DOHA: Global Art Forum, which features more than 40 local and international contributors, will start its 2013 events at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art on March 17.
Bringing together artists, musicians, museum directors, strategists, writers and thinkers; Global Art Forum_7 will highlight commissioned projects and research, as well as hold six days of live talks on the theme ‘Definitionism’.
Global Art Forum is presented by the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority (Dubai Culture), and is held in partnership with Mathaf.
Artists and contributors include poet and author Mourid Barghouti (I Saw Ramallah, among other books), artist and former REM lead singer Michael Stipe and writer and artist Douglas Coupland.
Launched by Art Dubai in 2007, the forum has become the region’s leading annual platform for cultural discourse, with a particular emphasis on issues prevalent in the Middle East and Asia.
This year Global Art Forum is directed by Istanbul-based writer/editor HG Masters, and commissioned by writer/curator Shumon Basar.
Entitled ‘It Means This’, the forum explores the concept of ‘definitionism’: Investigating the words, terms, clichés and misunderstandings that proliferate in the art world and beyond. The forum will attempt to (re)define words, phrases and ideas we think we know, and those we need to know, to navigate the 21st century.
Each session of the forum will take on a keyword; some are terms used every day — such as Heritage, Biography, Freezone, Score and Place (looking particularly at how the cities of Lagos and Ramallah have been shaped by writers and artists).
Other terms may be less familiar — including Academese, Advert Adverts, Drone Fiction, MENA (Middle East Nervous Anxiety), or Neologism.
Among the new participants to the forum are political scientist Dr Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, writer-editors Charles Arsene-Henry, Brian Kuan Wood and Guy Mannes-Abbott; artists Tarek Atoui, Manal Al Dowayan, Shuruq Harb, Hassan Khan, Anri Sala, Payam Sharifi, Ala Younis, writers Elif Batuman, Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, Oscar Guardiola-Rivera; Lagos-based writer-editor Tolu Ogunlesi, writer/urbanist Keller Easterling, curator-translator, and Dar Al Ma’mun founder, Omar Berrada, curators Reem Fadda, Koyo Kouoh, Bisi Silva and Tirdad Zolghadr; New York-based anthropologist Uzma Z Rizvi, composer and musician Andre Vida, and Doha-based analyst and commentator Tarik Yousef.
The Global Art Forum_7 will include a range of commissioned projects and publications, including a series of “advert breaks” by artists Lantian Xie and Abdullah Al Mutairi.
Forum visitors are also invited to a special lecture by architect Rem Koolhaas at Virginia Commonwealth University’s biannual art and design conference, Tasmeem Doha 2013 – Hybrid Making, on March 17 following the Global Art Forum sessions at Mathaf. The Peninsula
