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ROBIN MEIER WIRATUNGA

Waves Beneath an Ocean of Wet Air

This commission juxtaposes audio recordings from the Empty Quarters in the Arabian Peninsula—sounds of singing sands, acoustic measurements of dune sediment, and foraging ants from his field work—with submarine recordings from the Indian Ocean, neuroelectric activity of the brain, AI-synthesized vocal sounds, and various other elements to create a generative, polyphonic soundscape, giving a voice to the stories of the desert and weaving a composition with sounds from oceans of varying wetness and its entangled kin.

Aseel AlYacoub

Desert as Method

Drawing insights from historical records, cultural narratives, and the constructed environment, Aseel AlYacoub invites workshop participants to redefine preconceived notions about the desert.

Desert as Method

Hiba Ismail

Using an ongoing archive of sonic field recordings and images as a starting point, Ismail’s commission involves gathering extensive field recordings and images from the Red Sea and its surrounding areas, resulting in an index of recordings and photographs. Her most recent recordings took place on the Suakin Archipelago and multiple locations off the east coast of Sudan. The process of collecting audio material is an attempt to understand our relationship to the environment, drawing parallels between contemporary politics, archaeologies, and the natural histories of the earth. She consolidated the extensive catalogue of archipelago sounds into an audio composition developed in collaboration with sound designer Panos Chountoulidis.

NIDHI MAHAJAN & MOAD MUSBAHI

An Excerpt from Kitab Al Marasi: A Composite Navigational Manual for the Indian Ocean

A composite navigational manual for the Indian Ocean that draws from the historical cultural practices of local sailors to confront the uncertain future of coastal communities across the Indian Ocean facing extreme climate degradation. The work creates a repository of Indigenous maritime knowledge that firmly ties the risk of climate change with vernacular forms of knowledge.

Hussein Nassereddine

Hanging notes on “Laughing on the River”

I choose here, dear ones, to comment on the texts that have become laughter on the river, from that time a poet recalled his loneliness in the open desert and its long night, to my friends in the river near our village, as we jump from the high rocks––plunging headfirst into the water, then the years take us, and we enter time.

Hanging notes on “Laughing on the River”

Mohammad AlFaraj

Sketches / Whispers

Mohammad AlFaraj shares pencil sketches, ephemeral poems, and handwritten notes from the making of *The Whispers of Today Are Heard in the Garden of Tomorrow*, a newly commissioned work showing outdoors at the JAX District as part of Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2024.

Sketches / Whispers

Sammy Baloji

Overcoming Modernity

A conversation between Sammy Baloji and Rolando Vázquez Melken on world exhibitions and the politics of cultural representation and appropriation through contemporary artistic and architectural interventions.

Overcoming Modernity

Paulo Tavares

An Architectural Botany

Paulo Tavares writes about what can happen when we recognise that a quintessentially natural or wild space—as defined by the hegemonic epistemic frameworks of colonial modernity—is in reality a cultural, socially produced artefact and how architectural practice and research can learn from a botanic archaeology, its methods and epistemic shifts. The essay is an excerpt of “Architectural Botany: A Conversation with William Balée on Constructed Forests,” the eighth chapter of Environmental Histories of Architecture, an open-access book published by the Canadian Centre for Architecture.

An Architectural Botany

Seher Shah

Notes from a City Unknown

Cities are archives of our histories. They unfurl the historical, and connect the political to the personal across intimate passageways. We navigate the city through our kinships, languages, and constellations, which bind us in unknown and profound ways. We live with the weight and traces of those that came before us, as we guide our exterior and interior lives. Woven into us are notes and networks from inherited places, or a separation, leaving traces of a memory and a marked absence. Our names and bodies bear the weight of our failed nations, as we trace our footsteps to a sense of belonging.

Notes from a City Unknown

Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise

Plantations, Museums, and Regenerative Ecologies

The work presented is a radical act of digital restitution. CATPC reclaims a piece of their heritage by using funds gained from NFTs (non-fungible tokens) such as Balot NFT, minted in 2022 and depicting the angry spirit of Belgian colonial officer Maximilien Balot (1890–1931). A series of short videos share the journey of collective members as they speak to elders, art historians, and academics about the possibility of restitution and the future use of blockchain technology toward regenerative forest ecologies.

Jorge Otero-Pailos

A Library of Earthen Architectures

Jorge Otero-Pailos collaborates with Saudi artists and heritage experts in charge of Saudi World Heritage sites to create a Library of Earthen Architectures, which includes artefacts representative of Saudi cultural memory.

A Library of Earthen Architectures

Munem Wasif, Natasha Ginwala

Kheyal: a conversation with Munem Wasif

Munem Wasif and Natasha Ginwala discuss Wasif's solo exhibition Kromosho (ক্রমশ), or "step by step" in Bengali. Together, they exchange views around how the artist’s gaze has evolved, chronicling fiction and fact over time with fundamental transformations in both medium and subject. Traversing a range of recent works, Wasif attunes to unraveling vantage points, protagonists, and ambient idiosyncrasies.

Kheyal: a conversation with Munem Wasif

Jumana Emil Abboud

Gazelle in a Mother's Eye

Working with collaborators Tamara Kalo and Ileana Gonzalez Pacheco, artist Jumana Emil Abboud has created an immersive study of local folktales and the experience of embedding herself in the Riyadh landscape.

