbraith in a debate about our online art world.

Georgina Adam is editor-at-large, art market, for The Art Newspaper, and writes a weekly column on Saturday for the Financial Times. In 2014 she published Big Bucks, The Explosion of the Art Market in the 21st century. In addition to her specialisation in the art market, Adam is particularly interested in emerging cultural centres. @georginaadam Sebastian Cwilich is the president and COO of Artsy, the art collecting and education resource. Artsy provides free access to an encyclopedic database of art, architecture, and design, spanning historical to modern and contemporary art. Previously, Sebastian launched Christie's expanded private sales division, and was a software engineer at AT&T (Bell) Labs. @artsy and @scwilich Thomas Galbraith is Managing Director, Auctions at Paddle8. He is responsible for managing Paddle8’s worldwide sales of art, design, and collectibles and oversees a teams of specialists based in New York, Los Angeles, and London. Thomas has deep experience in the online art landscape, among other positions, having worked at artnet AG serving as Director of Global Strategy. @Paddle8

Anders Petterson is the founder and managing director of ArtTactic Ltd, a Londonbased art market research and analysis company set up in 2001. Anders Petterson is a regular lecturer on the topic of ‘Art as an asset class’ and ‘Art market analysis’ at Sotheby’s Institute, Christie’s Education and IESA. @ArtTactic CITIES: HOW GOOD IS SMART? Ayssar Arida, Amar Bakshi, and Noah Raford in conversation with Parag Khanna

GLOBAL ART FORUM

HSBC's airport ads tell us: "In the future, we will be planting cities." Indeed, we already are. Dubai has declared its ambition to be the world's smartest city by 2020. Other "smart cities" are sprouting up from Masdar to South Korea's Songdo. Should more cities be smart -- in the sense of efficient and sustainable -- or are they already too smart surveillance states that homogenize society? What is the balance between culture and technology in this new global form?

Ayssar Arida is an urbatect, thinker, and design entrepreneur. He runs URBATECTURE urban design thinking from Beirut and London, and advises international organizations in culture, education, urbanism and design. He co-founded toy start-up urbacraft.com in 2014. His research focuses on the dialogue between popular culture, scientific paradigms, and urban planning, first introduced in his book Quantum City. @ayssar

27

28

Amar Bakshi is the founder of Shared Studios, an arts organization that incorporates technology into built environments to connect people across divides in geography, ideology, and identity. Shared Studios’ first major initiative, Portals, retrofits shipping containers with specialized audio-video communications equipment and places them in cities around the world. @amarcbakshi and @SharedStudios Parag Khanna is Managing Partner of Hybrid Reality, a geostrategic advisory firm. He is also a Senior Fellow of the New America Foundation and Adjunct Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. He is author of the international bestsellers The Second World and How to Run the World. @paragkhanna Noah Raford is an advisor on futures, foresight, and innovation at the UAE Prime Minister’s Office. Noah helped establish the country’s first national foresight unit and is part of a special projects team that identifies emerging opportunities, develops strategic partnerships, and prototypes future initiatives. @nraford

THE USE AND ABUSE OF YOUTUBE FOR LIFE The Otolith Group: Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar in conversation with Shumon Basar The advent of YouTube in 2005 installed the mediatic conditions for new tendencies in appropriationism and associative archaeology and new forms of futurology and forgetting.

The Otolith Group is an award winning artist led collective founded by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun in 2002. The Group's work explores the legacies and potentials of liberation struggles, speculative futures and science-fictions. @theotolithgroup DEATH OF THE IVORY TOWER: WHY APPLIED EDUCATION WILL DEFINE THE FUTURE As every job in the future increasingly has an element of technology and data science in it, governments are rushing to make coding and robotics mandatory for school children. But, says Ayesha Khanna, we must not neglect the importance of creativity, art and beauty in creating technology – lest we create armies of

GLOBAL ART FORUM

In their presentation, The Otolith Group speculate upon 21st century cultural practices as a return of Nietzsche’s models of antiquarian, monumental and critical history in the form of interspecies friendship-videos, Dark Enlightenment screeds, Anthropogenic visualisations, OctoDad tutorials and Farocki gifs.

