Doha: The implications of the pandemic to museums and cities will be at the nucleus of a three-day virtual visual arts conference organised by Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art and Doha Institute for Graduate Studies (DI).
The continuation of highly engaging sessions which kicked off late last year, The Visual Arts Studies Third Annual Conference 2020-2021 titled “The Future Museum in the Future City” will be streamed via Zoom from April 25 to 27.
“In this edition of the conference, we look at the implications of the current pandemic on the futures of museums and cities. We expect the conference to be an open platform for a discussion of the questions concerning the various potential scenarios that are likely to come upon us in the foreseeable future,” wrote Qatar Museums in an e-mail to its Culture Pass members. QM invites Culture Pass members to attend the different online sessions, and engage critically with the presentations of the guest speakers.
The conference, which will be conducted in English and Arabic with simultaneous translation, will be opened by Mathaf Director Abdellah Karroum, and Associate Professor at DI Ismail Nashef.
With more than 20 expert speakers from different parts of the world, the three-day conference comprises five sessions beginning with “Critical Reading of the Urban Formative Forces of the Plagued City.” To be moderated by Amal Alhaag, Researcher and Curator - Curatorial and Research Consultant at Mathaf, this session will see Adham Selim, an independent researcher, speak on “Speculative and Excessive: Of Finance, Architecture and Contemporary Museums in the Arab World”, Mohammed Ouassit, lawyer and lecturer, talk about “Legal Protection of Mobile Traditional Artefacts in the Arab World in Times of Armed Conflicts and Pandemics” and Ali A. Alraouf, professor of Architecture and Urbanism, discuss “Qatar A Tale of Two Cities, Two Museums and One Starchitect: Contesting Cities, Communities and Museums Relationship.”
Other sessions lined up for the conference include “Revising the History of the Modern Museum in Light of the Current Pandemic,” “Speculating and Foreseeing the Future Possible Relations of the Museum and the City,” “The Possibilities of Visualizing the New Bio-Political Regime(s), and the Invention of Ways of Resisting It,” and “The Positionality of the Viewer: The Southern Scene and its Deconstructive Charge/Claim.”
