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GLOBAL ART FORUM

GLOBAL ART FORUM 12: “I AM NOT A ROBOT”

The Global Art Forum 2018 focused on the power, paranoia and potentials of automation. Entitled “I Am Not a Robot”, the 12th edition of the transdisciplinary summit was programmed by Commissioner Shumon Basar, with Chief Operating Officer and Futurist-in-Chief of the Dubai Future Foundation Noah Raford, and Curator of Digital Culture & Design Collection at the MAK, Vienna, Marlies Wirth, as Co-Directors.


The implications of automation run through our lives today and tomorrow: from machine learning, to algorithmic policy-making, social credit scores and gene editing. It is said that automation, more than any other factor, will fundamentally alter our working lives (leading Bill Gates to suggest robots pay taxes). This brings about the ambient fear of automation. We’ve already heard the first AI composed pop song and can read the first AI authored short story. Where does this all leave the fate of the human? And what exactly are machines saying about us behind our backs? “I Am Not a Robot” becomes a natural sequel to previous editions that dealt with technology, the future and trade.


After the debut at the Serpentine Gallery’s Marathon, the Forum’s programme opened at a special evening in Dubai Design District on February 14 2018 and continued at the renowned three-day event at Art Dubai, during March 21-23 2018.


Art Dubai’s Global Art Forum was presented by the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority (Dubai Culture) and supported by Dubai Design District (d3).


Metropolis. Brigitte Helm being prepared for Robot scene.  Germany 1925/26. Director: Fritz Lang

GLOBAL ART FORUM 12: FULL PROGRAMME



DUBAI DESIGN DISTRICT, BETWEEN BUILDING 8 AND 9


Past Session


6:30-6:40pm

WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
By Global Art Forum Commissioner Shumon Basar and Co-Directors Noah Raford and Marlies Wirth


6:40-6:50pm

I AM SHE: SOME FEMALE AUTOMATA FROM CINEMA
PRESENTATION
Shumon Basar
Cinema — that 20th century mass art form — provides one of the most fertile settings for history’s enduring experiments with man-made women. Shumon Basar outlined a brief genealogy and draws upon examples from the films Metropolis, Alphaville, Blade Runner (and its recent sequel Blade Runner 2049), Ex Machina and a few Scarlett Johansson led titles. What are the cultural and psychological values invested in cinema’s female robots? And why are men so scared?


6:50-7:00pm

I AM AI DIPLOMAT: ALIEN PROTOCOLS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS OF THE MIND
POLEMIC
Noah Raford
According to some, we are within a decade of the arrival of artificial general intelligence; machines so powerful that they can do anything a human being can, but faster, better, and more accurately. How will we handle the arrival of such a phenomena? How might this impact our world and what ways should we be thinking about possible responses? This whimsical talk explores serious issues through the lens of aliens, international relations, and medieval diplomacy to help us better understand the landscape we may face in the future.


7:00-7:15pm

ARE WE ARTIFICIAL: TWO RECENT EXHIBITIONS
LECTURE
Marlies Wirth
Hello Robot and Artificial Tears were two recent exhibitions in Vienna which dealt with the complex issues around automatization. Hello Robot looked at how design shaped our relationship with technology and with each other. Artificial Tears took a science-fiction position: asking what makes us “human” in this day and age, or if we are “artificial” after all. Co-curator Marlies Wirth talked us through both shows, and how these kinds of technologies are increasingly entering museum space in unexpected ways


7:15-8:00pm

I AM A HUMAN ARTIST
PRESENTATION AND DISCUSSION
Artist and Writer James Bridle, Hosted by Shumon Basar, Noah Raford, Marlies Wirth
How are artists engaging with technologies of automation, as well as the ever increasing automation of the world? With a background in linguistics and Artificial Intelligence, the artist James Bridle has dealt with predictive big data, drones, and the ethical problems posed by YouTube. Here, he discussed his ideas and work, and the social and political concerns facing the current moment.



