This week’s editorial musings from magpie’s nest
Spoiled for choice As usual there’s a lot going on this weekend, but we’ll be making time for The Ice Hole (best play of the year so far?) and Mute on stage, Kes and Dancing Pina on screen, and Rand Abdul JabbarandFariba Boroufar on a gallery wall near you. And this weekend it’s Alserkal Avenue’s two-day celebration of all things edible, What the Food.
Book ahead Diary dates this month – Blackadder Goes Forth, Singin’ in the Rain, The Streets.
Back to front RCR Arquitectes has designed a 380m-high tower for recently-launched developer Muraba that will only be 22.5m wide – that’s one apartment wide, so with views on both sides. Lots of other goodies in the building, including (we’re told) an art gallery, but the main aim is to produce “a daring, stop-you-in-your tracks spectacle, even in Dubai’s supercharged architectural vista” according to RCR.
City breaks Dubai retains its position as the leading MENA entry on Kearney’s Global Cities Index (“assesses the extent to which cities are able to attract, retain, and generate global flows of capital, people, and ideas”). It ranks 24th globally, down one spot from last year; Abu Dhabi was 59th, up 7 on 2023. Both are down on Kearney’s other metric, the Global Cities Outlook ranking; they score well on economics (GDP, long-term investment potential) but slip up on ‘personal wellbeing’ (which includes the environment) and ‘innovation’ (incubators, patents etc). Read more here.
Media artists wanted Saudi’s Diriyah Art Futures (DAF) will be the region’s first dedicated New Media and Digital Art hub when it opens later this year; but it’s already inviting applications for its inaugural Mazra’ah Media Art Residency – runs for three months (February to April 2025), separate ‘streams’ for artists and scholars, provides access to studios and production labs plus a production budget. Deadline is 20 January; there’s more information here.
Capital bargains Abu Dhabi Film Commission is looking to boost filmmaking in the Emirate with an increased cashback rebate for qualifying productions. The current rebate is 30%; from 1 January it will start at 35%. Seems that for every dirham paid out by the scheme, more than three comes back into the economy.
NYC reined in New York’s much-loathed Vessel, the pointless Hudson Yards open air observation carbuncle designed by Heatherwick, has been closed for three years after four people died by suicide. It’s now reopened, this time with suicide prevention nets. Hooray!
Artificial unintelligence “Personally, I am not against AI. AI is not going to destroy any middle class jobs.” Disgraced former British prime minister B Johnson was speaking at the AIM Summit in Dubai earlier this week. No, we have no idea why. But maybe it’s good to have it confirmed that this man thinks people without middle class jobs are basically expendable.
Something for the weekend Match the reviews to the album. Surprisingly compelling …
Things we didn’t know no.94 The Line megacity project in the Saudi desert is using one fifth of the entire world’s currently available steel.
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