Opening on March 13, Sharjah Biennial 11 will present an exciting programme, with more than 100 participants from 41 countries showcasing new commissions, music, films, performances, talks and the annual March Meeting. Re:emerge - Towards a New Cultural Cartography is curated by Yuko Hasegawa, who proposes a Biennial that reassess the Westerncentrism of knowledge in modern times and reconsiders the relationship between the Arab world, Asia, the Far East, through North Africa and Latin America.
One of the oldest contemporary arts initiatives in the Middle East, Sharjah Biennial 11 will commence with an official opening ceremony in the presence of HH Sheikh Dr Sultan Bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, Member of the UAE Supreme Council and Ruler of Sharjah and HE Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi, President and Director of Sharjah Art Foundation, along with Sharjah Biennial 11 Curator Yuko Hasegawa. Events March 13–17 will include performances, films, lectures, and the annual March Meeting, a symposium featuring presentations, thematic sessions, and panels that will contextualise the concept of SB11.
The opening of SB11 will mark the inauguration of SAF’s five new multi-functional art spaces in the Sharjah Heritage Area, which have been in development since 2009. With approximately 20,000 square feet of interior space, connected by open-air courtyards and rooftop terraces, these new spaces will provide venues for SAF’s growing activities and the increasing needs of its community.
March Meeting 2013 explores the concept of SB11. Inspired by the courtyard in Islamic architecture—in particular the historical courtyards of Sharjah, where elements of both public and private life intertwine—SB11 Curator Yuko Hasegawa proposes a new cultural cartography that reconsiders the relationships between the Arab world, Asia, the Far East, through North Africa to Latin America.
Curated by Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, it will feature programming by leading figures in the film industry, including Steve Anker, Dean of the School of Film/Video at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), Los Angeles; Khavn De La Cruz, poet, pianist, filmmaker, Mondomanila, the Philippines; Ali Jaafar, Executive Director, Independent Film Division, Quinta Communications, London; Mehelli Modi, Founder of Second Run DVD, London; Alcino Leite Neto, editor, Sao Paulo; Jean-Pierre Rehm, theorist, Festival Director, FIDMarseille, Paris; Tilda Swinton, Scotland; and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, film director/ producer, Chiang Mai, Thailand. The programme will include evening screenings in an outdoor cinema in SAF’s new art spaces of commissioned films, existing productions, and curated film programmes.
International and regional artists will be featured in a series of music and performance events that will take place throughout SB11. As part of this programme, Lebanese sound artist Tarek Atoui will orchestrate a series of new commissions by more than ten international musicians, including percussionists who will perform on the roofscape of SAF’s art spaces, and an SB11 commissioned solo performance by Egyptian artist Hassan Khan during the opening week. Also during the opening week is a performance by alva noto with a special appearance by Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Later events include a Skype-based dance performance by Tunisian dancer and choreographer duo Selma and Sofiane Ouissi and an audiovisual concert by Japanese sound artist Ryoji Ikeda in April.
In Re:emerge - Towards a New Cultural Cartography, curator Yuko Hasegawa proposes a Biennial that reassess the Westerncentrism of knowledge in modern times and reconsiders the relationship between the Arab world, Asia, the Far East, through North Africa and Latin America.
Hasegawa was inspired by the courtyard in Islamic architecture, in particular the historical courtyards of Sharjah, where elements of both public and private life intertwine, and where the objective political world and the introspective subjective space intersect and cross over.
The courtyard is also seen as a plane of experience and experimentation—an arena for learning and critical thinking of a discursive and embodied kind. It marks a generative space for the production of new awareness and knowledge. Within the network of intensifying international and globalising links, the courtyard as an experiential and experimental space comes to mirror something of Sharjah as a vital zone of creativity, transmission, and transformation.
Hasegawa has selected more than 100 artists, architects, filmmakers, musicians and performers whose artworks and practices resonate with strands of the curatorial theme: the complexity and diversity of cultures and societies; spatial and political relations; notions of new forms of contact, dialogue, and exchange; and production through art and architectural practices of new ways of knowing, thinking, and feeling.
The opening of SB11 will mark the inauguration of SAF’s five new multi-functional art spaces in the Sharjah Heritage Area, which have been in development since 2009. With approximately 20,000 square feet of interior space, connected by open-air courtyards and rooftop terraces, these new spaces will provide venues for SAF’s growing activities and the increasing needs of its community.
Located in the Heart of Sharjah, Sharjah Art Foundation’s new art spaces is an urban development project with an adaptive re-use approach. The buildings dialogue with both the existing physicality of the urban fragment as well as its history and past use in order to reactivate the area and invigorate the reception of contemporary art, which is befitting within the culturally rich, multi-layered urban context.