ART DUBAI, FORT ISLAND, MADINAT JUMEIRAH


2:00-2:15pm

WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
By Global Art Forum Commissioner Shumon Basar with Chief Operating Officer and Futurist-in-Chief of the Dubai Future Foundation Noah Raford, and Curator of Digital Culture & Design Collection at the MAK, Vienna, Marlies Wirth, as Co-Directors.


2:15-2:45pm

IAMAI
LECTURE
Media Theorist Paul Feigelfeld
What are the apocryphal histories of computing, and artificial/machine intelligence? Its obscure layers and lairs? The cryptic and alien languages it speaks? And the images it imagines but we cannot see? In this lecture, we looked for the Cloud at the bottom of the oceans and for platforms in the skies. We travelled the land of the blind and went mind jogging in China.



2:45-3:45pm

I AM NOT WESTERN AI: ANIMALS, ALIENS, AND ALTERNATE PHILOSOPHIES OF MIND
DISCUSSION
Assistant Professor, Academy of Media Arts Cologne Mi You, National Technology Officer Microsoft China Ltd Qing Wei, Professor, Philosophy Department,  Autonomous University of Barcelona Jordi Vallverdú, Hosted by Noah Raford
How did intelligence, cognition, and concepts of the self varied across cultures (and species)? How might this influenced the development of AI? From robot monks in Japan that held perpetual prayers, to octopus consciousness and multi-bodied minds, the creation of perceiving machines reflected deeply on our sense of self, and indeed, life itself.



3:45-4:15pm

AM I STILL EMPLOYED: JOBS, JOYS, AND WHAT DO YOU DO
LECTURE AND CONVERSATION
Head of Research, Dubai Future Foundation Jessica Bland with Shumon Basar
For hundreds of years, new waves of technology have motivated fresh fears of automation of human labour. Some of this fear has been about loss of jobs. But that is wound together with worries about loss of personal identity. We now develop machines that can take on tasks deeply woven into our human identities – producing knowledge, decisions and, perhaps, intelligence. What kind of social order would  remain in a world without economic status or knowledge work as hierarchy? Do Gulf nations have a head start in understanding what comes next?



4:15-4:30pm

BREAK


4:30-5:00pm

I AM AWESOME, ANNOYING AND AWFUL: AI IN EVERYDAY LIFE, 2050
CONVERSATION
Product and Interaction Designer Simone Rebaudengo with Noah Raford
AI will take many forms in the future, from self-selling disposable goods to terrifying, continent-wide minds that shape entire industries. How will these minds interact with our everyday goods and experiences? Will it be awesome, annoying, or awful? A pantheon of negotiation, a paradise of domination, or a compound of complication?



5:00-5:30pm

I AM A HYPERSTITION
LECTURE
Artist, Writer and Trend Forecaster Emily Segal
“Hyperstition” was a term coined in the 1990s to describe fictions that make themselves true – a form of automation in their own right. This lecture presented new research from the think-tank Nemesis that recasted the concept of Hyperstition in the contemporary moment, mapping the architecture of hype and its vectors of development.



5:30-6:30pm

I AM A HUMAN ARTIST: PART 1
DISCUSSION
Artists Rokni, Ramin Haerizadeh & Hesam Rahmanian, Yuri Pattison, Ania Soliman, Hosted by Writer Melissa Gronlund
How were artists engaged with technologies of automation, as well as the ever increased automation of the world? What new kinds of aesthetics, experiences and knowledge emerged? From interactive puppetry to robot choreography via the unconscious intent of algorithms, these artists discussed their ideas and work, and the complex concerns facing the current moment.




ART DUBAI, FORT ISLAND, MADINAT JUMEIRAH


10:00am-12:30pm

I AM/NOT A ROBOT
WORKSHOP
Artists Isabel Lewis and Asad Raza
Artists Isabel Lewis and Asad Raza offered a workshop to interested members of the public. The workshop format allowed a more thorough immersion in the practices and ideas specific to Lewis and Raza’s work, and took the format of a group participation in a collective live interaction. Lewis and Raza focused on the notion of the cyborg using texts by Donna Haraway and others as a guide. The workshop also functioned as a moment of collective creation for a public presentation that occurred at 6pm that evening.


