Entitled “Download Update?”, the 9th edition of the Global Art Forum takes on the theme of technologies and their impact on art and culture.
Beginning for the first time in Kuwait, the innovative and influential Global Art Forum brings together directors from leading art dotcoms to debate how technologies have transformed the art world.
Cécile B. Evans, ‘What a Feeling’, 2014. Image courtesy the artist.
The 2015 Forum is co-directed by Turi Munthe and Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, with Shumon Basar as Director-at-Large. Entitled “Download Update?”, the ninth edition of the Forum will take place first in Kuwait (14 – 15 March) and continue at Art Dubai (18 – 20 March).
Art and technology
Taking on the theme of technologies and their impact on the world of art, culture and beyond, the Forum’s dynamic agenda includes:
- A debate on the online art market featuring directors from leading art dotcoms.
- Presentations on the ways in which virtual museums in the Arab world and Latin America are reaching diasporic publics.
- Conversations with artists working at the forefront of new technologies: a look back at the first communication technologies in the Gulf, from newspapers to radio and cinema.
- A panel that asks whether we have “Too Much Artificial Intelligence”.
Initiating the dialogue, Shumon Basar says in the press release:
Perhaps nothing makes our lives feel better and worse at the same time than technology. [...] And while it’s humans who theoretically ‘invent’ technology, the truth is that it’s technology that ‘re-invents’ us humans constantly, in ways we aren’t aware of. ‘Download Update?’ is an opportunity to zoom out and take a screenshot of the world today, in all its high-definition glory and confusion.
Cécile B. Evans, ‘Suddenly The Human Voice – La Voix Humaine’, 2014. Image courtesy the artist.
A screenshot of the world
The Forum features an impressive line-up of speakers hailing from international art and technology spheres, with artists, writers and curators sharing the stage with some of the hottest tech innovators of our time. The list of international contributors includes:
- Alexander Asseily, founder of Jawbone
- Sebastian Cwilich, President and COO of Artsy
- Thomas Galbraith, Managing Director of Paddle8
- Christopher Bevans, Design Director of M3/Relativity
- Amit Sood, Director of the Google Cultural Project
- Ayesha Khanna, Digital Media in Education innovator
- Lawrence Abu Hamdan, artist
- Amar Bakshi, artist and writer
- James Bridle, artist, writer and technologist
- Manal Al Dowayan, artist
- Cécile B. Evans, artist
- GCC, artists’ collective
- Omar Kholeif, writer and curator
- Dan O’Hara, artist and writer
- The Otolith Group, artists’ collective
- Troy Therrien, artist and curator
Zooming in on the Gulf
Apart from discussing technology on an international level, the Forum intends for the conversation to zoom in specifically on the Gulf and the Middle East. Co-director Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi said in the press release that the Forum will
alter the conversation about technology and the Middle East, and shed light on how the region’s culture [is] being influenced by the streams of communication innovations that have appeared in the past few decades.
In an interview with Creative Time Reports Sultan Al Qassemi said:
There’s this impression that the Gulf, or the Middle East more broadly, is disconnected from the rest of the world. But a closer look makes it clear that some of the most connected youth in the world are based in Arab countries. Take Saudi Arabia—Riyadh is the tenth most Twitter-connected city in the world. Many Arab artists publish and sell their work using social media.
A selction of the 50 speakers in the Global Art Forum 2015. Image courtesy the contributors.
Tipping hats to Kuwait
This year the Forum begins for the first time in Kuwait, where a workshop on digitising archives, jointly organised by the Hong Kong Asia Art Archive and Sultan Gallery, will be hosted. In the Creative Time Reports interview, Al Qassemi revealed the decision behind having the Forum begin in Kuwait this year:
Kuwait was the launchpad for the globalisation of Gulf culture over half a century ago. Kuwait is where some of the earliest radio, cinema, theatre and even political and social movements of the Gulf originated several decades ago. Kuwait was also the launchpad for the first Gulf publication in colour. [...] For the first time, the Gulf had moved from being a receiver of culture—from the West, India and other parts of the Arab world—to being a broadcaster, a publisher, a producer of popular content. This is our way of tipping our hat to Kuwait and recognising its pioneering role in the globalisation of culture.
Michele Chan
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Related Topics: art in the UAE, art fairs, forums, art and the internet, art and globalisation, events in Kuwait, events in Dubai
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