Tales around the Pavement is a multi-staged contemporary arts project that explores the complex relationships and shifting dynamics between people and public space in the context of a mega city like Cairo, in which the notion of public space and its various functions, official and informal, is constantly negotiated and redefined.
For full program click here to link to event's official website.
Text from event's official website:
The first chapter of the project was launched during the Cairo Unclassified edition of Meeting Points 5 (MP5), a regional contemporary arts festival organized by the Young Arab Theatre Fund in November 2007. Taking place on the streets of Downtown Cairo, seven local artists, designers and architects produced new projects that subtly disrupted the urban landscape of the city by creatively reinventing some of the guerilla-style tactics and survival strategies employed by Cairo dwellers on a daily basis. Documentation of the entire process and discussion of the seven low-budget projects will be presented in a publication format with photographic images, illustrations, critical texts, notes and conversations (see program for dates of launch of publication and round table discussion with artists)
In Tales around the Pavement: Chapter Two, we bring to the table a similar set of questions and issues pertaining to public spaces in mega cities, from Istanbul to Mumbai, examined by an international group of artists, photographers, writers, curators and filmmakers within the framework of a visual arts exhibition in the white cube space and a parallel public program of presentations, lectures, films screenings and roundtable discussions. Property, privacy, ownership, class, marginalized sub-cultures and gated communities are but some of the threads that are woven within the narratives presented in the program.
The eight works presented in the visual arts exhibition include one project that has been reworked from Chapter One (Mohamed Allam), three newly commissioned works (Mahmoud Khaled, Katarina Šević, Tarek Hefny), three existing works that have been previously shown in other contexts (Hany Rashed, Osman Bozkurt, Randa Shaath) and one work that has been produced individually but has not yet been exhibited (Jean-luc Marchina). Making use of a diverse range media and approaches, from single channel low-tech videos, sound installations to black and white documentary photographs, these cultural producers collectively spin a web of stories that is as multi-layered as the city itself.
Hany Rashed
Jean-luc Marchina
Katarina Ševič
Mahmoud Khaled
Mohamed Allam
Osman Bozkurt
Randa Shaath
Tarek Hefny
All events begin at 7pm at the main hall at CiC
