The Global Art Forum is to Art Dubai what the quintessential (and by now obligatory) symposium and panel debates are to biennales and art festival: platforms for critique, intellectual exchange, discourse mongering or self-aggrandizement. It has to be said that apart from the Bidoun artists’ cinema – which featured 3 video programmes curated respectively by the Bidoun team, Nav Haq and Tirdad Zoghadr – and the Art Park, which featured some excellent video work, the Global Art forum was probably the strongest and most appealing part of the Art Fair.

The morning session on Thursday March 20th was – as moderator Negar Azimi, Bidoun’s senior editor, indicated – perhaps somewhat misleading in its title “The Middle East through Video”. This was not a panel about how video can “teach” us about the Middle East, but rather sought to address questions of audiences, the formal properties of video and whether it is possible to resist geography as an organising logic: i.e. what happens when video work travels. The other speakers were Arnolfini curator Nav Haq, freelance writer and curator Tirdad Zolghadr, audiovisual artist Hassan Khan, and Tate Modern’s film curator Stuart Comer.

Hassan Khan started his position statement by questioning Bidoun’s mandate (I guess this is a well-know strategy at panels: question – if not bite - the hand that feeds you). However there’s of course truth in the fact that the epithet “Arts and Culture from the Middle East”, should always be questioned anew. Specifically in relation to Bidoun’s video program, titled “Heysa” (Egyptian slang for joyful chaos), which featured a.o. work by Akram Zaatari, Ziad Antar, Iman Issa, Nadine Khan and Yasmeen Al Awadi, and was the strongest amongst the 3 curated programs, Hassan noted that an attempt was made to avoid any specific aesthetical statements, and not have curatorial intent cannibalise the works, but rather allow the works to speak for themselves. While I can sympathise with the position that – indeed – work should not be instrumentalised for a curator’s (or for that matter anyone else’s) vision, it is also misleading to state that all the works “speak for themselves”, as it is the curator who has decided what to include and what not, in which order we view things, and no matter how flaky and tattered – under which curatorial flag. Ultimately the selection will echoe preference, judgment of quality, and yes…perhaps even a (hidden) curatorial agenda. What bugs me is the reek of righteousness and feigned democratic values these “non-curatorial” statements made by curators entail. The worst recent example being last year’s Documenta XII, where the work also had to “speak for itself”, and eventually resulted in a dated and arrogant exhibition, where the curators decided what is good for you. Hassan also noted that he is very much interested in a discussion on form, which I second to a certain degree: the moment we (from the West) read “Middle East”, we only seem to focus on the message of the work, not the medium, not its form, not its aesthetics. This is extremely problematic and reductive. Hassan lamented that people just do not engage with the work anymore in a holistic fashion. The content becomes information or commentary on a state of affairs…where does that leave the art?

Stuart Comer approached things from a more historical perspective, claiming we would do well to address the amnesia in art history in regard to video. Few remember that it originated (as the Internet) as a military technology. Few remember the cinema as showing places, and seem to privilege the white or black cube for showing video work. But old cinema spaces have much to teach us in regard to public and private space, and the spatial conditions wherein we view work. Nav Haq followed Comer and affirmed that the moving image is a spatial practice.

Tirdad Zolghadr is definitely the uncrowned king of one-liners. He threw several at us during the course of the panel, of which some would make great T-shirts or bumper stickers. The best one definitely was: “Shirin Neshat makes Hala Gorani look like Edward Said”. Crude but brilliant (and very funny). I have quoted this on numerous occasions. Somewhere in the din of appreciative laughter the discussion turned back to Hassan Khan’s occupation with form. According to Tirdad formalism can be a useful strategy to talk about things without getting into the apologetic game. Negar pointed out however, that there is a difference between form and production values. True, but the lines are often not so clear-cut, as often the production values and constraints influence form. The more technologically complex a work gets, the more production conditions will influence the form. Writer and art journalist Kaelen Wilson-Goldie commented that the preoccupation with content [in viewing art from the Middle East] runs the risk to reduce a complex work to a complex [political or other] problem. My sentiments exactly.

What bothered me about this panel – though touching on important issues - was that though the topic was video, no videos were shown or concrete examples given. The discussions remained on a somewhat abstract level, which is fine, but in this case I think a missed opportunity. In that respect the curators were very true to the “form” of the art panel, where meta-discourse rules.