Astriking feature of development in some Gulf states in the new millennium has been the launching of high-profile cultural projects with the involvement of foreign institutions and expertise. Abu Dhabi's Saadiyat Cultural District is the region's largest arts hub. Several major cultural buildings are being constructed there, including the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Zayed National Museum, the Performing Arts Center and the Maritime Museum. Dubai too had ambitious plans for mega-projects in the cultural field. In 2007 the German scientist turned translator, writer, and theater and opera director Michael Schindhelm was appointed as adviser to the government of Dubai on setting up an opera house and other cultural facilities. Schindhelm had previously been, since 2005, the executive director of the newly-created Stiftung Oper in Berlin, the world's largest opera group bringing together the Staatsoper Berlin, Deutsche Oper and Komische Oper. In early 2008, in a widening of his remit in Dubai, he became cultural director of the newly-founded Dubai Culture and Arts Authority. But the planned arts construction projects were a casualty of the downturn in Dubai, and Schindhelm left Dubai in summer 2009. Schindhelm, the author of several books, wrote in German a memoir-cum-novel based on his time in Dubai, published in 2009 under the title “Dubai Speed: Ein Enfahrung”. Now Arabian Publishing of London has published an English translation – by Amy Patton – of the book under the title “Dubai High: A Culture Trip.” The text is accompanied by black and white photographs by the award winning French-Canadian Aurore Bilkin, who divides her time between Dubai and Rome. Arabian Publishing is a publisher of quality books on Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Its director William Facey has spent his career as a museum consultant, writer and publisher on the Arabian Peninsula. The book takes the form of a first-person present tense diary of 2008, with the narrator arriving in Dubai on Jan. 1 to work for the fictional company Al Adheem and leaving Dubai at the end of December after the global and local financial crises have taken their toll on the company. Schindhelm writes in his preface that the diary condenses his experiences, and focuses on the issue of public culture, “just one aspect of this extraordinary city's dizzying rise and its journey into an uncertain future”. Some characters and episodes have been fictionalized “in deference to political sensitivities and to the privacy of various individuals. The diary is none the less an authentic and accurate account of the substance of my experiences”. The book raises important questions such as whether art forms such as opera can be “transplanted” and imposed top-down, whether the high arts can be viewed in terms of profitability, and how decision-making and planning should be organized in the cultural field. When the narrator arrives in Dubai, there are plans for Al Adheem to build a cultural complex in Deira. The project would take three years and cost half a billion dollars. The roof of the building will accommodate three stages and an exhibition hall. When the narrator is shown a three-dimensional model of the complex, “I start to rant about it being impossible to perform classical opera in a room with 3,000 seats” he states. The architect of the approved design of the complex is the (fictional) “Swedish-Yemeni architect Touitou, who has never worked in the Middle East but makes up for it by being one of the hottest stars on the scene from San Francisco to Hong Kong”. In reality, Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid designed Dubai Opera House and cultural center. The narrator's work colleagues include an Iraqi Kurdish lead consultant Azad, his energetic Argentinian employee Cecilia, and a Jordanian, Mohammed. Then there is his Emirati companion Salem who refers to Schindhelm as “our Mr. Culture”. A vast array of other characters, local, Arab and foreign, move in and out of the narrative. As well as the pressures on him from within the company, the narrator is besieged by the German media and constantly lobbied by people peddling their cultural wares and wanting to get involved in the Dubai culture business. In his Sept. 29 dairy entry, he writes: “The summer has finally drawn to a close and the world's cultural salesmen have us on their radar again, bursting to delight us with projects and ideas”. Early on during his time in Dubai, he realizes there are “altogether too many cultural developments being planned without a clear business case”. Numerous arts projects are competing with each other. Over the course of a week, Cecilia identifies 16 theaters and 24 museums and galleries in the pipeline. Schindhelm is not only concerned with the mega projects, but also takes an interest in local Emirati artists. He gives a delightful portrait of the famous British-trained artist Hassan Sharif (identified in the book only by his first name) whom he visits in a house whose rooms are crammed with Hassan's conceptual art. Schindhelm is a sharp observer, and his zippy prose style suits the pace of the fast developing city of Dubai. He writes with humor and with a novelist's gift for observation and depiction of character. He writes with sensitivity of his physical surroundings and his visits to a shore deserted but for fishermen, and to the desert. His two pet turtles provide light relief. But his critique of cultural planning will not please all those he came into contact with in Dubai, and at times he can come across as irascible, with a touch of arrogance. Schindhelm's book chronicles the stalling of certain grandiose arts projects. But some aspects of the arts have nevertheless blossomed in Dubai, in some cases with support from the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority (rebranded as Dubai Culture in March 2009.) In literature, the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature has quickly become an international success story. Dubai International Film Festival is now the largest film festival in the Middle East, and also claims to be larger than any other film festival in Asia or Africa. There is a particularly lively visual arts scene, with a proliferation of art galleries, fairs and auctions. Reuters reported on May 5 that “a dusty industrial zone in flashy Dubai has become an unlikely home for a flourishing underground art scene that has grown even as the emirate's fortunes declined, curbing appetites for extravagant pieces.” Such developments bode well for Dubai's cultural future.
