Author Description

Monument to Habitat Compensation Island is a research project and publication that starts with this tiny artificial island in the Arabian Gulf and addresses its implications and relations within the global landscape. It brings together regional and international creative practitioners and thinkers to consider Habitat Compensation Island as a focusing device through which we might approach the convergence of culture, commerce, and environmental reparations and the tensions their particular interests produce, amplified in the shadow of rapid climate changes.The contributors to this publication offer multiple perspectives and contexts from the hyperlocal to the global, from the specifics of the rapidly developing Emirates to rapidly melting sea ice. The essays include a regional context through urban planning, Emirati history, and culture. They explore the island imaginary, the Anthropocene, what constitutes "success" on an artificial island, and consider islands as recipes for disaster as well as salvation. We hope to share our affections for the possibilities this speck of an island suggests, and offer a platform for meditation on who, how, and what gets to speak as we literally and figuratively form a set of new geological relations. Monument to Habitat Compensation Island was conceived by Marina Zurkow & Nancy Nowacek, and includes texts by: Abdullah Al Saadi, Munira Al Sayegh, Nils Bubandt, Una Chaudhuri, Elaine Gan, Ayesha Hadhir, Graham McKay, Nancy Nowacek, and Marina Zurkow Publication Editor: Carol StakenasGraphic Design: Nancy Nowacek with Zinah Maher A Bazarbashi Translation: Ban Kattan