Platform for discussion002
What relationship does visual culture have to the world we live in?
The Unimaginable Things We Build is a multi-part project exploring the evolution of the rhetoric surrounding, and material state of, the tallest man-made structure in the world, Dubai's Burj Khalifa.
The project focuses on several main stages of the skyscraper's life in order to bi-directionally put the material existence of the Burj into question. The work suggests that the tower, through its own incessant utterances, existed well before its inauguration and frames this inauguration as a public suicide.
In order to reconcile notions of globalization and site-specificity, as well as the idea of monumental landmark architectures as nodes in an unrepresentable global network of immaterial capital, the project makes use of artistic and literary frameworks and discusses the Burj via the perspectives of Lawrence Weiner, Walter De Maria, Yves Klein and Sheherazade, among others.
Other sections of the Unimaginable Things We Build have been shown in The Pavilion in Dubai, Mercer Union in Toronto and will be included in an exhibition at Lombard-Freid Projects in New York.
Haig Aivazian
The End Is Just The Same As The Beginning, 2011-ongoing
3 excerpts from The Unimaginable Things We Build
Video, 3'
Courtesy of the artist
What is a platform?
A platform is a space for speaking in public. It is an opportunity to express ideas and thoughts. It also suggests the formal declaration of a stance or position on any given subject.
Unique to Ibraaz is a 'platform', a question put to writers, thinkers and artists about an issue relevant to the MENA region. This platform is sent to respondents both within and beyond the MENA region and contributions will be archived every 12 months.