The project offers five exhibition buildings, which provide a range of interior spaces to experience art along with a variety of exterior areas including courtyards, alleyways, open squares and an inter-connected roofscape. Without being spatially or programmatically overly determined, each exhibition building has a pronounced spatial quality, scale, and lighting, producing a spectrum of more contextualised or more abstract frameworks for exhibiting and perceiving art. In response to the urban context and courtyard typology, the design subtly transforms introverted spaces that in the past supported private residential life around the courtyard into more fluid spaces that make provision for a communal social and spatial experience around contemporary art.
On a conceptual level and in an attempt to retain the place’s historic footprint, the project reinterprets pre-existing or documented architectural traces within the plot and readapts historic architectural elements and materiality to new uses and conditions. The intention is to balance the creation of open, and fluid contemporary spaces with a celebration of unique traditional urban characteristics. The revived traditional aspects of the architecture include thick peripheral walls, meandering alleys and reintegrated rooftops, which were once inhabited outdoor residential spaces. The roof becomes an extension of the urban space providing not only plunging views into alleys, courtyards, and exhibition spaces to intensify the perception of artwork but also provides views across urban layers, with limited vistas of the Creek and the Gulf beyond.
On Wednesday, March 13, the opening of SB11 will mark the inauguration of SAF’s five new multi-functional art spaces in the Sharjah Heritage Area. The opening day of SB11 will include a series of performances which will repeat on Thursday and Friday: Dictums 10:120 by Wael Shawky; Within, an SB11 commissioned performance by 10 drummers, composed by Tarek Atoui; and Terra Incognita, et cetera, by Tintin Wulia. There will also be performances by Otobong Nkanga and Tony Chakar, and the night will conclude with the SB11 Awards ceremony.
March Meeting begins on Thursday, March 14, followed by an evening performance by Shahzia Sikander. The SB11 Film Programme curated by Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul includes the film programmers Steve Anker, Khavn De La Cruz, Ali Jaafar, Mehelli Modi, Alcino Leite Neto, Jean-Pierre Rehm, Tilda Swinton and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The Film Programme begins with a panel discussion led by Apichatpong Weerasethakul including the film programmers, followed by evening screenings in an outdoor cinema in SAF’s new art spaces.
On Friday, March 15, the March Meeting and Film Programme continue. A performance by Işıl Eğrikavuk, Snapshot, takes place in the evening.
Also in the evening is a performance by alva noto with a special appearance by Ryuichi Sakamoto which offers an audio-visual performance of his 2011 album univrs. The performance is based on the real-time manipulation of software-generated test images by audio signals and the resulting patterns constantly change without any recurrence. Following the performance, a panel discussion led by Ali Jaafar discusses SB11 commissioned films from the Middle East.
On Saturday, March 16, the March Meeting and Film Programme continue. There will be a book launch for a publication based on March Meeting 2012. A Film Programme panel discussion led by Khavn de la Cruz explores SB11 commissioned films from the Philippines, followed by film screenings. Following the screenings is a performance by Filipino avant-rock improvisers The Brockas.
Sunday, March 17, is the final day of the March Meeting. An evening performance by Hassan Khan takes place, Live Ammunition: music for clapping, string quartet and electronics, followed by film screenings. In addition to the Opening Week Programme, there will be tours by SB11 Curator Yuko Hasegawa, as well as organised visits to museums and other sites within Sharjah.
March 14 – 17 Sharjah Institute for Theatrical Arts
The March Meeting is an annual gathering of global artists, art professionals and institutions involved in the production and dissemination of art in the MENASA region. The annual event is designed to provide leaders in the art world with an opportunity to connect, share ideas and expertise, network and collaborate on future projects. March Meeting 2012: Working with Artists and Audiences on Residencies and Commissions hosted a wide range of local, regional and international speakers and participants.
March Meeting 2013 will take place at the Sharjah Institute for Theatrical Arts, and will include a welcome address by HE Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi, President and Director of Sharjah Art Foundation, an introduction by Sharjah Biennial 11 Curator Yuko Hasegawa.
HE Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi stated: 'Through this gathering of academics, artists, architects and art professionals, March Meeting 2013 establishes a platform for examining the wider implications and aspirations of Yuko Hasegawa’s Re:emerge – Towards a New Cultural Cartography and aims to foster connections that may develop into new partnerships and initiatives. Moreover, parallel to facilitating encounters between the local and international, the above reflections are points of departure for exploring and revaluating cultural and artistic practices, and instigating dialogue with and within the community, a guiding premise to the existing mission and direction of Sharjah Art Foundation.'
