Overview

Felwine Sarr and Alexandre Kazerouni respond to one
another, as the former addresses critical questions about
the restitution of artefacts acquired during imperial eras
and colonial conquests, and the latter offers a critique
of universal museums—reflecting on the Louvre Abu
Dhabi’s much touted acquisition of a Benin Bronze, to
which Leo Asemota’s work offers a counterexample and
Christopher Cozier’s work introduces other universalising
frames of reference. Philippe Rahm invites us to rethink
museological frameworks based on sustainable museum
building practices, following principles of meteorological
architecture in extreme climates such as in the Arabian
Peninsula, where experimentation with renewable energy
stands in opposition to unsustainable, environmentally
unfriendly practices. Building on the observations of the
previous speaker, Michael Marder presents an alternative
perspective on a culture of extraction partly born from and
sustained by historical and contemporary circumstances
highlighted by preceding speakers and addresses the
elemental forces contained in the forgotten fundament of
energy, free-flowing among the works of artists, including
Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, Annie Dorsen and
Caline Aoun, while Wu Tsang defies all.