2:00-2:15pm

WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
By Global Art Forum Commissioner Shumon Basar with Chief Operating Officer and Futurist-in-Chief of the Dubai Future Foundation Noah Raford, and Curator of Digital Culture & Design Collection at the MAK, Vienna, Marlies Wirth, as Co-Directors.


2:15-3:15pm

I AM A HUMAN ARTIST: PART 2
DISCUSSION
Artist and “Private Ear” Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Artists Katja Novitskova, Pamela Rosenkranz, Hosted by CTO Serpentine Galleries London and Initiator unMonastery Ben Vickers
How are artists engaging with technologies of automation, as well as the ever increasing automation of the world? What new kinds of aesthetics, experiences and knowledge emerge? From aural surveillance to neuropharmacology via the sculptural qualities of Internet images, these artists discussed their ideas and work, and the accelerated textures of the present moment.



3:15-3:45pm  

IS IT DJINN: GHOSTS, MACHINES, MUSIC
CONVERSATION
Music Producer and Artist Fatima Al Qadiri and Shumon Basar
Long before Artificial Intelligence arrived, technology has often been framed as a supernatural force. There are maybe more “ghosts in the machine” now than there are human beings in the world. Fatima Al Qadiri’s work, too, is haunted by many things. A Kuwaiti childhood during the first Gulf War shaped a sonic sensibility, which in turn has produced music redolent of war video games and a spirit world. She discussed the links between sound and memory, djinn and the digital.



3:45-4:45pm

I AM HUMAN: CAN YOU PROVE IT?
DISCUSSION
Artist and Architect Alessandro Bava, Designer Simone Niquille, Artist and Writer Patricia Reed, Hosted by Marlies Wirth
Supranational structures (Google, Amazon, Alibaba) preside over our knowledge and technology. They cunningly manipulate the masses with the use of self-learning algorithms and streamlined filter bubbles. But should our major societal decisions be given over to what Hito Steyerl has described as “Artificial Stupidity”? As we increasingly inhabit responsive environments that attempt to predict our wishes and desires before we even have them, this discussion identified the shifts in personal and political dynamics, and the role of human agency in a non-human world.



4:45-5:00pm

REPORT FROM THE SERPENTINE MARATHON 2017
PRESENTATION
Artistic Director Serpentine Galleries London Hans Ulrich Obrist and Ben Vickers
The 2017 Marathon, entitled “Guest, Ghost, Host: Machine!,” brought together artists, scientists, activists, engineers, poets, sociologists, philosophers, filmmakers, writers, anthropologists, theologians and musicians to consider the advent of “artificial intelligence,” consciousness, interspecies cooperation, trans-humanism and non-linear time. The Marathon sought to illuminate the ways in which these fields of exploration leave unrecognizable traces and unknowable apparitions in the present.



5:00-6:00pm

I AM DISTRIBUTED: AT THE FRONTIERS OF THE BLOCKCHAIN
DISCUSSION
Theorist Jaya Klara Brekke and Architect and Musician Martti Kalliala, Hosted by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Ben Vickers
The blockchain is a database validated by a global community, and backed by code/math, rather than a central authority. Many claims are made for it: from introducing a new, better Internet to disempowering centralized banks. But what does the geography of the blockchain look like? What are its politics? And what is a “Decentralized Autonomous Rave Scene?” This discussion explored the still-emerging philosophy and technology of the blockchain and the kind of world it might bring about.



6:00-6:30pm

I AM/NOT A ROBOT
PERFORMANCE
Artist and Dancer Isabel Lewis and Artist Asad Raza
A playful encounter between crafters of live experience Isabel Lewis and Asad Raza using voice, text, electronic music and vocal processing. Following their open workshop earlier in the day, Raza and Lewis addressed the particular agency we could and do have in our current condition as real cyborgs.



ART DUBAI, FORT ISLAND, MADINAT JUMEIRAH


2:00-2:05pm

WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
By Global Art Forum Commissioner Shumon Basar with Chief Operating Officer and Futurist-in-Chief of the Dubai Future Foundation Noah Raford, and Curator of Digital Culture & Design Collection at the MAK, Vienna, Marlies Wirth, as Co-Directors.


