A panel discussion involving Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi commemorates the golden jubilee of the founding of the United Arab Emirates in 2021 in the context of Dubai’s Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre’s probe launch to Mars. Read more »
Art Dubai
50 Years of Media in the UAE
This panel, moderated by Global Art Forum co-director Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, discussed the advent of technology on the UAE culture and the impact it has on shaping the identity of the UAE over the past 50 years. Read more »
Media and Message in 20th Century Kuwait
Dr. Sulaiman Al Askari and Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi discuss the role of Al Arabi magazine, an acclaimed intellectual platform for Arabic thinkers and writers first published in 1958. Read more »
Art After the Internet
In this nimble, malleable, and responsive sphere, are artists enabled with an autonomy from art and its institutions? Could the Internet allow artists a means to jettison the formal structures and encourage a different kind of artistic expression? Or does it simply re-enforce real-world realities online? Read more »
MENA: Middle East Nervous Anxiety
Where are we right now? Is it Near, Middle or Far? Why does it unnerve the West? Why is it sometimes referred to as “the region” (for lack of a better name)? What are its borders and coordinates exactly? Does it have a centre? Centres? Has fuzziness about its borders brought on confusion about what it actually is? Are we still so dis-orient-ed? Read more »
The Social Media Spring?
Commentator Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi describes the ways in which the medium of social media has played an instrumental role in the ‘Arab Spring’, and whether history will over- or under-emphasise its political significance. Read more »