Why exhibitors from Abu Dhabi and Dubai are playing 'The Great Game' at London biennale

Buckminster Fuller's 1960s theories of how to resolve global challenges are being put into practice at a new summer exhibition

An exhibit from Dubai at the London Design Biennale. Photo: Taran Wilkhu

The phrase The Global Game could be described as a trigger term with many connotations, from the Peter Hopkirk novel The Great Game to the 1950s family favourite Risk and much else.

When the London Design Biennale 2023 was commissioned, the organisers asked exhibitors to theme their work around 'The Global Game: Remapping Collaborations'.

Among the dozens of designers to answer the call were Abu Dhabi and Dubai exhibitors who interpreted the challenge of collaboration across geopolitical boundaries in new ways for an international audience.

Abu Dhabi's decision to display the workings of the tradition of Soof, weaving techniques of combining wool from sheep, camels and goats to make a structure robust enough to make traditional tents, was rewarded. The House of Artisans curator Azza Alsharif and Salama Al Shamsi, director of cultural sites at the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi, picked up the prestigious theme medal on the first day.

For his take on the challenge set down by the curator Aric Chen of the Netherlands' Nieuwe Institute, Dubai's Abdalla Almulla took inspiration from the region's desert living conditions and the Hope probe to encounter the inhospitable conditions of Mars. Add to that a set of innovative twists, for example a robot prototype that plants seeds autonomously for days on end in the desert.

“I wanted to push that narrative that yes, we navigated the desert, we collaborated with camels to navigate this harsh weather, harsh landscape,” he says. “But today, we're always forward thinking by sending a Hope probe to explore Mars.”

A desert panorama has been erected around the Dubai pavilion in a prime function space of central London's Somerset House and from the ceiling hangs an orange reflective balloon that allows a different perspective on the scene.

“The idea of my exhibition is that as soon as you come, you will feel the experience yourself of walking through the camels or the desert as if you're a caravan but when you see your reflection on the orange sphere, you feel like you're walking through Mars,” Almulla adds. “It's like you've seen and you are navigating these two landscape simultaneously. Within the desert landscape, you will see prototypes developed by students that each tackles different challenges. The robot on display navigates the desert planting the seeds for almost a week at time.”

Playing with place and capturing the scale of change is what the Biennale sets out in its mission to inspire visitors to Somerset House throughout this month. The Global Game: Remapping Collaborations aims to do that by delivering alternative physical or political landscapes. Places that are driven not by competition nor conflict, but rather by a common search for co-operation. “We all know that global challenges require global collaboration,” says artistic director Aric Chen.

This is not art as a respite from the mounting threats and tensions in the world. It directly addresses the big issues such as refugees forced to flee Ukraine by Russia's invasion, or the climate challenge. An example is the Blue Nomad exhibit with envisages using carbon neutral materials to create modular structures for living on the rising seas.

These concepts are not isolated to new works at the Biennale this summer. Across in West London the artist Khalid Alloush is exhibiting In Agua Viva at the multi-gallery Cromwell Place backed by Abu Dhabi Art. This work looks at how to function in two environments. The installation depicts his encounter with a jellyfish in the waters off The Palm Jumeirah. The jellyfish is then transplanted to the waters of the Indian Ocean and Alloush investigates the creature's adaptation from the Gulf to the sea. While it was a short coast-to-coast transplant across the UAE, the pressures and threats in the changed environments are starkly different.

The Biennale takes as it starting point the theories and approaches in Buckminster Fuller's World Peace Game, a theory developed on how people could solve the world's problems through collaborative work. Futurologists have been schooled on Buckminster Fuller's books and research for more than six decades.

Bringing his system out of the realm of the strategy institutes and universities, the Biennale hopes to engage visitors with problem-solving presentations throughout the exhibitions.

The foreign affairs think tank Chatham House occupies a corner of the exhibition with its own challenge to create a future for beginners. The goal of the game is much more than mere survival. “On a small peninsula, five towns are preparing for a huge cultural festival,” the designers' description reads. “This will be the event that puts their region back on the map, showcasing their unique arts, music, food and sporting prowess. But three days out from the festival, a tropical depression in the ocean has strengthened to a category five typhoon. Now, there are going to be some tough decisions to make.

“The Future for Beginners is a new game for up to 30 players as part of the London Design Biennale. Over 60 minutes, players take control of this quiet peninsula and try to turn its fortunes around, in the face of escalating climate and ecological threats.

The risk and rewards of action and reaction is best personified by the G80 installation from Switzerland's Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts. It has made a deck of 80 sliders that visitors are invited to push to high or low input combinations to see the triggering effect across the whole landscape. So a participant can test what the effect of pushing the “freedom” button up to high has on the scale from low to high on the use of “surveillance” in their manipulated society.

The designers hope to fulfil the promise of Buckminster Fuller's theory that the world could work for all humanity through new types of co-operation. “Today with the arrival of supercomputers, the multiplication of data and the advent of artificial intelligence, the realisation of such a project might be achievable,” the curators claim.

Once future and theoretical worlds are conquered, visitors can retreat to the Nelson stairwell where an ascending display of textiles and selected music makes up the Inner Peace installation.