Samar | ســـَمَرْ

This week, artists Wafaa Bilal, @mollycrabapple, @FendeVilliers and @Samaritual debate labor, intent, craft and class in contemporary art. Moderated by @Nadir_Nahdi.

This week on the Doha Debates Podcast, we ask: Do we need to rethink contemporary art? Featuring Wafaa Bilal, @mollycrabapple, @FendeVilliers and @Samaritual. Moderated by @Nadir_Nahdi. 1:57 Time to rethink contemporary art? 4:59 Contemporary art: more relevant than ever? 5:45 What is the role of the artist? 6:45 Craft, labor and AI 10:32 Wafaa Bilal's viral “Domestic Tension” experiment 21:23 Lasting vs. fleeting art 22:16 Contemporary art institutions and the new Left 25:15 "Generative AI is an extraction engine. It is a vampire." 27:16 AI: a problem or just misunderstood? 29:22 Who has the right to define what is or isn’t art? 42:07 Postmodernism, craft and aesthetics 45:43 Is inaccessible art a revolutionary act? 51:09 Bad art: Is capitalism to blame? 1:01:11 Artist’s ego, craft and authorship 1:45:37 Success, tech & cultural preservation 2:03:11 “The ability to create art is divine.” 2:12:34 Experts share their favorite works of art

The impact of AI feels inescapable. Will it usher in more possibilities or problems for artists? Hear what acclaimed artists @mollycrabapple and @Samaritual have to say.

@DohaDebates Excited to see this out in the world finally !

Watch the extended cut for the full debate on contemporary art ➡️ lnk.bio/s/DohaDebates/…

What work of art has moved you, and why?

The future of contemporary art is not a tech question. It's a provenance question. We got into it 🌪️

El Anatsui makes art from what was discarded and left behind after the crossing. That's the whole argument…. The episode we filmed on the Future of Contemporary Art in the age of AI is finally out 👀

Tayfurat: طيف specter, spectrum, ghost-light that persists. Khabrein: knowledge that travels and changes form in transit. unfolding over the next 9 days on @the_ai_art_mag instagram.com/p/DX4qoMAiktL/…

The metabolism of futures: what digestion knows that democracy forgot - the thinking behind sunday's event! linkedin.com/pulse/metaboli…

Where does art live when everything can be generated? Future Ancestors Radio: Resonance 001 Brooklyn ↔ Beirut. A live session in the form of digital zajal/cypher where sound leads, the body responds, and the room composes together luma.com/pz2q4pok

War. Sand. Survival. And the architecture that forms afterward... Two thresholds for 2026 Read here: linkedin.com/pulse/sand-fir… via @LinkedIn

@punicist Very interesting-How can I calculate mine ?

I am North African. Even though I come from a Muslim background, and my native language is a dialect of Arabic, I have negligible Arab ancestry. That's because the Arab conquest of N. Africa wasn't a demographic colonization. We are natives who assimilated and became Arabized.

YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE: Legendary New Orleans clarinetist Doreen Ketchens serenades her grandson with a beautiful jazz tune 🥹❤️

My forever jam!

Fragment 021: Analog Accumulations A Visual Essay on momentum, cultural generation, and how we find our way back to making when the system feels too loud and the body feels too tired Image: artifact from my Future Ancestors series: ‘Not Cloud White’ 😉

@ReginaHarsanyi I’d argue kitsch isn’t the opposite of culture. Kitsch is culture under duress The simulacrum people reach for when their real cosmologies were stripped, looted, or algorithmically flattened

"Where there has been an avant-garde, generally we also find a rear-guard. the new urban masses set up a pressure on society to provide them with a kind of culture fit for their own consumption. To fill the demand of the new market, a new commodity was devised: ersatz culture, kitsch, destined for those who, insensible to the values of genuine culture, are hungry nevertheless for the diversion that only culture of some sort can provide. Kitsch, using for raw material the debased simulacra of genuine culture, welcomes and cultivates this insensibility. It is the source of its profits. Kitsch is vicarious experience and faked sensations. Kitsch changes according to style, but remains always the same. Kitsch is the epitome of all that is spurious in the life of our times. Kitsch pretends to demand nothing of its customers except their money. Kitsch is deceptive. It has many different levels, and some of them are high enough to be dangerous to the naive seeker of true light. Ambitious artists will modify their work under the pressure of kitsch, if they do not succumb to it entirely. The net result is always to the detriment of true culture in any case. These artists predigest art for the spectator and spare him effort, providing him with a short cut to the pleasure of art that detours what is necessarily difficult in genuine art. These artists' work, or kitsch, is synthetic art. If the avant-garde imitated the processes of art, kitsch, we now see, imitates its effects. This current interval, too great to be closed by all the infinite gradations of popularized "contemporary-ism" and "contemporary" kitsch, corresponds in turn to a social interval, a social interval that has always existed in formal culture, as elsewhere in civilized society, and whose two termini converge and diverge in fixed relation to the increasing or decreasing stability of the given society. There has always been on one side the minority of the powerful, and therefore the cultivated, and on the other the great mass of the exploited and [culturally] poor, and therefore the ignorant. In the end the [ignorant] will go back to kitsch when he feels like looking at pictures, for he can enjoy kitsch without effort."

@ReginaHarsanyi 🎯

Today, go around Art Basel and ask present artists “What did/do your parents do?” “Who paid your tuition?” “When did you start making art?” “Who are your favorite artists?”

@matdryhurst 😭🫠

Where do they find these people theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

@ReginaHarsanyi Wil this be recorded ?

Joining this workshop at 12pm EST is the first step to qualifying for a grant that supports using the Tezos blockchain as a material component. Don’t miss it!

What if adornment has always been interface technology? These Future Ancestors explore what happens when adornment becomes communication hardware. Prosthetics for ecological consciousness. Amplifiers for spiritual practice.