March Meeting 2013 topics will include Why Remap? Shifts In Journeys Inside And Outside History with Tiffany Chung, CAMP and Dr. Edward Simpson; The courtyard as constructive void: negotiating perception and memory with Ahmed Jaride, Farid Noufaily and Megumi Matsubara; and Contact and exchange: cartographies of redrafted legacies with Dr. Pablo Leon de la Barra, Dr. Agung Hujatnika and Mohamed Abdelrahman.
Yuko Hasegawa invited Sharjah Biennial 11 participating artist, Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul to curate the Sharjah Biennial 11 Film Programme. Weerasethakul started from the idea of 'a place where a cinema of illusion arises and flourishes. A place of ghosts.' He states 'I was interested in the moment when we free our minds and bodies of preconceived ideas, and allow ourselves to be possessed.'
To realise these ideas, the artist has invited a selection of film world professionals to share lists of films that have haunted them. The response to his request includes what Weerasethakul calls a 'variety of moving-image experiences, from clips of unknown movies to full-length feature films' that are organised as screening programmes. The seven programmers are Steve Anker, Dean of the School of film/Video at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), Los Angeles; Tilda Swinton, Scotland; Mehelli Modi, Founder of Second Run DVD, London; Alcino Leite Neto, editor, Sao Paulo; Khavn De La Cruz, poet, pianist, filmmaker, Mondomanila, the Philippines; Jean-Pierre Rehm, theorist, Festival Director, FIDMarseille, Paris; Ali Jaafar, Executive Director, Independent Film Division, Quinta Communications, London. Weerasethakul has also curated a screening programme of his own.
The SB11 Film Programme screenings will take place over the course of the Biennial in the Mirage City Cinema, a cinema architecture space by Apichatpong Weerasethakul and architect Ole Scheeren, commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation.
Central to Weerasethakul’s concept for the Film Programme is the idea of a space for open public access. Mirage City Cinema has been created in an outdoor courtyard space. Weerasethakul explains, 'One massive wall of the Sharjah Art Foundation New Art Spaces is turned into a platform for ritual. It’s a place in between private and public, like a courtyard in your home. Ole has taken an existing urban fabric in Maurouth Square and imagined it as a space of memory, of disorientation. He has created a city within the city, mirroring the infinite activities and spaces of the area. As a result, the narratives are not only shared from the screen but also emerge in the minute details of the steps and the stones.'
As part of the Film Programme three panel discussions will take place during the opening week. On Thursday March 14, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Ole Scheerin will lead a discussion featuring the visiting film programmers. On March 15, Programmer Ali Jaafar and SB11 commissioned filmmaker Nizar Sfair, will discuss filmmaking in the Middle East, moderated by Lina Matta from MBC, Dubai. On March 16 New York-based film writer Dennis Lim will moderate a discussion between Khavn de la Cruz and the Filipino filmmakers he selected to create short films for his screening programme.
All screenings and events are free and open to the public.
March 14
Speakers: Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Ole Scheeren, Steve Anker, Alcino Leite Neto, Ali Jaafar, Khavn De La Cruz, Jean Pierre Rehm, moderated by Dennis Lim
Mirage City Cinema, a collaboration between filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul and architect Ole Scheeren, features evening screenings in an outdoor courtyard cinema in the new SAF spaces. The panel, featuring Apichatpong and Scheeren as well as Steve Anker, Khavn De La Cruz, Alcino Leite Neto and Jean-Pierre Rehm who have each curated individual programmes, will consider this cinema-architecture space as it relates to Yuko Hasegawa’s investigation of the courtyard as an experiential and experimental space. The panelists will also discuss the works they have chosen as well as the themes of ghosts, taboo, black magic, memory, and dream spaces in cinema. Moderated by critic and programmer Dennis Lim.
March 15
Speakers: Ali Jaafar, Nizar Sfair (commissioned filmmaker), moderated by Lina Matta
The Arab world has been convulsed for much of the last two years by historic uprisings that have seen its citizens bravely defying the threat of death and imprisonment to fight for a better future. Historically, societal upheaval has been good for a nation’s cultural industries, particularly cinema. It is encouraging to see a new generation of Arab filmmakers emerging to tell their stories both at home and abroad. Deep pocketed film festivals and organisations in the Gulf, buoyed by petro-dollars, have also appeared in recent years with ambitions to become regional and global film players. For all that, however, huge obstacles remain, notably the woeful lack of cinemas in large swathes of the Arab world and, just as importantly, the lack of a systematic relationship between the booming pan-Arab TV industry and its relatively struggling film industry. Unless these deficiencies are tackled as a matter of urgency, a crisis in Arab cinema lurks imminently, despite the plentiful resources the region has to offer as well as its rich and glorious tradition of storytelling.