29

30

graduates who are easily replaced by the very robots they create.

Ayesha Khanna is CEO of Technology Quotient, which develops content and technology platforms for the vocational and K-12 educational sectors. From Jan-Aug 2014, she served on the Singapore Ministry of Education’s ASPIRE Steering Committee on higher education reform. She is the Founder of 21C GIRLS, which delivers creative and engaging coding and robotics classes for school girls in Asia. @ayeshakhanna1 TMAI (TOO MUCH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE) Cécile B. Evans and Dan O’Hara in conversation with Shumon Basar Humans have always strived to invent something more intelligent than themselves -- and have been equally petrified by the possible consequences. But, the Singularity has already happened on our screens. And if popular culture is a barometer of our collective fears and desires, what do we make of the resurgence of Artificial Intelligence in recent cinema, literature and art?

Cécile B. Evans is an artist. Evans has exhibited internationally and is the recipient of awards such as Frieze’s Emdash Award and the Palais de Tokyo’s PYA Prize. She is the creator of AGNES, the Serpentine Galleries’ first digital commission and is currently working on a sequel to her recent film Hyperlinks or It Didn’t Happen. @cecilebevans

Dan O’Hara teaches at New College of the Humanities, London, and taught previously at the Universities of Cologne and Oxford.

His most recent book is Extreme Metaphors: Interviews with J. G. Ballard, 1967-2008. @skeuomorphology THE WORK OF ART IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL NATIVES Laurent Gaveau in conversation with Shumon Basar

Laurent Gaveau took the reins of the Lab of the Google Cultural Institute in December 2013. Before joining Google, Laurent Gaveau was Deputy Director of Communications at Versailles since 2008, more specifically in charge of the service New Media, Marketing and Partnerships. A graduate of Sciences Po Paris he previously worked at the Opera de Paris, the Centre Pompidou and Universal Music France, first as head of jazz and classical projects, then as head of online marketing for all labels in the group.

GLOBAL ART FORUM

The Google Cultural Institute, which includes the Google Art Project, is forging new ways of engaging with the arts through technology. Its director will discuss, ‘Can something natively physical be as comfortable in digital?’

31

32

89PLUS The 2015 Global Art Forum features the launch of a two-year partnership with 89plus, the long-term, international, multi-platform research project co-founded by Simon Castets and Hans Ulrich Obrist, investigating the generation of innovators born in or after 1989.

The year 1989 saw the introduction of the World Wide Web and the beginning of the universal availability of the Internet. Positing a relationship between these world-changing events and creative production at large, 89plus introduces the work of some of this generation’s most inspiring protagonists.

89plus Dubai is the first such presentation in the Middle East and South Asia and is supported by Dubai Design District (d3).

Hans Ulrich Obrist and Simon Castets are joined at Art Dubai by artist and 89plus collaborator Abdullah Al Mutairi; they lead a series of closed interviews and workshops (on March 18-19) with creative/cultural protagonists, with the aim of working up ideas and points of discussion that feed into plans for a collaborative project March 2016.

Hans Ulrich Obrist, Simon Castets and Abdullah Al Mutairi also deliver a public presentation and discussion on 89plus at the Global Art Forum.

Abdullah Al-Mutairi (b.1990 - Kuwait) is a Kuwaiti artist based in New York. He has

exhibited at Art Dubai, UAE; Mathaf, Qatar; The Serpentine Gallery, UK; and contributed to Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Simon Castets ongoing digital natives project 89plus.

