On The Medium

This session explores the importance of medium to help us understand sound not just as noise, but as a way to see and experience our surroundings differently. Ultimately, we gain a deeper appreciation for how sound as a medium shape our experiences and the stories within our spaces. The session also helps us understand the embedded histories within specific soundscapes, giving us insight into how we can unearth histories of the environment through sound.

Day: Friday, 25 April
Time: 6.30PM - 9PM
Venue: WH50, Project Space

Click here to RSVP.


Speakers


Shumon Basar is a writer, thinker and curator with two decades' experience working in the Gulf. He is co-author of The Extreme Self and The Age of Earthquakes, both with Douglas Coupland and Hans Ulrich Obrist, and his books on the region include With/Without and Cities from Zero. Other roles have included long-term Commissioner of Art Dubai’s Global Art Forum; founding member of Fondazione Prada’s ‘Thought Council’; Expert Advisory Group for the Royal Commission of AlUla; Chief Narrative Officer and co-founder at web3 startup Zien; Public Programs Director at the Architectural Association; and he is currently helping to establish a new cultural platform in London with the Kamel Lazaar Foundation. Shumon has held editorial positions at the magazines TANK, Bidoun, 032c, Flash Art, and as Curator-in-residence at Zora Zine, produced a trilogy of pieces around his viral neologism, 'Lorecore.'

Safeya Alblooshi is a sound artist who experiments with found sound via participatory performance and installation. Her work extends to being presented and performed at the Expo 2020 Dubai, Louvre Abu Dhabi, Alserkal Avenue, IRCAM Forum, London Design Biennale, Festival X, Sharjah Art Foundation, and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. She was part of the second cohort of Numoo in 2023 at the NYUAD Arts Center, where she recently curated the 4th edition of ElectroFest, and the founder and organizer of Resound UAE supported by the National Grant Program for Culture & Creativity. Safeya just completed her 3 year tenure as a Research Fellow with the Music and Sound Cultures research group at NYU Abu Dhabi.

Susan Schuppli is a researcher and Director of the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London. Her fieldwork and documentary film practice is situated at the intersections between environmental struggles, climate science, and affected communities with a specific focus on the cryosphere. Investigations span legal analysis and public advocacy as well as theoretical reflection and creative exploration in order to understand how the transformations wrought by global burning are generating new forms of evidence. Granting agency to the more-than-human as a material witness informs her attempts at expanding the fields of action and justice. Recent films include: Moving Ice, Signals from Svalbard, Listening to Ice, Gondwana, Arctic Archipelago and Ice Cores. The Cold Cases (2021) investigations on the weaponisation of temperature were produced in collaboration with Forensic Architecture. Schuppli is the author of Material Witness: Forensics, Media, Evidence published by MIT Press in 2020.

John Thabiti Willis, Associate Professor of African History at the Africa Institute in Sharjah, is a scholar specializing in Africa's social and cultural history in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds. He holds a Ph.D. in History from Emory University, USA, and is an Associate Professor of African History at The Africa Institute, Sharjah. Before this, he served as an Associate Professor of African History at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, USA. Over the past decade, Willis has dedicated his research to uncovering the historical and cultural significance of Africa's contributions to pearling in the Gulf. His research utilizes a range of sources, including museum exhibits, manumission records, and heritage performances. In his latest project, Willis is collecting oral histories through ethnography and geographic information system methodologies to analyze the biographies of individuals who were involved in the pearling industry.
ASMR performance by Rasha


About AAVS Dubai

The AA VS Climate Cartographies is committed to exploring the longue durée of climate change at heritage sites by deploying cartographic thinking to create new maps that capture unexplored relations in our environment.

A glitch, often perceived as an error or disruption, serves as an unanticipated opportunity for insight and growth. Supported by Alserkal Arts Foundation, the AA Visiting School programme in Dubai explores the undefined or the in-between through situated spatial sonic practices that encompass listening, translation, and transcription.

The School’s agenda in Dubai examines the intersection of climate change and heritage, while considering innovative ways of representing these themes in and through the medium of sound. Along with a cohort of 20 architects, designers, cultural practitioners and artists, we will engage with research and artistic practices to examine the region’s complex history, paying close attention to our experience of sound and our relationship with the land.

Apart from our closed workshops with the AAVS cohort, the programme includes a series of public sessions where we invite you to join the conversation with experts from the fields of archaeology, museology, heritage studies, and contemporary art.