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Day two at the Biennial.

It is easy to get lost in the labyrinthine passages, baking courtyards and rooftop terraces of the Sharjah Biennial, this year featuring over 100 artists and 42 newly commissioned works, many of which chart the cartography and choreography of space.

On Friday October 12 in London, acclaimed Lebanese sound artist Tarek Atoui will transport audiences through a lost world of Arabic culture with his trance-inducing La Suite, a five-hour performance piece inspired by classical Arab music.

Sama Alshaibi moderated a panel on Artists as Nomads, describing herself as the least 'nomadic artist on the panel, relatively speaking,' secure in a US Professorship.

A consequence of trying to write about the MM while presenting at it as well as attending panels, films and exhibitions [to say nothing about the barely glimpsed wonders of downtown Sharjah itself!] was that I missed some sessions.

As I home in on conclusive thoughts, the first must be an acknowledgement of the fifth March Meeting as such.

Sejla Kameric and I go East [to Kalba]

Murtaza Vali moderated another of the central panels during this March Meeting; Artists and Audiences.

Day One unfolded in celebration of a range of curatorial and cultural risks taken [actual and potential], from large European and North American institutions through more wide-ranging, smaller and artist-led institutional initiatives to a single artist’s practice.

Salah Hassan, venerable Cornell Professor, followed the UAE’s Minister of Culture in delivering a keynote speech.

This is my second March Meeting and my first attended without the contextual buzz and fruitful ‘distractions’ of the Sharjah Biennial going on around it. It’s worth remarking on what a special and in fact, important event it is.