Two-day symposium
Free and open to the public
Food and beverages served
REGISTER
*See below for full day one schedule and presenter bios*
*Click here for day two schedule and presenter bios*
Beyond the toll of US-backed “forever wars,” recent years have cast the MENA region into unprecedented turmoil—from the devastating ethnocide and genocide of Palestinians across Gaza and the West Bank, to the current attacks on Iran and Lebanon, the genocide in Sudan, the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime in Syria, the collapse of the Lebanese state and economy, and the military coup in Egypt. We have also witnessed the promise of revolutions sweeping the region following the 2010 Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia that catapulted the Arab Spring. While moments of catastrophe, crisis, and collapse may seem antithetical to imaginaries of the future, the capacity to dream or speculate is essential to undoing to sites of epistemic and ontological violence, while also charting possible paths forwards. Moreover, speculative acts of world-building can realize the critical potential of impossible acts of imagination that empower us to envision entirely new archeologies of the future.
This two-day symposium brings together contemporary artists from the Arab world and diaspora—in conversation with curators and scholars—to reflect on the importance of speculation “in the construction of alternative states of becoming” (Sulaïman Majali, 2015). Interrogating the possibilities and limits of futurity amidst ecological, territorial, existential, and ideological states of crisis, these artists turn to sites of historical and present rupture to envision alternate, possible, or impossible worlds. These speculative projects can be understood as critical modes of reading the assemblages of bio-politics, colonialism, capitalism, and environmental collapse that theorize other ways of being, knowing, and imagining. Disrupting the geo-spatial logics of the past, present, and assumed future, these artists not only “write alternative histories but also articulate counterfuturisms as imaginaries of times-to-come” (Jussi Parikka, 2018).
SCHEDULE FOR DAY ONE
Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry
Midway Studios Building
929 E 60th St
11:30am – 12:30pm
Nat Muller Talk “Lost and Found? Science Fiction as a Mode of Imperfect Repair”
This presentation explores how science fiction (sf) in contemporary visual practices from West Asia articulates experiences of loss while functioning as an imperfect mode of repair. Focusing on works by Larissa Sansour, Monira Al Qadiri, Fadi Baki, and Wafa Hourani, it examines key sf tropes—respectively, space travel, aliens, robots, and dystopia—as critical frameworks. I argue that these artists expand the lexicon of science fiction, positioning sf not only as a representational mode but as a speculative and critical method for analysis and restoration.
12:30pm-1:30pm
Lunch Break
1:30pm – 2:15pm
Rania Stephan Artist Talk “Isn’t It About Time”
The works that make up Isn’t It About Time were triggered by extensive research on science fiction, a genre the artist and filmmaker has been focusing on for the past few years. This research led to an exhibition currently showing in Marfa’ Gallery Beirut and to a science-fiction documentary titled: Memories for a Private Eye #2. In both instances, Rania Stephan considers how science fiction and editing both orbit around the notion of time. Appropriating the methods of an editor—part detective, part cinephile—the artist investigates how images collide and collude, multiply and subtract. The works are driven by resonances between images, still and moving, visible and invisible, revealing the trace of an unrecovered absence.
2:15pm – 3:00pm
Rania Stephan Screening
Threshold (2018)
Memories for a Private Eye # 1 (2015)
3:00pm – 3:45pm
Post-Screening Discussion/Q&A
3:45 – 4:00 pm
Break
4:00pm – 5:30pm
Michael Rakowitz Lecture-Performance “Old Ceremonies for the New Skin” with Q&A to follow
In this talk, artist Michael Rakowitz delves into several projects that articulate the tension between reappearances and returns, monuments and monsters, restitution and restoration, not-too-distant interrupted pasts and speculative futures. The talk will conclude with an object performance that is sometimes called an address, sometimes a speech, and more accurately, a shetakha.
