It's content creation, not exhibition, that matters

I attended the Global Art Forum's opening day in Doha about a month and a half ago. It was held at the recently opened Museum of Islamic Art. There were distinguished speakers at the forum, including museum directors, curators and artists from St Petersburg, Paris and Cairo among others. The subjects of discussion centred on creating audiences and spaces, but I had a fundamental issue with the areas of focus.

I do not want to be misunderstood so I will clarify my position on what I refer to as cultural venue capex; it is good! The fact that the major cities of the southern part of the Gulf have committed to develop large exhibition venues is indeed a significant step towards a cohesive cultural policy.

I have no doubt that the establishment of these institutions will drive an interest in research, documentation, exhibition, dialogue and of course collection; and herein lies the problem.

When one examines the relationship of the GCC countries with the rest of the Arab and expanded Middle Eastern world, one finds that these countries have a net human capital inflow and a net monetary outflow.

The reason for this is that the Gulf has been attempting to emerge as a viable standalone model for quite some time now and one can say that it has only started to become that in the past 10-15 years. In that sense, the region has begun the difficult transformation from an employment destination into a home.

Enter the arts programme of the southern Gulf; while not uniform there are ongoing similarities between the different cities' approach to cultural recognition.

Creating immediate recognition as a cultural centre has been high on the agenda and the perception has been that the venues will drive development in other parts of the cultural system such as content creation, developing new movements and schools of thoughts, all leading to the emergence of a cohesive identity. However, when attempting cultural development we cannot allow ourselves to commit the same mistakes as in other fields by mainly importing content.

There is a clear line between the centres of content production - if we may call it that - and the emerging centres of content consumption - and exhibition. The first is in Beirut, Damascus, Cairo and Tehran while the second is in Doha, Abu Dhabi and Dubai; this is potentially very problematic.

What that entails is that we will continue to predominantly collect and show works that were made outside the countries of these purpose-built museums of the Gulf. Of course, this is not a xenophobic call for museums to collect the art of their national artists, nor is it a condemnation of collecting works of other countries.

What I am pointing out here, which I said at the Global Art Forum in Doha, is that the cultural programme of the southern Gulf cities does not include a concentrated effort to allow for content creation, through part-time work legislation, affordable accommodation and decent grant programmes.

The lack of these has made the existence of artists, and in turn content creation, virtually impossible. Given the situation, these cultural nodes will be known only as net importers of content.

In case the above still does not seem problematic - if not catastrophic - I will explain further.

The Gulf has always been - sometimes rightly - accused of being a lazy region. That it produces nothing, buys assets and sells land and oil. It is a viable model since it obviously continues to be part of the world's economic food chain, but does it really contribute to the world's development? Does it produce new concepts? Does it invent anything? Do its writers debate or deal with global issues? In short, what is the Gulf's raison d'être besides merely having good infrastructure and high economic growth?

I do not claim to necessarily hold the answers to all of these questions. However, what I do know is that if we really want to approach culture differently, if we want to move away from well-crafted press releases and text panels of architectural models then we should invest in our people and our neighbours and friends, who want to become part of the story.

Sure, it may not get us a press release or an interview right away, but it is sustainable and over the long run will command more interest, recognition and respect for the region than all the museums we may all build put together because creation will always be greater than exhibition.

The Gulf has a golden opportunity today to change the perception of it being an intellectual laggard. The arts are perhaps the first step, but scientific research among others should follow; we must build our cities for the future, not for the media. Otherwise the Gulf will continue to have a schizophrenic, benevolent relationship with the Arab world where we collect their content to exhibit in our museums with no narratives in between.

Mishaal Al Gergawi is an Emirati commentator on socio-economic and cultural affairs in the UAE.