We are pleased to announce the new groups participating in our Self Organizations program. This year’s open call, launched last April, received 114 applications from across the Arab world and beyond. Carine Doumit (film editor & writer, Beirut/Paris), Kamila Metwaly (curator, music researcher, & artistic director, Berlin/Cairo), and Liên Hoàng-Xuân (visual artist & director, Paris/Tunis) advised on the selection process. The groups are:
Informal Co-ops
Dancer and choreographer Abdelrahman Boudii, sound designer and music producer Ahmed Moustafa, performing artist and theater maker Caroline Ackad, and visual artist and filmmaker Sarah ElMasry will share a studio in Cairo to be used individually and collectively to meet, connect, and generate ideas, as well as develop their practice in dance, sound design, and visual arts.
Photographers Abdo Shanan and Cléa Rikhou and graphic designer Louise Dib will together experiment with and train in risograph printing. They aim to expand their knowledge and use of the printer to develop collective and personal projects and then create a space for transmitting that knowledge by training others and offering an open resource for the local artistic community in Algiers.
Stage director Akram Assam, architect Amir Akram, sculptor Loay Al Hadhary, environmental artist Muhaned Taha, and conceptual artist Zaid Saad will share a workspace in Baghdad that will allow them to experiment with collaborative art practices, as well as research collaborative decision-making, teamwork, and conflict prevention within self-organized groups.
Topical Assemblies
Artists, feminist militants, and friends Aicha Chennaoui, Bochra Triki, and Rym Amami will create a fanzine to help document women’s and queer persons’ stories. They will also organize a workshop at Mad’art, a hub for feminist and queer initiatives in Tunis.
Architects and filmmakers Dana Salama, Mena El Shazly, Omnia Sabry, and Rana El Mahallawy will converse together and with guests to critique the political implications of their interrogation of Egyptian landscapes and botanical histories. They will question the techno-scientific archives, databases, methodologies, and expertise upon which they often rely.
Painter Hozaifa Elsiddig, musician Ibrahim Taha, visual artist Khalid ElKhateem, human rights activist Mohamed Bakr, cultural researcher Roaa Ismail, and painter and sculptor Sannad Shreef want to visualize and narrate the genocide and violence taking place in Sudan. They will reimagine the archival material through their artistic and digital tools to create a public digital archive.
Poet and researcher Farida Gohar, academic Lina Khedr, and poet, cultural programmer, and curator Youssef Mansour will create a series of events that function as a living research process on how to reintroduce poetry into public and communal life in Egypt. The series would include regular readings, open mics, writing sessions, and informal community gatherings around poetry.
These groups will participate in four online sessions reflecting on alternative concepts, tools, and methods of self-organization: a conversation led by researcher and film editor Carine Doumit, with Abir Saksouk and Ayman Hassan from Mansion and Engy Mohsen and Rania Atef from K-oh-llective, around their experiences as part of those two self-organized initiatives; a workshop with visual artist Marnie Slater raising questions on financial inequality and creating actions of redistribution in self-organized groups; and a session with transfeminist political organizer and multidisciplinary artist Leil Zahra Mortada on how to align artistic production with ethical practices; and an interactive workshop with filmmaker and activist Salma El-Tarzi addressing and preventing sexual violence in shared spaces.
This new edition of the Self Organizations program is made possible with the generous support of the DOEN Foundation and Mophradat’s structural funders.