LB02 Academic Forum

The Academic Forum is an integral dimension of the Lahore Biennale. It aims to foster broad and imaginative discussions on art, culture, and society by bringing comparative and cross-disciplinary perspectives from other locations to Lahore. The Academic Forum brings over a dozen distinguished international curators, critics, and scholars to give public lectures, participate in panel discussions, conduct workshops, and do studio visits with local artists. Topics selected have comparative relevance for the artistic, academic, and public context of Lahore. Highlighted in this edition’s Academic Forum are a series of lectures and workshops spread over the course of the Biennale. These primarily outline contemporary discourse surrounding left-leaning politics, cinema in Pakistan, food culture, anti-colonial movements, feminist transnational networks, and problems inherent to the historiography of Indian art criticism amongst others.

Lectures & Panel Discussions

January 27, 2020

Keynote Speech by Tariq Ali

Keynote speech delivered by writer and political theorist Tariq Ali during the inaugural weekend of the Lahore Biennale.
Location: ...

January 27, 2020

John Akomfrah in conversation with Salah Hassan

British artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah in conversation with art historian, educator, critic and curator Salah Hassan. Artist talk held ...

January 28, 2020

Keynote speech by Adrian Lahoud

Keynote speech delivered by architect and writer Adrian Lahoud during the inaugural weekend of the Lahore Biennale.
Location: National ...

January 28, 2020

Adrian Lahoud in conversation with Rafay Alam

Keynote speech delivered by Adrian Lahoud (Dean of Architecture, Royal College of London) followed by a conversation with Environmental Lawyer ...

January 28, 2020

Artist Talk: Jeanno Gaussi

Berlin-based, mixed-media artist Jeanno Gaussi discusses the process behind her artwork titled Peeran-e-Tombaan exhibited at the LB02.
Location: National ...

January 28, 2020

Artists’ Talk: Hera Büyüktaşçıyan and Hajra Haider Karrar

LB02 participating artists Hera Büyüktaşçıyan and Hajra Haider Karrar discuss their art practice and their collaborative film project titled ‘Infinite ...

February 3, 2020

Thinking with Unfinished Buildings – Between Construction and Ruination in Lahore by Chris Moffat

Location: Gurmani Center of Literature and Languages, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)

This presentation navigates a construction site that has ...

February 13, 2020

Lecture by multilingual writer and scholar Adania Shibli

Location: Mariam Dawood School of Visual Arts & Design, Beaconhouse National University (BNU)

The talk highlights methods of visibility and ...

February 20, 2020

The Populism of Piety by Maryam Wasif Khan

Location: College of Art & Design, Punjab University

By the second decade of the twenty-first century, seventy odd years in ...

February 25, 2020

Women on Aeroplanes: Editorial Meeting

Panel members: Annett Busch, Nida Kirmani, Sehr Jalil, Otolith Group
Location: College of Art & Design, Punjab University
...

February 25, 2020

Fugitive Histories in Publications by Naila Mahmood

Location: College of Art & Design, Punjab University

Old Urdu books of all genres reflect their readership, and the cultural ...

February 26, 2020

Revolutionary Pasts and Decolonial Futures by Ali Raza

Location: Lahore Museum

In a moment where far right nationalisms are ascendant across South Asia, it’s easy to overlook a shared ...

February 26, 2020

From the dadis of Shaheen Bagh: Faiz Ahmed Faiz and the Poetics of Protest by Aamir Mufti

Location: Lahore Museum
The complete talk can be accessed on LBF’s YouTube channel by clicking on the link provided

February 27, 2020

Jump Cut: Lahore Cinema 1960s/2010s by Iftikhar Dadi

Location: College of Art & Design, Punjab University
The complete talk can be accessed on LBF’s YouTube channel by ...

February 27, 2020

Cinema Between Video and Film by Lalitha Gopalan

Location: College of Art & Design, Punjab University
The complete talk can be accessed on LBF’s YouTube channel by ...

February 28, 2020

Film and Cinephilia in Pakistan: Beyond ‘death’ and ‘revival’ panel discussion

Panel members: Momina Masood, Gwendolyn S. Kirk, Zebunnisa Hamid, Ali Nobil (Moderator)
The complete talk can be accessed on ...

February 28, 2020

Approaching the Mughal Past in Indian Art Criticism by Devika Singh

Location: National College of Arts, Mall Road
The complete talk can be accessed on LBF’s YouTube channel by clicking ...

February 28, 2020

Womanifesto Movements: a History of an Evolving Artist-Organized Biennial by John Tain

Location: National College of Arts, Mall Road
The complete talk can be accessed on LBF’s YouTube channel by clicking ...

February 29, 2020

Afro-Asian Genealogies in Colonial Penang by Simon Soon

Location: Lahore Museum, Mall Road
The complete talk can be accessed on LBF’s YouTube channel by clicking on the ...

February 29, 2020

Open Sounds, Hidden Spaces: Listening, Wandering, and Spatial Formation in Sufi Iran by Seema Golestaneh

Location: Lahore Museum, Mall Road The complete talk can be accessed on LBF's YouTube channel by clicking on the link ...

February 29, 2020

Female Desire, Forbidden Love and Forgotten Archives: Sexual Politics in 1960s Pakistani Cinema by Kamran Asdar Ali

Kamran Asdar Ali focused on the film Saheli (1961) to open up the question of domestic life and sexuality in Pakistan ...

The Academic Forum was organised by Iftikhar Dadi.
Iftikhar Dadi is professor in Cornell’s Department of History of Art. He is the author of Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia (2010) and the edited monograph Anwar Jalal Shemza (2015). He has co-edited Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space (2012); and Unpacking Europe: Towards a Critical Reading (2001). Dadi serves on the editorial advisory boards of the journals Archives of Asian Art; BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies; and Art Journal (2007-2011). He is advisor to Asia Art Archive (Hong Kong), and member of The Institute for Comparative Modernities at Cornell University. Dadi received his PhD from Cornell University.