Translator's Introduction: Pension Arts in Dubai, 2010

In 2007, I was asked to join the Dubai branch of the Artist Pension Trust (APT). A private company established in 2004 by a savvy entrepreneur and a risk-management guru, APT aims to select and pool artists and artworks into regional investment and pension funds, of which it has thus far established eight. APT is owned by MutualArt, a British Virgin Islands-registered company whose assets include the Web site by the same name.

To determine whether to join APT Dubai, I found myself asking who was funding APT and MutualArt, and why was APT launching a trust in the Middle East. This led me to look into technological innovations in the areas of statistics; risk-management concepts in finance; art as an alternative asset class; culture as an engine of economic growth in the Arab world and elsewhere; text, data-mining, and face-recognition algorithms; and the Israeli military and its links to the Israeli high-tech sector. All of which led to the tableau presented here, which I regard as a stage set for an accompanying oral presentation in which I narrate my findings. 

Section 139: The Atlas Group (1989-2004), 2008

Between 1989 and 2004, I worked on a project titled “The Atlas Group.” It consisted of artworks made possible by the Lebanese wars of the past few decades.
In 2005, I was asked to exhibit this project for the first time in Lebanon, in Beirut’s first-of-its-kind white-cube art gallery.
​For some reason this offer perturbed me and I refused.
​In 2006, I was asked again. I refused again.
In 2007, I was asked again. I refused again.
In 2008, I was asked again. I agreed.
Weeks later, when I went to the gallery to inspect my exhibition before its opening, I was startled to find that all my artworks had shrunk to 1/100th of their original size.
​I subsequently decided to build a smaller white cube befitting my works’ new dimensions, and to display them there.