Each of us, at any given moment, is pinned to a single spot on the planet. You are here, announces the pulsating dot on your smartphone. With your feet on the ground, you seek out landmarks to get your bearings. A snappy jingle on a billboard, a briny wind reaching you from Dubai Creek, and the heightening calls of migrating birds: all of these might help you grasp your place in the world.

Your field of perception is vast, hemmed in by the horizon—that unmappable line that affords you balance and also the promise of imminent change at its cusp.

Knowing one’s whereabouts is the only way to move on.

Themed ‘There You Are’, participants of Night School 2024 assessed how much we can know about a place just by taking a good look around. Together, with the six invited scholars and experts, participants shared how they observe Dubai and other complex landscapes from their given coordinates; exploring ways of reading the environment, including those aspects that never seem to budge and others that escape at first glance.

Night School 2024 guests included: scholar Meitha AlMazrooei, writer Deepak Unnikrishnan, researcher Ashraf El-Taher, archeologist Timothy Power, architect Dariush Zandi and architect and writer Nadi Abusaada. Film curator Hind Mezaina facilitated a film screening event.

Night School 2024 hosted three events that were open to the general public, to collectively engage and reflect on the programme themes.

January 13, 2024 | (No)Body is Translating – Public Lecture by Deepak Unnikrishnan
Deepak Unnikrishnan presented the opening chapter to his first literary/artistic project in seven years, Pettee. The lecture focused on the role of the moving body in Gulf spaces as a translating device and sound machine, and why he is convinced we must pay attention to community elders with Gulf roots: to document how they move/sound, not only write what they say/remember. The project continued in spring 2024 with a dance and sonic collaboration at The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi.

January 20, 2024 | Traversing Landscapes – Film Screening curated by Hind Mezaina
Traversing Landscapes featured five short films by artists and filmmakers that foreground landscapes as poignant locales of memory and being. The screening was followed by a discussion between Hind Mezaina and Todd Reisz, with audience participation. The following films were screened:

1. El Chinero, A Phantom Hill (Bani Khoshnoudi, 2022, France, Mexico, English, Spanish, 11 min)
2. Transitions (Aurèle Ferrier, 2017, Switzerland, No dialogue, 13 min)
3. The Unofficial Countryside (Jacob Cartwright & Nick Jordan, 2021, UK, English, 17min)
4. Blue Honda Civic (Jussi Eerola, 2020, Finland, No dialogue, 10min)
5. Shadegan (Ako Salemi, 2019, Iran, No dialogue, 15 min)

February 3, 2024 | Everyday Life in the Spectacular City – Book Launch by Rana AlMutawa, in conversation with Neha Vora
Night School 2024 concluded by celebrating the arrival of Night School 2022 invited guest Rana AlMutawa’s book Everyday Life in the Spectacular City: Making Home in Dubai (UC Press, 2024). She gives shape to her book by means of the urban ethnographer’s skillset, and ultimately through a patient resolve to listen and look. She was joined in conversation with Dr. Neha Vora to discuss how academic rigor can challenge and counteract misinformed clichés about the city of Dubai.

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Meitha Al Mazrooei is a Ph.D. candidate in History, Theory, and Criticism of Islamic Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She received her M.S. in Critical, Curatorial & Conceptual Practices in Architecture from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Her curatorial and editorial work encompasses public programming for Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, publications for The National Pavilion of the United Arab Emirates, and the establishment of WTD Magazine. Her most recent editorial work includes co-editing two anthologies: On Foraging: Food Knowledge and Environmental Imaginaries in the UAE’s Landscape and In Plain Sight: Scenes from Aridly Abundant Landscapes.

Deepak Unnikrishnan is a writer from Abu Dhabi and an Associate Arts Professor, Literature and Creative Writing at the New York University Abu Dhabi. As a writer and professor, he is interested in the role of memory, left-behind stories and language(s) in transient/ephemeral spaces, especially when residents aren’t required/expected to belong. His fiction has been commissioned for the written publications of the National Pavilion of the UAE at the Venice Biennale (2017), the Oslo Architecture Triennale (2019), the National Pavilion of the UAE at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2023), and Barjeel Art Foundation. His book Temporary People, a work of fiction about Gulf narratives steeped in Malayalee and South Asian lingo, won the inaugural Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, the Hindu Prize and the Moore Prize. Deepak, along with Laure Assaf, co-edited Wasafiri’s special issue about the UAE (2025), the first time the academic and literary journal turned its attention towards UAE creatives and scholars.

Timothy Power is an archaeologist and historian specialising in Arabia and the Islamic world, with a focus on the Islamic period ceramics of the Arabian Gulf, Indian Ocean trade networks and the economic and social development of the pre-modern Emirates. Currently serving as an Associate Professor of Archaeology at the United Arab Emirates University since 2021, Power has conducted extensive fieldwork in the UAE, including excavations at historic sites in the UAE. He earned his DPhil in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford in 2010, with a thesis on the Red Sea basin from Byzantium to the Caliphate, later expanded into the book The Red Sea from Byzantium to the Caliphate: AD 500–1000 (American University in Cairo Press, 2012). He completed an MPhil in Islamic Art and Archaeology at Oxford in 2005 and a BA in Egyptian Archaeology from University College London in 2001. He was a Lecturer in Islamic Archaeology at UCL Qatar and consultant for the UAE’s Department of Culture and Tourism. 

Dariush Zandi is an architect and the founder of Total Arts and the Courtyard Dariush Zandi in Dubai. Zandi completed his education in architecture, urban design, film and photography in the United States and moved to the UAE in the early 1980s, where he worked as a Senior Architect and Town Planner for the Dubai Municipality. Zandi has made contributions to major design and planning disciplines including parks and recreational facilities, historic restorations and environmental conservation projects in the UAE.

Nadi Abusaada is an architect and historian and is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture and Design at the American University of Beirut (AUB). His work focuses on the material histories and visual cultures of the modern Arab world. He was the co-editor of Arab Modern: Architecture and the Project of Independence (gta Verlag, 2025) and editor of Resurgent Nahda: The Arab Exhibitions in Mandate Jerusalem (Kaph Books, 2024). Nadi earned his Ph.D. and M.Phil. degrees in Architecture at the University of Cambridge and his B.A. in Architecture at the University of Toronto. He has also held various academic fellowships including the ETH Zürich Postdoctoral Fellowship at ETH Zürich and the Aga Khan Postdoctoral Fellowship in Islamic Architecture at MIT. Before joining the AUB, Nadi taught history and theory of architecture and urbanism at Cambridge, MIT, and ETH Zürich. He has curated and participated in many exhibitions around the world including in Ramallah, Amman, Zurich, Venice, Dubai and Montreal and is currently working as curator for the Permanent Exhibition of The Palestinian Museum.

Hind Mezaina is an artist, writer and film curator from Dubai. Working primarily in analogue photography and more recently in video, her practice delves into themes of collective memory, the notion of heritage, and depictions of the UAE in the media. Mezaina is also the founder of The Culturist blog; Moving Image Editor at Tribe, a non-profit publication and platform that focuses on photography and moving image from the Arab World; and the co-founder of Tea with Culture podcast. She has curated film screenings for local institutions, including Louvre Abu Dhabi, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Sharjah Art Foundation, The Africa Institute, Alliance Française Dubai and Jameel Arts Centre.