Al-Mutairi is also a member of the GCC collective, whose work has been exhibited at MoMA PS1, Fridericianum, New Museum and the Sultan Gallery, among other institutions. @Al_Bedoui

Hans Ulrich Obrist is Co-director of the Serpentine Gallery, London. Prior to this, he was the Curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville, Paris. Since his first show “World Soup” (The Kitchen Show) in 1991 he has curated more than 250 shows. @HUObrist

GLOBAL ART FORUM

Simon Castets is the Director and Curator of Swiss Institute, New York. Along with Hans Ulrich Obrist, he is the co-founder of the research project 89plus, which investigates the generation of artists born with the introduction of the World Wide Web. He holds an MA in Curatorial Studies from Columbia University, New York and a MA in Cultural Management from Sciences Po, Paris. @SimonCastets

33

34

DIGITISING ARCHIVES WORKSHOP Relating to the Global Art Forum’s theme of technologies, the Global Art Forum in Kuwait includes a two-day Digitising Archives Workshop led by the Asia Art Archive (Hong Kong) and Sultan Gallery (Kuwait), taking place at Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah.

The workshop features the participation of the Arab Image Foundation (Beirut); The Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah (Kuwait City); The Khalid Shoman Foundation (Amman); Kuwait’s National Council for Culture, Art and Letters (Kuwait City); Kuwait University (Kuwait City); Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art (Doha); Palestinian Museum (Ramallah) and Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation (Abu Dhabi).

The two-day workshop is an opportunity to share best practice and debate both practical and conceptual ideas around the digitisation of archives and artworks. Around 24 participants were selected for the workshop, with priority given to those working in this area and based in the GCC and wider Middle East/South Asia region.

Through an engagement with some of the existing and on-going archival projects in South Asia and West Asia, this workshop examines the very practice of archiving in a digital world as it is conducted in research institutions as well as its appropriation in artistic practice. The workshop includes presentations and open-floor discussions to explore various questions ranging from

what forms can archives take in the current technological milieu; how do we recover undocumented histories; can the very field of visual art be re-imagined through archiving; and, what questions do we want to ask of the future and what shape will we give to the past?

The workshop takes as its point of departure the possibilities that lie in the wake of new archival initiatives in the Arab world and south Asia, reaching out to individuals and entities engaged in or developing a project on digitising material.

GLOBAL ART FORUM

Workshop Leaders Kristine Khouri is an independent researcher and writer based in Beirut, Lebanon. Her work focuses on modern art history in the Arab world, with an emphasis on institutional and exhibition history and networks. Khouri also frequently collaborates with artists as a researcher. @kristinekhouri The Sultan Gallery has played an important role over the last forty years in introducing Arab artists to broader audiences, and helping to establish a vital dialogue among artists and institutions working internationally. The Sultan Gallery was initially founded in Kuwait in 1969 by the late siblings Ghazi and Najat Sultan. @SultanGallery Sabih Ahmed is a Senior Researcher at Asia Art Archive. Stationed in New Delhi, he has overseen numerous projects and research initiatives in India which include digitisation

35

36

of personal archives as well as bibliography compilations of multi-lingual histories of art.

Asia Art Archive is an independent nonprofit organisation initiated in 2000 in response to the urgent need to document and make accessible the multiple recent histories of art in the region. AAA has collated one of the most valuable collections of material on contemporary art in the region—open to the public free of charge and increasingly accessible from its website. @AsiaArtArchive

37

DAILY SCHEDULE

40 Day 1 and 2 of the Global Art Forum took place on March 14 and 15 in Dar Al-Athar Al-Islamiyyah, Amricani Cultural Centre in Kuwait City. For more information visit artdubai.ae

WEDNESDAY MARCH 18

ART DUBAI, MINA A’ SALAM, MADINAT JUMEIRAH, DUBAI

DAY 3 3:00 - 3:15pm Welcome and Introduction: Shumon Basar (Writer and Global Art Forum 9 Director-at-Large), Turi Munthe (Media Entrepreneur and Global Art Forum 9 Codirector) and Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi (UAE Columnist and Global Art Forum 9 Codirector) 3:15-4:15pm Discussion Strangers, Welcome: New Invisible Publics Gala Berger (Artist and co-founder of Museo La Ene, Galería Inmigrante and Urgente platform), Kate Fowle (Chief Curator, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art), Gabriel Pérez-Barriero (Director and Chief Curator, Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros) and Jack Persekian (Director and Head Curator, Palestinian Museum) 4:15-4:45pm Architecture Effects: Moving On After Progress Troy Conrad Therrien (Curator, Architecture and Digital Initiatives Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Museum)

