When the Circus Comes to Town

Day 5 
Sunday, March 18


Writing Workshops at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha

Sandstorm in Doha: the high rises of West Bay are barely visible from the corniche 

Realize: that a sandstorm sounds much more exciting than it is. Mostly it's just wind and small particles getting in your eyes. 

I had planned a workshop for Sunday as preparation for the Global Art Forum at Mathaf. We were going to talk about the relationship between art and culture at large: to films, public spectacles, and the world of commodities. But that day there was a sandstorm. 

Outside Mathaf. It was so windy that the tent set up for the Global Art Forum was unusable.  

The wind was very noisy and sand was creeping into in the museum, under the doors and through the windows.  

Sand finding its way under the doors of Mathaf

And through the cracks in the window in the workshop space we were using.

Because of the weather, only two of the participants came to the workshop that afternoon. Neither had seen the show yet, so we did a walk-through of the exhibition and then watched some of Cai Guo-Qiang's videos upstairs. 

Cai's Black Ceremony (2011), performed in Doha, on the left; the 2008 Beijing Olympic fireworks display on the right. 

We talked about the various differences between Black Ceremony and the Beijing Olympics display—whether they were both "art" and what we mean when say something is, or is not, art. I showed some pictures of Duchamp's readymades and stills from films made by artists. We had a good discussion but didn't do much writing that day. 


Then it was time for the Global Art Forum, which had by that time been relocated indoors to Mathaf's library because the sound of the wind in the tent was like standing inside a jet engine.


And so the circus came to town, even if the tent was unusable that evening. 

Shumon Basar, Global Art Forum director/impresario/ring-leader, with Wassan al-Khudhairi, Mathaf's chief curator and director, at the podium. Art-market reporter Georgina Adam is in the foreground checking her make-up.

Hans Ulrich Obrist talks with Shumon "Electric Socks" Basar and the novelist/artist Douglas Coupland. Georgina Adam, in the foreground, is checking her cell phone.

At the end of the session, since most people weren't able to make it (also because it was the first day of the working/school week), I decided to do a repeat of this session when I returned to Doha the following Saturday. — HG Masters