2:05-2:45pm  

AM I A SAD ROBOT: THE CLINIC OF AI
LECTURE
Philosopher and Writer Aaron Schuster
Why are AI’s typically portrayed in popular culture as murderous/psychotic, bent on wiping out the human race? Wouldn’t intelligent machines run the full range of human psychopathologies? Think of Marvin, the melancholic robot from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Isn’t it more likely that a hyperintelligent AI would become depressed, not aggressive? Perhaps in the future, the main role of human beings will be to minister therapeutically to depressed AIs, whose melancholic bouts threaten civilization with digital malaise and total breakdown. In this lecture, Schuster explored the “clinic of AI:” the psychopathologies of our machine intelligent future.



2:45-3:00pm  

BREAK (SET CHANGE)


3:00-6:00pm


PRESENTS ‘CONSIDER THE ROBOT & “OTHER” STATES OF FUTURENESS’
SCREENINGS AND CONVERSATION
Cinema Akil presents a filmic framework of intersectional imagination.
Sci-fi short mockumentary Last Days of the Man of Tomorrow (2017) takes a look at Lebanon’s history through the life and legend of Manivelle, an automaton gifted to the nation  in 1945, making it the country’s first AI citizen. In Wanuri Kahui’s sci-fi drama Pumzi (2009), a post-apocalyptic future East Africa is visited, 35 years after World War III. Together, the two sci-fi shorts will unthink Eurocentric depictions of imminent automation. A conversation between Pumzi director Wanuri Kahui and writer/curator Özge Calafato explores these themes deeper. Cinema Akil at GAF12 will close with the Middle East premiere of the documentary Free Lunch Society (2017) as the Lexus, the Nexis and the Auto Tree collide and crossover to face UBI realpolitik.


3:00-3:30pm  

LAST DAYS OF THE MAN OF TOMORROW
SCREENING
2017 | Lebanon, Germany | PG | Animation | Arabic |
Director Fadi Baki
A young filmmaker investigates the legend of “Manivelle”, an automaton gifted to Lebanon in 1945 that still haunts an abandoned mansion in Beirut. After being coaxed back into the limelight, the people who knew him come forward to speak out and the myth that “Manivelle” has constructed around himself starts to unravel.


3:30-4:00pm  

PUMZI
SCREENING
2009 | Kenya, South Africa | PG | Short, Sci-Fi | English
Director Wanuri Kahiu
Nature is extinct. The outside is dead. Asha lives and works as a museum curator in one of the indoor communities set up by the Maitu Council. When she receives a box in the mail containing soil, she plants an old seed in it and the seed starts to germinate instantly. Asha appeals to the Council to grant her permission to investigate the possibility of life on the outside but the Council denies her exit visa. Asha breaks out of the inside community to go into the dead and derelict outside to plant the growing seedling and possibly find life on the outside.


4:00-4:30pm  

PUMZI Q&A
CONVERSATION
Wanuri Kahiu and Writer and Curator Özge Calafato
Özge Calafato talked to Wanuri Kahiu about the themes behind her acclaimed sci-fi short, the increasing ways Africa finds itself fast forwarding to an automated present, and the recent cinematic languages of non-Euroamerican futurism.



4:30-6:00pm  

FREE LUNCH SOCIETY
SCREENING
2017 | Austria, Germany | PG | Documentary | German, English |
Director Christian Tod
What would you do if your income were taken care of? Just a few years ago, an unconditional basic income was considered a pipe dream. Today, this utopia is more imaginable than ever before – intense discussions are taking place in all political and scientific camps. Free Lunch Society provides background information about this idea and searches for explanations, possibilities and experiences regarding its implementation.