6:30 pm
Reception
PRESENTERS
Dr. Nat Muller is an Amsterdam-based curator, writer and researcher. Her interests focus on contemporary art from Southwest Asia, science fiction, the Anthropocene, foodways, and ghosts. Her writing has been published in peer reviewed academic journals and in art publications. She has edited several artist monographs, including those of Muhannad Shono; Walid Siti; Sadik Kwaish Alfraji; and Nancy Atakan. Muller has curated exhibition projects and film screenings internationally for museums, art institutions, film festivals, art fairs, and commercial galleries. Notable curatorial projects include: Rogue Agents of History at Wereldmuseum Amsterdam (2026); The Ground Day Breaks at ATHR gallery, Riyadh (2024); Trembling Landscapes at Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam (2020); Heirloom, the Danish Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale (2019); Picture Palestine at International Film Festival Rotterdam (2017); Young Artist of the Year Award, Ramallah/London (2016-17); This is the Time. This is the Record of the Time, A.U.B. Beirut/Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2014-15); Spectral Imprints, The Abraaj Capital Art Prize, Dubai (2012). She has taught across universities and art academies in the Netherlands and internationally. Muller is co-editor of Larissa Sansour Envisions the Future: Critical Essays(forthcoming with Peter Lang) and author of Science Fiction in Contemporary Art from the Middle East (forthcoming with Palgrave Macmillan).
Born and based in Beirut, Lebanon, filmmaker and artist Rania Stephanworks with still and moving images. She has directed numerous videos and creative documentaries notable for their play with genres, and the long-running investigation of the themes of memory, identity, archaeology of the image and the figure of the detective. Anchored in the turbulent reality of her country, Stephan’s documentaries blend archival material, personal history, and montage to investigate forgotten images and sounds that haunt the present. Represented by Marfa’ Gallery Beirut, Rania Stephan has had solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1, New York, Alt Art Space, Istanbul, Marfa’ Gallery, Beirut, Frieze Art Fair, London and has participated in numerous group exhibitions and residency programs. She has been appointed Associate Artist at The Advanced School for Social Sciences (EHESS), in Paris France and Senior Fellow at The Institute of Advanced Studies of Aix-Marseille University (Iméra), in collaboration with the Mucem Museum in Marseille France. Stephan has directed two award-winning feature-films, the acclaimed documentary The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni (2011), constructed entirely of VHS footage, and In Fields of Words: conversations with Samar Yazbek(2022) which won Best Film Award at the Villa Medicis International Film Festival.
Michael Rakowitz is an Iraqi American artist working at the intersection of problem-solving and troublemaking. His work has appeared in venues worldwide including dOCUMENTA (13), P.S.1, MoMA, MassMOCA, Palais de Tokyo, the 16th Biennale of Sydney, the 10th and 14th Istanbul Biennials, the 8th, 14th and 15th Sharjah Biennials, Tirana Biennale, National Design Triennial at the Cooper Hewitt, Transmediale 05, FRONT Triennial in Cleveland, and CURRENT:LA Public Art Triennial. He has had solo projects and exhibitions with Creative Time, Tate Modern, The Wellin Museum of Art, MCA Chicago, Jane Lombard Gallery in New York, SITE Santa Fe, Galerie Barbara Wien in Berlin, Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago, Malmö Konsthall, Tensta Konsthall, Kunstraum Innsbruck, and Waterfronts - England’s Creative Coast. He is the recipient of the 2020 Nasher Prize; the 2018 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts; a 2012 Tiffany Foundation Award; a 2008 Creative Capital Grant; a Sharjah Biennial Jury Award; a 2006 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship Grant in Architecture and Environmental Structures; the 2003 Dena Foundation Award, and the 2002 Design 21 Grand Prix from UNESCO. He was awarded the 2018-2020 Fourth Plinth commission in London’s Trafalgar Square. From 2019-2020, a survey of Rakowitz’s work traveled from Whitechapel Gallery in London, to Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Torino, to the Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai. Rakowitz participated in the 2025 edition of the Aichi Triennale in Japan, and a solo exhibition of his work, titled Proxies for Palaces and Poets ran from September 2025 until March 2026 at the Stavanger Art Museum in Norway. In 2025, Rakowitz presented the first two parts of a trilogy of exhibitions with NEON in Greece. The first chapter, Allspice, was on view at the Acropolis Museum in Athens through the end of October, and the second chapter, Lamassu of Nineveh is installed outside the museum until October 2026. The third and final part of the trilogy will open on the Acropolis Hill later in 2026 and remain on view through 2027.
Sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Division, the Franke Institute for the Humanities, The Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry at The University of Chicago, The Department of Comparative Literature, and the University of Chicago Divinity School