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Art Jameel Publishing partners with Mousse to present a series of essays drawn from the organisation's expanding publishing programme. Spanning art, architecture, ecology and critical theory, the selection brings together voices from artists, curators, writers and thinkers, extending conversations into new contexts and readerships.
Read below the essay by Saira Ansari, originally published in Fahd Burki: daydreams, the book accompanying Fahd Burki’s first survey exhibition, daydreams held at Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai (March 5, 2022 - October 9, 2022).
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About Art Jameel Publishing
Part of the organisation’s mandate, the publishing arm at Art Jameel increases access to under-documented cultural histories and artistic practices. Publications encompass print and digital formats, including artist books, monographs, exhibition catalogues and expanded editorial outputs across online, audio and video platforms.
Art Jameel Publishing has produced nearly 50 publications, spanning learning resources, exhibition catalogues, monographs and artist’s books, developed both independently and in collaboration with a wide network of partners globally.
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BORROWED MONSTERS
Popular Culture and Worldbuilding in the Works of Fahd Burki
by Saira Ansari
The opening credits of Stanley Kubrick’s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, (1968) unfurl to the heroic fanfare of Richard Strauss’s tone poem ‘Also sprach Zarathustra’ (1896) as the Sun rises over the Earth and Moon, creating circular shapes of blinding light and utter darkness. The silence afterwards transports us away from the celestial, and down to Earth where the ‘Dawn of Man’ plays out in a vast, sepia-tinted rock and desert landscape. The long and meticulous sequence is deliberately slow, building up to a synchronous climax with György Ligeti’s cacophonic choral and orchestral symphony Requiem (1963%1965), as we see the cognitive capacity of man’s anthropoid ancestors expanding after contact with a large and unworldly monolith that appears suddenly, as if from nowhere. Tall, rectangular, and dark, it is not of that land, nor of that time. Yet, it manipulates one of the creatures to wield a bone as a weapon so as to assume power and control of its destiny through an act of measured violence. Much has been written about the film – the screenplay for which was co-written by Kubrick and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke[1] – its musical score, and the various interpretations of its beginning and end. The synthesis of these visuals and sounds have become so intrinsically bound to the storyline that they have become impossible to separate. Fahd Burki tells me he was greatly moved by Kubrick’s creation and that the film left a lasting impact on his work. In particular, what stayed with him was the notion of scale – visualised not only through the sweeping views of land and vastness of open space, but also through the panoramic musical score which stretched and enveloped a range of human emotions.
As I speak to Burki about the film, I revisit the desolate and stony landscape of Tract I, 2006, which was inspired in part by Kubrick’s vision, and I suddenly have new insight into the artist’s work that I had only guessed at before.
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Fahd Burki and I both grew up in Lahore, Pakistan, and while we led significantly different lives, it seems that the smallness of Lahore ensured we shared similar coming-of-age experiences when the country was at the precipice of joining a globalised world. In the time before satellite television and cable networks, we turned to readily available mainstream English literature, including fantasy and science fiction novels and comic books. But another kind of change came swiftly after the death of military dictator General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in 1988. As the first private television channels started broadcasting in 1990 and dish antennas (satellite TV) proliferated in the mid-1990s, our generation became ardent consumers of imported popular culture that took over our television sets and bookshops. Meanwhile, bootlegged copies of rock and grunge music were being sold across town, which led to the development of a rich indie music scene, permeating both Burki’s life and mine. So, it is no coincidence that many of the cultural references that those of us growing up in the urban centres of Pakistan adopted were external, alien even, yet they formed an intrinsic part of our spoken and visual vocabulary. Early MTV culture of cool, Hollywood blockbusters, post-war sci-fi, Japanese anime, and more; the influences were as varied as they were compelling. Very little of this material was in Urdu. For too long, we have tried to find the right vocabulary for the rest of the world (as well as for purists back home) to understand how our practices – Burki’s art and my writing – are Pakistani even when they don’t look or sound it.
CONTINUE READING
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[1] The novel 2001: A Space Odyssey was developed jointly by Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick alongside the film version and published in 1968, soon after the release of the film. While Clarke and Kubrick both worked on the book, it is slightly di$erent and more expansive than the film, and only Clarke is cited as the o&cial author.
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