GLOBAL ART FORUM 12: CONTRIBUTORS

COMMISSIONER

Shumon Basar is a writer, curator and cultural critic. He is Commissioner of the Global Art Forum in Dubai; Editor-at-large of Tank magazine; Contributing Editor at Bidoun magazine; Director of the Format programme at the AA School; part of Art Jameel’s Curatorial Council; and a member of Fondazione Prada’s Thought Council. His most recent book, co-authored with Douglas Coupland and Hans Ulrich Obrist, is “The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present.” @shumonbasar

CO-DIRECTORS

Noah Raford is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Futurist-in-Chief of the Dubai Future Foundation. He was also a former advisor on futures, foresight, and innovation for the UAE Prime Minister’s Office. As part of a team that identifies emerging opportunities and future initiatives for the Government of Dubai, his work helps frame the UAE as a global test-bed for 21st Century technologies and ideas. He is currently leading the construction and curation of the Museum of the Future (opening in 2019), as well as various public sector transformation initiatives. He lives in Dubai and is a semi-retired techno DJ. @nraford



Marlies Wirth is a curator and art historian based in Vienna, Austria. With a background in contemporary art she has been active at the MAK – the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art in Vienna, since 2006, where she has worked closely with MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles and was appointed curator in 2009. She was recently named Curator of Digital Culture & Design Collection at the MAK. She curates exhibitions, programmes and discursive events in the fields of art, design, architecture, media and technology, and has had a key role in the programming of VIENNA BIENNALE 2017. Next to her institutional practice, she develops independent exhibition projects with international artists, and writes essays and texts for artists and publications. Recent exhibitions include the themed group show “Artificial Tears” and “ich weiß nicht [I don’t know] – Growing Relations between Things” (Vienna Biennale 2017), the group show “24/7: the Human Condition” (Vienna Biennale 2015). She is also part of the curatorial team for the international travelling exhibition “Hello, Robot. Design between Human and Machine” (2017, MAK in cooperation with Vitra Design Museum and Design Museum Gent). @marlieswirth

CONTRIBUTORS’ BIOGRAPHIES

Lawrence Abu Hamdan is an artist and “Private Ear” who creates audiovisual installations and conducted investigations with Forensic Architecture for organizations such as Amnesty International and DCI-Palestine.


Fatima Al Qadiri is a music producer and artist. She has released music as a solo artist on Hyperdub, UNO NYC and Fade to Mind, and as a member of Future Brown on Warp. She is also a member of the collective GCC, whose work has been shown at MoMA PS1, Berlin Bienniale and Sharjah Art Foundation.


Fadi [the fdz] Baki studied graphic design at the American University of Beirut and earned a MA in filmmaking from Goldsmiths College in London. He wrote, directed, short and edited the 40 minute mockumentary “It Came from Al-Makkab!” nominated for the FutureTV Award. In 2007 Fadi co-founded and edited Samandal Comics Magazine and currently divides his time between motion graphics, comics and filmmaking.


Alessandro Bava is an artist based in London, UK and Naples, Italy. His recent work focuses on augmented intelligence in its embodied and spatial dimensions. He is the founder of the art collective åyr, researching contemporary domesticity, and the independent ecology magazine and publishing platform ECOCORE.


Jessica Bland is Head of Research at the Dubai Future Foundation, previously head of the technology futures team at Nesta, a UK foundation. She works on the governance of emerging technologies – particularly artificial intelligence, synthetic biology and open science.


Jaya Klara Brekke writes, does research and speaks on the politics and power of distributed systems, blockchain and consensus protocols. She is the author of the Satoshi Oath and the B9Lab ethical training module for blockchain developers and is based between London and Durham University Geography Department where she is writing a PhD.


James Bridle is a writer and artist whose works explore the cultural and political effects of new technologies, and have been commissioned by institutions worldwide. His book “New Dark Age: Technology, Knowledge and the End of the Future” is forthcoming in 2018.


Ozge Calafato currently works as the Project Manager for the Akkasah: Center for Photography at NYU Abu Dhabi and Programming Consultant for the Imagine Science Film Festival. She is co-founder and project director of the UAE National Film Library and Archive and has worked as a programmer and consultant for a number of film festivals and institutions including Cinema Akil and Abu Dhabi Film Festival. She has authored five books and worked as a journalist, editor and translator for several magazines.