March 16
Speakers: Khavn De La Cruz, Pedro Reyes, Ivy Universe Baldoza, Roxlee, John Torres, Jon Lazam, Kaloy Olavides, Dan Gil, Lav Diaz, moderated by Dennis Lim
For his programme within Mirage City Cinema, the Biennial’s film programme, Khavn de la Cruz, a leading figure in contemporary Philippine cinema, invited several of his contemporaries to make original work for the courtyard space in Sharjah. This discussion among De La Cruz and his fellow filmmakers, including Pedro Reyes, Ivy Universe Baldoza, Roxlee, John Torres, Jon Lazam, Kaloy Olavides, Dan Gil and Lav Diaz will explore the conception and the making of these commissioned films as well as the state of independent filmmaking and the larger context of religion, censorship, and cultural politics in the Philippines. Moderated by critic and programmer Dennis Lim.
International and regional artists will be featured in a series of music and performance events that will take place throughout SB11. As part of this programme, Lebanese sound artist Tarek Atoui will orchestrate a series of new commissions by more than ten international musicians, including percussionists who will perform on the roofscape of SAF’s art spaces, and an SB11 commissioned solo performance by Egyptian artist Hassan Khan during the opening week. Also during the opening week is a performance by alva noto with a special appearance by Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Performance
•Ryoji Ikeda •alva noto (Carsten Nicolai) with a special appearance by Ryuichi Sakamoto •Selma and Sofiane Ouissi •Lagash
Within – composed and orchestrated by Tarek Atoui
•Uriel Barthelemi •Jim Black •Brian Chippendale •Cevdet Erek •Susie Ibarra •Lukas Ligeti •Morten Olsen •Kevin Shea •Yoshida Tatsuya •Yoshimi •Sophie Agnel •Hasan Hujairi •Charbel Haber •Hassan Khan •Wu Na
HE Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi, President and Director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, is a practicing artist who received her BFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London (2002), a Diploma in Painting from the Royal Academy of Arts (2005) and an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art, London (2008). She is Chair of the Advisory Board for the College of Art and Design, University of Sharjah, Member of Advisory Board, Khoj International Artists’ Association, India, and Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, and serves on the Board of Directors for MoMA PS1, New York and Ashkal Alwan, Beirut. She was on the curatorial selection committee for the 2012 Berlin Biennale and is a Visiting Lecturer at Slade School of Fine Art, London. Her recent curatorial projects include Drift -- an exploration of urban and suburban landscapes (2011), and In Spite of it All (2012). A solo exhibition of her photographic work Off Road opened recently at the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno
Yuko Hasegawa is Chief Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2006–present) and is also a Professor at Tama Art University, Tokyo, where she teaches curatorial and art theory. Previously, she was Chief Curator and Founding Artistic Director of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (1999−2006). Hasegawa has worked on many international biennials, and has held such positions as: Artistic Advisor of the 12th Venice Architectural Biennale (2010), Co-Curator of the 29th Sao Paulo Biennale (2010), and Co-Curator of the 4th Seoul International Media Art Biennale (2006). Artistic Director of the 7th Istanbul Biennale (2001) Hasegawa has curated major thematic group exhibitions, and solo exhibitions by such artists as Matthew Barney, Marlene Dumas, Rebecca Horn, and Atsuko Tanaka. She has served on advisory boards for Asian Art Council of the Guggenheim Museum, and has authored curatorial essays in publications for museums including The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
Sharjah Biennial is one of the most established cultural events in the Arab world. Since its inception in 1993, it has formed a cultural bridge between artists, art institutions and organisations locally, regionally and internationally. The acclaimed, eight-week Biennial consists of various components from its primary exhibitions of visual art, film, music, and performance, to seminars for artists and art professionals and workshops for students and families. In 2011, the 10th edition of the Sharjah Biennial received over 80,000 visitors including artists, art practitioners, museum groups, students, and collectors from the UAE and abroad.
Sharjah Art Foundation brings a broad range of contemporary art and cultural programmes to the communities of Sharjah, the UAE and the region. Since 2009 SAF has built on the history of cultural collaboration and exchange that began with the first Sharjah Biennial in 1993. Working with local and international partners, we create opportunities for artists and artistic production through our core initiatives that include the Sharjah Biennial, the annual March Meeting, residencies, production grants, commissions, exhibitions, research, publications and a growing collection. Our education and public programmes focus on building recognition of the central role art can play in the life of a community by promoting public learning and a participatory approach to art. All our events are free and open to the public. Sharjah Art Foundation is funded by the Department of Culture and Information, Government of Sharjah.
For more information on SAF and its programmes, visit http://www.sharjahart.org.
Alyazeyah AlMarri
Press & Communications Manager
Sharjah Art Foundation
Tel: +971-6-544-4113, ext. 26
Meg Blackburn
FITZ & CO, New York
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E: meg@fitzandco