This week’s editorial musings from magpie’s nest
The quote: If a book is tedious to you, don’t read it; that book was not written for you Jorge Luis Borges
Join the club Karama Arts Club has finally got its licence to operate as Dubai’s first ever non-profit arts social club – “created for independent creatives looking for a low-key, welcoming space to connect”. There’s a meet-the-club doc here, and it’s relaunching on Wednesday 25 June somewhere in Al Barsha (which is nowhere near Karama, of course, but practicalities apparently got in the way). They’re looking for simpatico sponsors, and hopefully they won’t feel the need to load up with attention-seeking luxury brands …
Biennial goodbyes Sharjah Biennial 16 closes this weekend. It’s been one of the best that magpie has encountered, packed with good stuff – too much to see on one visit and with multiple locations to check out, so maybe get along to it before the doors close on 15 June …
UAE’s Guinness World Record no.94 Warner Bros World on Yas Island has officially broken the Guinness World Record™ title for the Longest Cheeseboard or Platter – 30m long, holding around 345kg of cheese. The Warner Bros suit described it as “a truly momentous occasion to celebrate the enduring appeal of Tom and Jerry’s 85th anniversary” …
Residency terms NIKA Project Space has named its first Open Studio residents – Zahra Jewanjee, Yasmine Al Awa and Ahed Al Kathiri. Selected through an open call, they will be developing projects ion the ground floor of NIKA’s Dubai gallery in a space that remains accessible to the public throughout the residency. It all culminates in a September exhbiition.
Incidentally, our Opportunities page lists a current residency open call, at Rizq Art Initiative in Abu Dhabi. It’s a fully-funded 12-week residency for three artists and one curator or researcher to develop new work, do some networking, and generally advance their professional development. Details here; apply by 1 July …
Park ‘n’ fly Long-term parking at DXB is being discounted until the end of the month – three days for AED 100, seven for AED 200, 14 for AED 300, all valid at Terminal 1 Car Park B, Terminal 2 and Terminal 3. Book here. (Hopefully there will be similar cuts later in the summer – last year the deals were in August and September.) AUH sometimes does similar deals, but we haven’t noticed any as yet …
More Arabic Abu Dhabi is increasing the number of hours of mandatory Arabic language tuition for preschoolers. For the 2025-2026 academic year children aged three to six will receive four hours a week of Arabic, increasing to five a week from August 2026. Makes sense to us, given that we’re in an Arabic country …
AI comes to court A landmark case about AI and image copyright got under way in London this week. Getty Images alleges the London-based Stability AI used around 12m copyrighted images without permission or payment to train its text-to-image tool Stable Diffusion. Stability argues its use of Getty’s content is protected under “fair dealings” exceptions in copyright law. Getty filed a parallel suit against Stability in the US in early 2023, one of several pending cases that could have massive implications for the copyrightability of images and artworks …
Intern in Abu Dhabi … Abu Dhabi’s Creative Media Authority has a couple of internship opportunities – one described as a Creative Industry Internship (pretty vague, but says you will “gain hands-on experience and a unique opportunity to develop essential skills that will help you build your career in the creative media sectors”) and the other a much more explicit Production Internship (work in pre-, post- or production in TV, video, film:). The commitment seems to be one to three months, unpaid (though there’s a daily allowance of AED 120 for on-site work for production interns) More info here …
… Laugh in Abu Dhabi There’s a hectic round of comedy shows and standup gigs in Abu Dhabi over the next couple of weeks. Check the listings in the Agenda, but we’d recommend trying some of newer venues to see how they work. We have our eyes on the Black Tap in Mamsha al Saadiyat, which is hosting 1 Minute to Krushit on 17 June – comics get one minute at the mic, the audience votes. Fast, raw, unpredictable: what more could you want from a Tuesday evening in Abu Dhabi?
The value of money 1 pixel wealth demonstrates graphically how rich the rich really are (1px = $1000). Prepare to be appalled – and to realise how the wealth of the top 400 billionaires could solve most of humanity’s challenging problems while still leaving them as billionaires. Incidentally, this is a way-back-when (Covid-era?) demo – it has Jeff Bezos as worth $139bn, an unimaginably massive number, but duck.ai tells me he’s currently good for $220bn. And Zuckerbuck and Mush are still way ahead of him …
Something for the weekend The Incredible Shrinking Goalie is very simple, very silly, very fun: you are a small goalkeeper, and your job is to stop the ball hitting the floor. But every time the keeper touches the ball, you get very slightly smaller …
Things we didn’t know no.94 Fingernails really do grow faster in the UAE (well, in hot places generally). It’s probably due to increased blood supply to the fingertips, though maybe some people do less fingernail-abrading manual labour here …
Earworm of the week The Tibs : Narcissist
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