Nadim Choufi in Conversation with Gökçe Günel

Exhibition Tour for “Race for the Surface” and Discussion

The event will begin with a half-hour tour of the exhibition “Race for the Surface” led by Nadim Choufi.

To conclude Nadim Choufi’s exhibition “Race for the Surface”, join Gökçe Günel and Nadim Choufi for a conversation that will take as its starting point the work in the exhibition and Gökçe Günel’s book Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change, and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi. They will discuss the imaginaries and aesthetics used to propel green technologies and infrastructure in the face of climate crises; the role of metaphors in creating new worlds; the paradoxical realities in the implementation of such projects, and the underlying desires to keep present financial, social, and political systems intact.

Gökçe Günel is Assistant Professor in Anthropology at Rice University. Her first book Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change, and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi (Duke University Press, 2019) focuses on the construction of renewable energy and clean technology infrastructures in the United Arab Emirates, more specifically concentrating on the Masdar City project. Her articles have been published in Ephemera, Anthropology News, Public Culture, Anthropological Quarterly, The Yearbook of Comparative Literature, The ARPA Journal, Avery Review, The Fibreculture Journal, and PoLAR among others.

Nadim Choufi lives in Beirut and primarily works with video, 3D animation, and sculpture. Nadim’s work spins around scientific progress and its non-neutrality, often focusing on the materiality of designed organisms, language, products, and bodies. He has exhibited his work regionally and internationally most recently at Sharjah Art Foundation in Sharjah, The New School in New York, and Macao in Milan.

This event will be conducted in English at Beirut Art Center. Limited seating on a first come first seated basis. Masks are mandatory.