4:45-5:15pm Discussion Too Long; Didn’t Read Christopher Bevans (Design Director for M3/ Relativity, and Director's Fellow at MIT Media Lab) and Turi Munthe (Media Entrepreneur and Global Art Forum 9 Co-director) 5:15-5:45pm Break

6:05-6:45pm Conversation We Live in the Exoskeleton of the Internet James Bridle (Writer and artist) and Omar Kholeif (Writer, curator and editor)

DAILY SCHEDULE

5:45-6:05pm Presentation Aural Contract: The Voice Before The Law Lawrence Abu Hamdan (Artist) introduced

by Lara Khaldi (Independent curator and 2015 Curator of Art Dubai Projects and A.i.R Dubai)

6:45-7:30pm Discussion Live Transmission: 50 Years of Media in the UAE Dr. Saoud Al Mulla (Director, Higher Colleges of Technology – Dubai Colleges), Hessa Al Ossaily (General Supervisor of Programmes at Al Oula radio) and Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi (UAE Columnist and Global Art Forum 9 Codirector)

41

42

THURSDAY March 19

ART DUBAI, MINA A’ SALAM, MADINAT JUMEIRAH, DUBAI

DAY 4 3:00 - 3:15pm Welcome and Introduction: Shumon Basar (Writer and Global Art Forum 9 Director-at-Large), Turi Munthe (Media Entrepreneur and Global Art Forum 9 Codirector) and Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi (UAE Columnist and Global Art Forum 9 Codirector) 3:15-4:15pm Discussion Values, Virtues and The Virtual Georgina Adam (Author and art market Editor-at-Large, The Art Newspaper, art market columnist, The Financial Times), Sebastian Cwilich (President and COO, Artsy), Thomas Galbraith (Managing Director, Paddle8) and Anders Petterson (Founder and Managing Director, ArtTactic) 4:15-4:45pm Presentation Death Of The Ivory Tower: Why Applied Education Will Define The Future Ayesha Khanna (CEO, Technology Quotient)

4:45-5:15pm Break 5:15-6:15pm Discussion Cities: How Good Is Smart?

Ayssar Arida (Urbatect and author, CoCreator of urbacraft City Crafting System), Amar Bakshi (Founder and Lead Artist, Shared Studios, JD Candidate at Yale University), Parag Khanna (Managing Partner, Hybrid Reality Pte Ltd) and Noah Raford (Advisor, Special Projects, UAE Prime Minister’s Office) DAILY SCHEDULE

6:15-6:45pm Presentation The Use and Abuse of Youtube for Life The Otolith Group (Co-founders Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar) and Shumon Basar (Writer and Global Art Forum 9 Director-atLarge) 6:45-07:30pm Conversation Tmai (Too Much Artificial Intelligence) Cécile B. Evans (Artist), Dan O’Hara (Senior Lecturer in English Literature, New College of the Humanities) and Shumon Basar (Writer and Global Art Forum 9 Director-at-Large)

43

44

FRIDAY March 20 ART DUBAI, MINA A’ SALAM, MADINAT JUMEIRAH, DUBAI

DAY 5 5:30-6:15pm Presentation The Work of Art in The Age of Digital Natives Laurent Gaveau (Head of the Lab, Google Cultural Institute) and Shumon Basar (Writer and Global Art Forum 9 Director-at-Large) 6:15-6:45pm Presentation Middle East Team Building 89PLUS Abdulla Al Mutairi (Artist), Simon Castets (Director and curator, Swiss Institute / Contemporary Art) and Hans Ulrich Obrist (Curator, co-director of exhibitions and programmes and director of international projects) 7:45-7:30pm Discussion Middle East Team Laboratory 89PLUS

Free and open to all, this year’s Global Art Forum is simultaneously translated into Arabic and English. Please visit artdubai.ae for the schedule and programme timings of the Global Art Forum talks in Dubai on March 18-20 at Art Dubai, next to Art Dubai Modern, at Mina A’Salam, Madinat Jumeirah.

