The fourth annual Qasr Al Hosn festival opens this evening with an updated programme of exhibitions and events that its organiser, Abu Dhabi’s Tourism and Culture Authority (TCA), hopes will attract even larger crowds than the 120,000 visitors who attended last year.
As well as the familiar displays of traditional Emirati arts and crafts and heritage zones dedicated to traditional life in the desert, oases, islands and the sea, this year there are several major new features, the most notable of which has nothing to do with the festival at all.
During the past year, Qasr Al Hosn has had the architectural equivalent of a facial peel and the result is walls that are knobbly, uneven, and grey – very different from the pristine image that appears on the UAE’s Dh1,000 note.
The effect is as temporary as it is eye-catching and is part of the ongoing work to restore the monument.
But before its walls regain their familiar crystalline whiteness, this year visitors get to see the fort as never seen before, with a kind of X-ray vision that reveals its many secrets.
By way of an explanation, TCA have commissioned a bespoke light show. Designed by the same specialists who animated the surfaces of the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque during the UAE’s 40th anniversary celebrations – and who recently bathed St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican in projections – it promises to be something special.
“Instead of a regular tour, this year the building is telling its own story,” explains one of the event’s organisers, Randa Bin Haidar.
“Inside the fort, the light show will put the building in the context of the turning points of Abu Dhabi’s history while the outside walls of the fort talk about the building.”
It’s not the only installation designed to provide actual and intellectual illumination.
In the Cultural Foundation building a new immersive exhibition, The Anatomy of a Photograph: Iconic Images from the Past, will allow visitors to digitally deconstruct a series of famous historic photos, including Hermann Burchardt’s famous photograph of Sheikh Zayed the First sitting outside the walls of Qasr Al Hosn, and Wilfred Thesiger’s iconic image of Bedouin with camels fording the Maqta crossing.
“We understand our past through these images, they are a part of our narrative,” says Bin Haidar, who is a programme manager with TCA’s culture section.
“If you look at the photographs, there is a sequence, but they also operate as a series. There is a story inside each image but there is also a wider story arc – they tell a deeper story.”
Anatomy of a Photograph is complemented by two other exhibits in the Cultural Foundation that contrast the insights that can be gained from official histories with those that arise from unofficial memories.
Archives and Memories: Capturing the Nation’s Story, brings together documents from six of Abu Dhabi’s most extensive archives to examine key themes in Abu Dhabi’s history, while Recollections of the Cultural Foundation allows visitors to listen to the memories of individuals who have witnessed key moments in the building’s history.
“We try to come up with a different angle each year to guide our programming,” Bin Haidar explains.
“Last year involved a contrast between tradition and modernity but this year is about making connections through the memories of the people and, by collecting their memories, to build a collective memory,” she says.
“Last year we were collecting memories and this year we want even more information.”
As always with the festival, the exhibitions that combine serious scholarship with the latest findings about the history of Qasr Al Hosn and the Cultural Foundation building are accompanied by family-focused events that are designed, most importantly, to be fun.
Resource: http://www.thenational.ae
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