AGSIW x Culture Summit: Channeling the Uncanny in Counter-Futurisms

AGSIW was pleased to curate a session, during Culture Summit Abu Dhabi, moderated by AGSIW Senior Resident Scholar Kristin Smith Diwan. 

How is time felt in hyperfuturist societies? How is it imagined? What contemporary realities, reflected in regional cultural production, are shaping the Gulf’s future imagination? This session will draw on, and challenge, Gulf Futurism – an artistic movement suggesting that a dystopian vision of the future, with its barren lands and hypermodernist architecture, is in fact a reality in places such as the Gulf. Adopting the aesthetics of science fiction, speculation, absurdism, and the uncanny across their multimedia practices, three Gulf artists will share how their work grapples with disconnects in pre- and post-oil generations, internet culture, uncertain futures, and the eerie underbelly of hyperspeed time in countries where resource extraction, technological innovation, and rapid urban development bear implications on everyday life and imagination.  

About Culture Summit: Culture Summit convenes leaders from the field of arts, heritage, media, museums, public policy, and technology to identify ways in which culture can transform societies and communities worldwide. Organized by the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi, the 2024 edition brought cultural leaders, artists, and performers to Abu Dhabi for an extraordinary forum of knowledge exchange, debate and policy development March 3-5 in Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, UAE. 

The views represented herein are the author's or speaker's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of AGSI, its staff, or its board of directors.