Paul Feigelfeld is a Media Theorist based in Vienna. He is the Data and Research Architect of TBA21-Academy the exploratory, scientific and artistic research arm of Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary.


Melissa Gronlund is a writer based in Abu Dhabi. She is the author of Contemporary Art and Digital Culture (Routledge, 2016) and writes about art for The National, Artforum, Art Agenda and other venues. She is a former co-editor of Afterall and taught for many years at the Ruskin, University of Oxford.


Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian have lived and work together in Dubai since 2009. Their work has been exhibited at the Guggeneheim Abu Dhabi; ICA Boston; Kunsthalle Zurich; Trussardi foundation, Milan; Den Frie Center for Contemporary Art, Copenhagen; the New Museum, New York; Carnegie International 2013; and the Sharjah Biennial 2011, among others. Recipient of the Han Nefkens Foundation/MACBA Award, most recently exhibited at MACBA in Barcelona.


Wanuri Kahiu born in Nairobi is part of the new generation of African storytellers. Her stories and films have received international acclaim and her films screened in numerous film festivals around the world. To date, Wanuri has written and directed six films and is working on her second feature length film. She is the co-founder of AFROBUBBLEGUM, a media company that supports, creates and commissions fun, fierce and frivolous African art.


Martti Kalliala is an architect and musician. He is the co-founder of the think tank Nemesis and the other half of the electronic music act Amnesia Scanner, known for its involvement in the Decentralized Autonomous Rave Scene.


Isabel Lewis (​born 1981, Santo Domingo, DR) works on the aesthetics of the experiential creating spaces of sociable encounter between human and nonhuman agents in the format she’s named the hosted occasion. Lewis’ sensorial occasions have been presented internationally, recently at Tate Modern London, Ming Contemporary Art Museum in Shanghai, and Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin.


Simone C. Niquille is a designer and researcher. Her practice Technoflesh investigates the representation & digitisation of corporeality. She is a 2016 research Fellow at Het Nieuwe Instituut Rotterdam and a contributor to the Dutch Pavillion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2018.


Katja Novitskova follows ongoing ecological, social and informational processes in the times of biotic crisis, developing personal strategies to render world’s future forms. Novitskova represented Estonia at the 57th Venice Biennale. Recent solo exhibitions include CC Foundation, Schanghai (2017); Greene Naftali, New York (2016); Kunstverein Hamburg (2016). She has also exhibited at Okayama Art Summit 2016, the 9th Berlin Biennale; MoMA, New York (2015), the 13th Biennale de Lyon (2015), and Fridericianum, Kassel (2013).


Hans Ulrich Obrist (b. 1968, Zurich, Switzerland) is Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries, London. Prior to this, he was the Curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show “World Soup” (The Kitchen Show) in 1991, he has curated more than 300 shows. Obrist’s recent publications include Mondialité, Conversations in Colombia, Ways of Curating, The Age of Earthquakes with Douglas Coupland and Shumon Basar, and Lives of The Artists, Lives of The Architects.


Yuri Pattison is an artist living and working in London. Pattison was the recipient of the 2016 Frieze Artist Award. Recent solo exhibitions include context, collapse, mother’s tankstation project, London; Trusted Traveller, Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen (both 2017) and user, space, Chisenhale Gallery (2016).


Asad Raza combines experiences, human and non-human beings, and objects in his work as an artist. His recent projects include Untitled (plot for dialogue) at CONVERSO, Milan; Root sequence. Mother tongue at the Rockbund Museum, Shanghai, and the Whitney Biennial, New York; and Mondialité at the Villa Empain, Brussels.


Simone Rebaudengo collaborates with international clients exploring the future of connected and intelligent products. He’s funding member of automato.farm and visiting lecturer at Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design. His work is exhibited in international museums as Vitra and MAK and awarded by IxD Awards, Robot Film Festival, IDEA and Core77.


Patricia Reed is an artist and writer based in Berlin. Her elected exhibitions include those at The Museum of Capitalism, Oakland; Homeworks 7, Beirut; Witte de With, Rotterdam; and HKW, Berlin. Recent writings have been published in e-flux Architecture; Cold War Cold World (Urbanomic); and The Neurotic Turn (Repeater). She is part of the Laboria Cuboniks techno-feminist working group.


