This year’s open call for Self Organizations, launched in March, received over 90 applications from across the Arab world and beyond. Haig Aivazian (visual artist, Beirut), Hajer Boubaker (radio producer and researcher, Paris/Tunis), and Noor Abed (visual artist and filmmaker, Ramallah) advised on the selection process.
Informal Co-ops
Art curators and researchers Adele Jarrar, Ammar Mnla Hasan, Nour Ezzedine, and Peter Houaiss will work together to build a decentralized art gallery and music venue on the virtual platform Decentraland.
The group called Bahh, which was founded by artists and performers Ahlam Dirani, Hashem Adnan, Hiba Najem, Nassim Banna, Nour Shammaa, Racha Ghanem, and Rima Kaddissi, will work on producing their first season of live events, including discussions, workshops, and lectures that take place in Beirut.
Topical Assemblies
Cairo-based visual arts practitioners Aly Talaat, Ebrahim Bahaa, Gustavo Ciríaco, and Nada Hesham will develop tools related to copying methods in order to consider how to free ideas from their copyright, challenging notions of ownership and entitlement to art works.
Researchers Jana Nakhal, Mihad Haydar, Nour Hteit, and Rahaf Dandash seek to create a space for feminist education, documenting feminist experiences, and reflection through graphic design and creative writing workshops in feminist library and café Mayli, in Baalbek. The former would focus on the history of revolutionary graphic design, its basics, and its application in an aim to produce a feminist calendar for the upcoming year; while the latter would take on feminist science fiction in an aim to produce a feminist short story collection that addresses the body, land, and territories.
Your Ideas
Environmental activist Antoine Daher, filmmaker Eliane Raheb, performance activist Marie-Elise Aad, eco-tourism activist Nizar Mhanna, and social activists Yara Ayoub and Zaher Kaiss will work on building an environmental solidary and cultural cooperative in Lebanon. It would propose local solutions and use its resources in a healthy and sustainable manner by cooperating with locally active groups and exchanging tools and expertise, as well as build strategies and backup plans in times of catastrophe.
Cairo-based Kusbarra Collective is a writing, research, and cooking partnership between writers and artists Mariam Boctor and Nour Kamel, who will collaborate with cultural historian Anny Gaul and visual artist Rana El Nemr on organizing six community meals, each curated around a specific ingredient with cultural and historical relevance to Egypt. They will collaborate with more artists, culinary historians, and chefs on ingredient selection, research, recipe design, and menu curation, which would be integrated into a public event that includes an exhibition, a collective meal, and a zine-making event.
Visual artist Souad Mani, in collaboration with curator and writer Marianna Liosi and psychologist Wael Garnaoui will create a transdisciplinary space where arts, humanities, and environmental studies intersect within the specific cultural and social context of Sousse. It will focus on topics such as the climate crisis and its effects on living species, digital humanities, and borders.
This edition of Self Organizations is implemented as part of the project “Future Acts,” which is partially supported by the Federal Foreign Office, Germany.