How can artists, architects, and theorists from cities as diverse as New York, Cairo, and Riyadh mobilize public art to reclaim the commons? What promise - or peril - does digital art and Web3 pose to this collaboration? This panel discussion brings together artists, thinkers, creators, and policy-makers to ponder these questions and propose arts and culture as tools for rebuilding public sphere.

In cities around the world, climate change is making visible the infrastructures that were once hidden. What is the role of art in this process? How can art hasten and clarify this infrastructural awakening? This panel discussion brings together artists, thinkers, creators, and policy-makers to explore what it would mean to truly embed artistry within the infrastructural networks that sustain us.

'A Prophet in the City', is a geotagged audio-performance developed by artist Lamia Gouda, and commissioned by RASEEF Program. Lamia Gouda reflects on the rich Arab history of New York, in the early 20th century, through the stories of Arab poets as they resonate in the works of Lebanese-American visual artist and poet Gibran Kahlil Gibran. The performances are tagged to locations in the West Village in New York City, creating a sonic-monument that reminds us of the absent history of the Arab poets and artists who lived in Manhattan, a hundred years ago. Audiences are invited to arrive at 51 West 10th Street, the address that used to be Gibran’s last house in New York. The first GPS tag starts there, and through SonicMaps (available both in the app or browser version), the audiences will follow the maps through Lamia Gouda’s haunting voice.