Pamela Rosenkranz work explores how physical and biological processes affect art. It addresses the shifting philosophical and scientific meanings of the “natural” and the “human” during Anthropocene. In 2015, Rosenkranz represented Switzerland at the Swiss Pavilion of the 56th Venice Biennale. Her most recent large scale installations were shown at the Louisiana Museum in Denmark, the Fondazione Prada in Milan, the K21 in Düsseldorf, and the GAMeC in Bergamo.


Aaron Schuster is a philosopher and writer, based in Amsterdam. He is the author of The Trouble with Pleasure: Deleuze and Psychoanalysis (MIT Press, 2016). He was a fellow at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry ICI Berlin and the Center for Advanced Studies Rijeka, Croatia. In 2016 he was a visiting professor at the University of Chicago.


Emily Segal is an artist, writer, and trend forecaster. She founded the art collective and trend forecasting group K-HOLE, and is currently the director of Nemesis, a think tank for cultural insights.


Ania Soliman has a drawing-based research practice, and is interested in readings of technology from a post-colonial perspective. Her work was shown at the Drawing Center (NY), the 2010 Whitney Biennial, 15th Istanbul Biennial, the Museum of Modern Art in Salzburg, and Museum of Culture in Basel.


Christian Tod is an accomplished economist and filmmaker. Tod’s first feature length documentary “Es muss was geben”  firmly established him as an auteur filmmaker after it got theatrically released nationwide and was shown at Filmfest Munchen and Crossing Europes 2010 edition. Free Lunch Society is his current and most ambitious film, and is the subject of his diploma and dissertation: the unconditional basic income.


Jordi Vallverdú is Professor at UAB (Catalonia), expert in Computational Philosophy and Cognitive Sciences, with interests on Western-Eastern Traditions, Minimal Cognition, Multi-heuristics, Artificial Creativity, Emotional Modeling, and Human-Robot Interactions. His cross-cultural and transdisciplinary approaches to academic research offer a new view on several current debates.


Ben Vickers is a curator, writer, explorer, technologist and luddite. He is CTO at the Serpentine Galleries in London and an initiator of the open-source monastic order unMonastery.


Qing Wei is currently the National Technology Officer in Microsoft China which allows him to evangelize Microsoft latest technology vision and innovation. Qing Wei is an ICT industry veteran who has been working in mobile communication, information technology and smart devices related business for over 25 years in Asia with Microsoft and Motorola. He is also an active public speaker and coach specialized in digital transformation.


Mi You travels physically and metaphysically on the silk road. She curated performative programs at Asian Culture Center (Gwangju) and the inaugural Ulaanbaatar International Media Art Festival (2016) taking the silk road as a figuration for deep-time, de-centralized and nomadic imageries. She researches on art/performance philosophy and science and technology studies.


Cinema Akil is an independent cinema platform that brings quality films from around the world to the audiences in Dubai. Showcasing directors and filmmakers spanning decades, genres and places, Cinema Akil aims to create awareness and interest in film and the cinematic arts. Launched in 2014, Cinema Akil has held over 35 pop up cinemas around Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah. Follow us into the dark. www.cinemaakil.com // Facebook – Cinema Akil // Twitter – @CinemaAkil // Instagram – @CinemaAkil // Snapchat – CinemaAkil #fortheloveoffilm



ABOUT THE GLOBAL ART FORUM



The Global Art Forum is an annual, transdisciplinary summit, based in Dubai, which combines original thinking and contemporary themes in an intimate, live environment. Since 2007, the Forum has been a key part of Art Dubai’s extensive cultural programming. It has brought together over 500 global minds from pop culture to renowned academia:  artists, curators, museum directors, filmmakers, novelists, historians, philosophers, technologists, entrepreneurs, musicians and performers, dialogue with one another across disciplines, reporting from every part of the world, painting a truly 21st century portrait of how the globalized world thinks.



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