Gazelle in a Mother's Eye

Anca Rujoiu, Priyageetha Dia

Forget Me, Forget Me Not

Amid the sea of information and data prone to racialized terminology, what are the possibilities for an artistic engagement to eschew or hijack the perpetuation of violence? Anca Rujoiu writes about Priyageetha Dia's *Forget Me, Forget Me Not.*

Forget Me, Forget Me Not

Liam Young

The Great Endeavor

Speculative architect and filmmaker Liam Young reflects on The Great Endeavor, a 2023 work that depicts a planetary carbon removal and storage industry emerging in the near future as part of the solution to the climate crisis.

The Great Endeavor

Taus Makhacheva

Archival Footage: Behind Charivari

Taus Makhacheva shares archival films that were collected and compiled from her research on the Soviet circus tradition.

Archival Footage: Behind Charivari

Aseel AlYacoub

The Secret Lake

In this video documentation, Aseel AlYacoub explores two sites within Riyadh's desert, commonly referred to as 'The Secret Lake'. Through the footage, the artist interweaves narration from Paul W. Harrison's "The Arab at Home" (1924), a work by an American medical missionary to Arabia.

The Secret Lake

Feifei Zhou

Before there was land, there were mangroves

Zhou’s commission is a long-term, collaborative research undertaking that investigates coastal land reclamation across the globe. Filled by hard material such as rocks and cement, reclaimed land eliminates porosity and results in more severe flooding and biodiversity degradation. In contrast, mangrove forests, such as those in the Indian Ocean, nurture a rich range of sea and land creatures including fish, crabs, birds, and shrimp. Their salt-tolerant trunks and roots also create a porous environment and natural barrier against floods and tides. Preserving mangroves are some of the most pressing battles for coastal communities around the world.

Migrant Ecologies Project

Fragments from Railtrack Songmaps

By probing the existing relationships between humans and birds, Migrant Ecologies collaborators explore a series of pathways through a contested zone along the former tracks of the Malaysian state railroad at Tanglin Halt, a neighborhood of Singapore that has undergone considerable social and environmental change.  

Fragments from Railtrack Songmaps

Rasha Al-Duwaisan

Buckets and Waterskins

In this poetic reflection, Rasha Al-Duwaisan expands on Buckets and Waterskins, which was presented in March 2024 as part of the Biennale Encounters program of the Diriyah Contemporary Arts Biennale.

Buckets and Waterskins

Dana Awartani

Listen to my words

In this selection of translated Arabic poetry interlaced with geometric symbolism, Awartani's work breathes a new life into powerful voices from the past, orchestrating an intergenerational dialogue that subtly questions the status of women in contemporary society.

Listen to my words

Tarek Atoui

The Hive: On Vibration and Resonance

In this video workshop, Tarek Atoui invites children to explore music-making through playing with toys and instruments.

The Hive: On Vibration and Resonance

Tara Aldughaither & Joe Namy

Rhythms of the Rising Sun

Rhythms of the Rising Sun traces migratory rhythmic ecologies from West Asia, the Indian Ocean subcontinent, East Africa, and the Arabian Peninsula. This collaborative research project aims to raise awareness for resonant sound pressures in the region today. It explores how lucid migratory patterns have shaped some of the most prominent rhythms, sounds, and music of these geographies, and how rhythms have in turn shaped language and ways of life.

Martha Atienza, Jake Atienza

Equation of State

Martha Atienza’s ‘Equation of State III’ is part of a series that examines climate change and asks the viewer to question environmental management and socioeconomic development. The installation is an entry point to community-based archival work on Bantayan Island in central Philippines from which it emerges.

Equation of State

Anne Holtrop

From Geology to Glass

Anne Holtrop Studio presents part of the research behind Glass to Stone, with a focus on the transitions from geology to glass, to glass waste and new glass production.

From Geology to Glass

Mariah Lookman

Poets have forgotten the words for love

A digital version of Mariah Lookman's sound walk, which gathers stories along spice routes in Saudi Arabia. The artist’s poetic narration is inspired by the stories of healers and merchants at the souks, and those of mothers and grandmothers. Storytelling becomes a method of recuperating a knowledge of plants that is passed on orally from one generation to the next. The work is an embodied and holistic experience of cross-cultural encounters and vernacular knowledge that has endured over distance and time.

Poets have forgotten the words for love

Sketches / Whispers

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Mohammad AlFaraj

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Sketches / Whispers

Mohammad AlFaraj

Mohammad AlFaraj shares pencil sketches, ephemeral poems, and handwritten notes from the making of The Whispers of Today Are Heard in the Garden of Tomorrow, a newly commissioned work showing outdoors at the JAX District as part of Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2024.

Sketches. Courtesy of the artist.

Sketches. Courtesy of the artist.

Sketches. Courtesy of the artist.

Mohammad AlFaraj

Mohammad AlFaraj is an artist, film director, storyteller, and writer, who graduated with a BA in mechanical engineering from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) in Dhahran in 2017. After his studies, he began turning his attention to the natural world and making art steeped in metaphor, drawing on agricultural practices, oral histories, and legends recorded from the elders of his community. Fantastical creatures as well as the fauna and flora of his environment appear in his work. By using local and natural materials, such as soil, palm fronds, and date extracts, AlFaraj conveys a deep- rooted connection to the oasis of Al Ahsa, where he was born and raised and where much of his exploration began.

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