Before beginning, it is important to state that I have been a regular visitor to Alhamra Art Center for the past four years. I have attended talks, seminars, and even local Marxist jam sessions. I loved them all, but it is important to ask ourselves whether Alhamra and similar institutions are actually performing the functions they were meant to. Generally speaking, cultural institutions are places designated to preserve culture or subculture. An inclusive platform meant to bring together all classes and weave them into the threads of intersectionality, free of the divisions that usually come with it.
I will argue that the cultural institutions in Pakistan, especially Alhamra, have resorted to surface-level discussions and engagement, and that the class interaction merely highlights the difference between them. Imagine a three-day talk, a few bright (read well-known) names, opposite Old Lawrence Road, people would be pouring in without a slight doubt, but here is where this gets interesting. You would see a very clear class division: one segment would arrive in Range Rovers and S-classes, while the other would rely on either bikes or local transport. Parking is outside, so you'd assume that inclusivity would come into play once everyone is within the premises, but unfortunately, Lahore's sole representative of culture fails at the very first step. This is where Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's Anti-Oedipus comes into play.
They note that the structure operates through a double movement: it deterritorializes, stripping away the old codes of blood, caste, and inherited privilege that once decided who belonged where, only to reterritorialize almost immediately, reattaching those same hierarchies onto a new axis, that of the structure itself. A cultural institution, in theory, should be one of the few spaces left where this deterritorializing promise is actually honored: where the old codes are suspended, where a seminar hall or an art gallery becomes a genuinely flat space, indifferent to where you arrived in or where you came from. This is, after all, meant to be culture's whole justification for existing as a public good, that it deterritorializes.
Money does it quietly, before anyone’s even sat down for the talk on inclusion.
Alhamra calls itself open. Free entry, seminars anyone can walk into, inclusivity plastered across its messaging. But step onto the premises and that starts to fall apart. Watch who pulls up in a Prado and who pulls up on a motorbike, you'll see instantly who's made to feel like they belong and who isn't. No one needs a guest list or a dress code for that. Money does it quietly, before anyone's even sat down for the talk on inclusion. And that's the real problem, not that Alhamra fails to live up to its ideals, but that it recreates the same exclusion at its own gate that the seminar inside spends three days pretending doesn't exist.
So once you've entered, a volunteer will give you a schedule (it used to be the custom; don't see this happening now). The schedule featured a mix of relevant talks and others that seemed strikingly out of touch, addressing topics one wouldn't ordinarily expect to see prioritized in a Pakistani context. That isn't a problem in itself, but it does raise a fair question: what purpose does a cultural institution serve if its schedule includes talks like "Sikh Art in Contemporary Punjab," "Byzantine Iconography and the Devotional Image," or "Scandinavian Folk Music Traditions", sessions with little apparent connection to the concerns, heritage, or audience one would expect at a Pakistani cultural venue? You would find, not surprisingly, only a selective few attending these talks. It is a completely valid point that such talks are necessary, but are they really so in the context of Pakistan? What purpose then is this center serving for those who come from not-so-affluent backgrounds and have not been part of a circle where such a conversation is a daily routine? Not that the affluent crowd fully understands what's happening in those rooms either. Even among them, there's a split, some actually get what's being discussed, others are just there to look like they belong.
It is fascinating to observe that the rooms with comparatively higher attendance are those featuring famed actors, politicians, or journalists. But even in those rooms, if you look more closely, a few are listening intently; the rest either do not understand or are not interested, and this is also reflected in the questions they ask at the end. One criterion often used to judge an institution's effectiveness is its output. By that measure, Alhamra falls short of producing anything substantial. The study circles at Nasir Bagh, by comparison, are far more effective. This is not to suggest that Alhamra should become a platform for promoting any particular ideology; it never should be. Rather, it should be a space that questions ideologies. But if it is to serve that function, it should at least do so well.
But is Alhamrah really at fault here? Is this not the description of every other institution? What can one do in this regard? Invest in the people. Invest in the institutions that are already there to serve the same purpose. Nurture an environment where dissent or critical thinking is appreciated. Make amends (I won't use the word reform, it's the favorite word of our elites) into the educational system, consider that to be a prerequisite for a session at Alhamra. Avoid creating an environment where participation in these talks/ seminars feels forced because it is high time we come out of the culture of pretense and genuinely take some responsibility. These sessions shouldn't be something you show up to once a year. They should inspire. They should educate. That's the whole point of them.