During a trip this past April, I stood under the Kuwait Towers (the trio of bulbous skyscrapers that overlook the Arabian Gulf) and tried to picture the environmental destruction the city faced during the First Gulf War from 1990-91. The images I had seen circulate—acrid clouds of smoke rising from oil wells torched by the Iraqi military, coastal mangrove forests covered in tar, unrelenting air strikes—were harrowing, and they have, over the past 20 years, stuck in the minds of everyone in the Middle East. The damaged towers, set against a toxic sky and harbor blackened by attacks on oil tankers near the Sea Island Terminal, were nearly impossible to imagine. Now, the gleaming corniche of Kuwait City appears to be a success story of ecological recovery, architectural experimentation, and multi-billion dollar restoration efforts. In a lot of ways, it is. But the memory of this disaster has been preserved through institutions like the Oil Display Center in Al-Ahmadi, and also in a more nuanced way by individuals who grew up during the Iraqi invasion.
In the whitewashed, cavernous amphitheater at MoMA PS1 last Thursday, Kuwaiti artist and composer Fatima Al Qadiri re-created this dystopian world, as part of Expo 1: New York’s Speculations ("The future is _______"), a series of talks and discussions on worldwide environmental change, organized by magazine and editorial collective Triple Canopy. While responses range from "dark optimism" to doom-and-gloom, Fatima’s explored her own personal experience during the Gulf War as a catalyst for her surreal, messianic—and even religious—music. (Last year, she released Desert Strike with label Fade to Mind, an EP named after the Sega Megadrive game based on the American-led Operation Desert Storm in the Gulf.) During the intimate discussion, we watched Akira, the 1988 cult Japanese cyberpunk film, and compared it with Shi’a Islamic and Buddhist visions of the end of the world. Animated films and manga, Fatima explained, acted as a way to "reject adult reality and create your own world as a child in a scene of war." If you can imagine the harsh experiences that Japan (the atomic bomb and recent tsunami) and Kuwait (the Gulf War) both survived, then this connection in Fatima’s work becomes quite powerful.
Playing to a DJ set by Fatima, Kuwaiti-American and diamond-generation artist Abdullah Al-Mutairi's video illustration, Bhagavad Gita, showed scenes of floating and washed-up cars, the Kuwait Towers aflame, and bubbling pools of petroleum. With daily reminders of climate change and frequent political upheavals in the Middle East, Fatima's work is even more relevant now than ever, and her future visions of Kuwait are certainly worth listening to first-hand.
Through September 2, 2013
MOMA PS1
22–25 Jackson Ave,
Long Island City, NY 11101
MAP
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Fatima
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Kuwaiti Water Tanks 5. Fatima at the "School", PS1
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Fatima
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Fatima
In the whitewashed, cavernous amphitheater at MoMA PS1 last Thursday, Kuwaiti artist and composer Fatima Al Qadiri re-created this dystopian world, as part of Expo 1: New York’s Speculations ("The future is _______"), a series of talks and discussions on worldwide environmental change, organized by magazine and editorial collective Triple Canopy. While responses range from "dark optimism" to doom-and-gloom, Fatima’s explored her own personal experience during the Gulf War as a catalyst for her surreal, messianic—and even religious—music. (Last year, she released Desert Strike with label Fade to Mind, an EP named after the Sega Megadrive game based on the American-led Operation Desert Storm in the Gulf.) During the intimate discussion, we watched Akira, the 1988 cult Japanese cyberpunk film, and compared it with Shi’a Islamic and Buddhist visions of the end of the world. Animated films and manga, Fatima explained, acted as a way to "reject adult reality and create your own world as a child in a scene of war." If you can imagine the harsh experiences that Japan (the atomic bomb and recent tsunami) and Kuwait (the Gulf War) both survived, then this connection in Fatima’s work becomes quite powerful.
Playing to a DJ set by Fatima, Kuwaiti-American and diamond-generation artist Abdullah Al-Mutairi's video illustration, Bhagavad Gita, showed scenes of floating and washed-up cars, the Kuwait Towers aflame, and bubbling pools of petroleum. With daily reminders of climate change and frequent political upheavals in the Middle East, Fatima's work is even more relevant now than ever, and her future visions of Kuwait are certainly worth listening to first-hand.
Through September 2, 2013
MOMA PS1
22–25 Jackson Ave,
Long Island City, NY 11101
MAP
Fatima
Kuwaiti Water Tanks 5. Fatima at the "School", PS1
Fatima
Fatima