Region

In order to counter-balance the widespread (Western) media rhetorics of negativity and/or negation in regards to the Gulf region, the Winter School, as a transient but pro-active institution was introduced as a first-ever serious engagement with the spatial conditions of the Gulf’’s labour situation and – more generally -– the realities of immigrants throughout the entire social spectrum of the emirate.

Over the last decade, one could sense a particularly biased mode of reportage in which Western journalists, thinkers, and writers would continuously criticize the Gulf’’s ambitions, while continuously falling back into the same (old) modes of (Western-driven) critique. But what was and continuous to be often forgotten or not mentioned is that, as a city and mode of cultural production, the Gulf has been forced through modernity within only a few decades. This makes it an unprecedented place. What in Europe, or the ‘West’’ at large, took almost a century, happened and continues to happen here within a couple of years. This of course creates situations that are often difficult and challenging, and require an incredible amount of believe, ambition, and effort to deal with the setting up of a platform for civil society.

The scale and speed of urbanization, at times, even dwarfs similar projects in China and India. But what can we learn from the accelerated urbanism of the Gulf region? It seems increasingly urgent to understand the Gulf’’s transformation in a different light. Not with the goggles of blacked-out pessimism but through a genuine attempt to recognize and utilize its dynamics. We need to take seriously what is too often being ridiculed. It is along those lines where one needs to understand that rather than delivering a mere critique, it is time to get engaged, to start a critical practice of involvement. It is only through direct involvement that we can interrogate spatial realities in a serious and lasting fashion: to be political outside the realm of politics.