In this closing address, Vilma Jurkute of Atsakat (Alserkal Initiatives) reflects on the six‑month "Cultures in Conversation" program created in partnership with Expo 2020. She explains the program’s interdisciplinary, epistemic approach that brought together over 60 thinkers from scientific, artistic, humanitarian and radical perspectives to tackle Anthropocene challenges. The speech walks through each thematic week—Climate & Biodiversity, Urban & Rural Development, Space, Tolerance & Inclusivity, Future of Food, and Water—highlighting key activities, notable participants (e.g., Her Excellency Nour El Khadraoui, His Excellency Zaki Musaiba, Mirna Ayad, Najum Elgammam, Nadia Verjee, Hindel Boom) and the unique formats used (paleoclimate archives, intergenerational debates, chapucha format, performances). Jurkute announces an online archive that will preserve the program’s concepts, ideas and research for ongoing access. She extends gratitude to Expo, Atsakat, partners, and the practitioners who shaped the content, and then shares an excerpt of Najum Elgammam’s poem "I Found My Way to You" (translated by Khaled al‑Masri) as a poetic closing. The address underscores the program’s aim to foster radical, co‑evolutionary change beyond conventional political descriptors.
Chapters
In partnering with Expo 2020, we brought some of the world's leading thinkers and professionals to help us reimagine and address some of the most urgent and critical contemporary issues we are faced with in the world of Anthropocene today. Our intent for Cultures in Conversation was to create a condition for learning and change through alternative pedagogy. It is with epistemic approach that we studied these complex issues from radical, scientific, artistic, and humanitarian worldviews, revealing their inseparability from social, economic, environmental, and political spectrums. We've been collectively and actively engaged with over 60 participants over the past year, and as we deconstructed paleoclimate archives for Climate and Biodiversity Week, facilitating intergenerational debate, as part of Urban and Rural Development Week, we problematized and investigated epistemologies and ontologies applied to cities today by highlighting cities off the map and focusing on multivicality of the urban and possibility of community pertinent to our region. We learned to read the stars with artist and poet Najum Elgammam as part of Space Week. We danced to global goals Together with Sima Performing Arts Studio, and collectively imagined key ingredients for future of food through the chapucha format. While it is impossible to mention all of the highlights of cultures in conversation, I cannot not share my personal one. I still recall the conversation between Her Excellency Nour El Khadraoui. The Minister of Culture and Youth, and His Excellency Zaki Musaiba, a former Minister of State and current culture advisor to the President of the UAE, moderated by Mirna Ayad, where stories we've never heard before that were never shared with the public before were shared, and really new narratives, new informality were drawn in challenging the meaning or definition of tolerance as part of Tolerance and Inclusivity Week. And to this day, I feel quite privileged to have been part of that conversation. All this in search of co-evolutionary radical forms of change that can shape platforms of corporativism, allowing for a broader investigative discussion, reimagined approaches that go beyond political descriptors. We hope the fundamentals laid out over the past 6 months will allow for continued research, reimagination, and change with all of you in this room and beyond. With that in mind, we have worked on creating an archive that will provide continued access to to the concepts, ideas, and research that the participants involved in this program have produced. Cultures in Conversation archive components will continue to be accessible on both Expo's and our virtual platforms, leaving tangible, indelible traces of this program. I want to thank both Expo and Atsakat teams, all partners, and most importantly practitioners and thinkers who helped us shape and mold the content of this program for their intellectual labor and commitment. Please join me in expressing our immense gratitude on behalf of Atsakat family, our community, in acknowledging her excellent for her leadership of Expo 2020. And of course, Nadia Verjee, her Chief of Staff, who unfortunately couldn't join us this afternoon, and her team, Hindel Boom, who led it besides her— next to her— this entire program at Expo. as we shaped the content together. For most importantly, for believing and trusting Elsik and Advisory to be your partner. Thank you for making EXPOs our second home for the past year and for trusting a homegrown organization grounded in an international network to create this program and realize this program together with you. Thank you. Before I hand you over to my colleague Nader Raza, who is the director of the Arts Foundation and really conceptually shaped Water Week, to introduce and open this week, I would like to leave you with an excerpt of Najum Elghanam's poem commissioned for Space Week titled I Found My Way to You, translation by Khaled al-Masri. And just before, in the green room, I was saying to my colleagues, I don't know what I was thinking by including this excerpt and citing Najum Organi's poem, because I think many of you who know the artist, she's definitely more eloquent than I am, but I will give it my best. You must believe the stories, the ones that make no claim to Truth, but cannot bear lies like those Sharazov told. You must believe the marks made by the tears of the meteors on the silence of the evening, and the ringing sound of water waters hard when the reflective blueness of the Southern Cross glints over its skin. You must believe the poets. Then they allege that life is like water, like a river, and then they swear that many dreams are hidden there in the sky like bird nests. Thank you.