DAILY SCHEDULE 45

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

48

GLOBAL ART FORUM 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, fashion and luxury industry.

It offers businesses, entrepreneurs and

The Tamdeen Group, Kuwait’s outstanding property developer and investor, is proud to support the Global Art Forum in Kuwait.

One of the Tamdeen Group’s flagship developments, 360 MALL integrates retail, leisure and entertainment in a luxury environment; positioning it as the premier luxury shopping experience in Kuwait offering shoppers and visitors 82,000 sq.m of exciting leisure and shopping experiences.

Amongst its stores are a mix of luxury brands, dining and entertainment which have been introduced for the first time in Kuwait.

The mall’s elegant interiors include seven different experience zones. 360 MALL marks a milestone in the growth of the retail sector

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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.

49

50

in Kuwait and is clearly setting benchmarks for the industry.

The Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah (DAI) was created to support the loan of objects from the al-Sabah Collection to the State of Kuwait and currently operates under the auspices of the National Council of Culture, Arts, and Letters.

Over time the mission has grown to include promoting the fusion of people, cultures and ideas both in Kuwait and in countries hosting DAI exhibitions, which are drawn from the 30,000-piece al-Sabah Collection. The DAI’s cultural season programme, now in its 20th year, also foments the fusion of ideas, people and cultures. Throughout the cultural season, the DAI hosts activities and events that share aspects of the world around us, opening its doors to welcome all those who choose to enter and participate.

Sultan Gallery has played an important role over the last forty years in introducing Arab artists to broader audiences, and helping to establish a vital dialogue among artists and institutions working internationally. The Sultan Gallery was initially founded in Kuwait in 1969 by the late siblings Ghazi and Najat Sultan. Up until 1990 it operated thoroughly as a convergence point for not only artists and intellectuals exploring polemic issues on Arab society, but also the general public.

The mission of Sultan Gallery has since been about propagating contemporary and secular movements through Arab art. Upon reopening its doors to the public in 2006, director of the space, Farida Sultan, has continued working

avidly with a wide range of artists to advance a critical art discourse emerging in the country. The Gallery takes pride in supporting up-and-coming artists, and is highly receptive to experimental practices dealing with sound, video, performance, publications, as well as networks and the media.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Nuqat, first known as “Nuqat Ala Al Huroof,” started off with one objective in mind - to develop Arab creativity on all levels, encompassing design, advertising, architecture, fashion, production and all other pertinent social and cultural fields.

Established out of frustration with the lack of spirited exchange in the Middle East, the Nuqat team is made up of like-minded cultural visionaries from Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Dubai who have a growing optimism about fueling creative dialogue in the region. Nuqat’s mission as growing cultural force is to advance creativity and enrich society. It aims to establish Nuqat institutes in different cities across the Middle East and to develop a specialized educational curriculum, in addition to organizing the ongoing annual Nuqat conferences for tackling a variety of pressing topics in the creative realm. Since 2009, Nuqat has hosted a yearly conference and a wide range of activities including workshops, exhibitions and design competitions.

The International New York Times is the international media partner of the Global Art Forum.

51

52

Special thanks to Sabih Ahmed Shurooq Alghanim Abed Al Kadiri Marzooq Al Marzooq Mohammad Jassim Al Marzouq Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi Muath Al-Roumi Sheikha Hussah Sabah al-Salem al-Sabah Sheikha Paula al-Sabah Barrak Alzaid Katherine C. Baker Tayseer Barakat Shumon Basar Amer Huneidi Sue Kaoukji Kristine Khouri Turi Munthe Hammad Nasar Nuqat Rana Sadik Farida Sultan All at The Dubai Culture and Arts Authority All at Dubai Design District (d3)

53