Category: Informal Co-ops
Adam HajYahia, Haitham Haddad, Hussam Abu-Hanna, Layla Rina
Four Palestine-based practitioners plan to share a workspace that functions as a dark room and development studio in Haifa, where they will work on film-scanning, film development, printing, and print-making, as well as multidisciplinary artistic creations involving photography practices. They plan to share the studio and also provide space for other analog and film photographers in order to further their research into intimate Palestinian visual narratives rarely documented or shared with the public.
Ahmed AbdelGawad, Aly Roshdy, Hebatuallah Hendawy, Nermeen Nasser
Four multidisciplinary designers from Egypt come together with an interest in experimenting with natural materials in architecture, art and product design, amongst other applications. Propelled by the need to create a sense of the outdoors within indoor spaces during the pandemic, they propose a co-working/art space in the heart of Cairo in which they will incorporate elements from the natural world, exploring experimental and experiential design. Documenting their process, they hope to inspire and involve other designers through this project, and to develop a toolbox for the methodologies used that can be shared with a wider audience.
Aymen Gharbi, Aziza Gorgi, Emily Sarsam, Siavash Eshghi
A group of arts professionals from Tunis seek a shared and safe studio space to host their project, Convivial Tools. This dynamic and collaborative learning environment aims to explore forms of collective governance and knowledge-sharing through critical conversation and radical creative practice. This space will host readings, screenings, “do-it together” sessions, writing workshops, and calligraphy labs in a central and accessible area of the city, with the goal of imagining new and fairer ways of improving the urban environment.
Jamal Awar, Jihad Saade, Ramzi Khoury, Reem Al Mohtar
Four filmmakers from Lebanon plan to establish an informal film cooperative called The Cinema House in the mountain village of Aramoun. The cooperative will be dedicated to circulating films and making them accessible in areas where cinema venues and related activities are non-existent. They will tour with a mobile cinema that can be adjusted to different outdoor settings, inviting the attendees to participate in the setting up of the sessions by choosing the location of the screening and the films that will be screened. The house will also host film projections, discussions, and workshops.
Abdelrahman Hatem Haj Mohamad, Basel Nasr, Bashir Masaad, Raoof Haj Yehia
These four Palestinian researchers and artists (in the fields of cartoon, handcrafts, and visual arts) will acquire a set of specialized animation devices as a shared resource to develop their artistic practice for both individual and collaborative projects. They want to rethink work dynamics based on the collaborative process that computer animation requires when using stop-motion techniques.
Ali Mohanna, Deeb Al-Ghandour, Hanaa Al-Ghoul, Yahia Abu Saqr
Four Palestinian artists — a director, a storyteller, a visual artist, and a musician — will come together to equip an open-air performing stage made of recycled material on the Gaza seashore to produce and present plays, as well as other cultural events. The project invites artists and young people to share their unconventional visions, and investigate art as a transformative tool for their community.
Ibraheem Fadl, Oudi Mahmoud, Rehab Qataber, Saleh Al Bakry
Four music practitioners from Yemen will set up a shared recording studio that can be used for the creation and production of music and multivocal songs in the style of the Yemeni fan khefafy genre, mixing traditional repertoire with contemporary elements. The studio, which will be located in a rehabilitated rooftop room in one of their homes, will host regular gatherings and discussion around the created works.
Category: Private Audiences
Bouchra Salih, Sanaa Zaghoud, Mohammed Kharbouchi
Rabat-based artists question the relationship between the body, space, and architecture through Appartements Investis, an artist residency that rotates in private spaces throughout the city. Wanting to invest in the intimacy of the home in order to experience a new way of working, and to meditate on the process of creation in a changed world, they aim to invite a diverse audience to reflect with them on their work.
Category: Topical Assembly
Amr Issa, Hala ElHadi, Khouloud Essa, Mohamed Adam Zakaria, Nawal Abdelwahab
An Egyptian-Sudanese group of theatermakers, musicians, and cultural practitioners will organize a music workshop for Alexandria-based participants from Syria, Sudan, Yemen, and Egypt focused on the crafting and use of the tanbura, a traditional Nubian instrument. A professional tanbura maker and player from Aswan will share his knowledge and experience with the participants of the workshop.The group will also initiate conversations for further documentation on this instrument by collecting stories, sound, and visual material from tanbura practitioners in Egypt and Sudan.
Category: Your Ideas
Ghalia Elsrakbi, Lama Abdelwahab, Rana Magdy
In response to the lack of intimate spaces in which early-career arts practitioners can question and engage in dialogue on the infrastructure of art and cultural production in Egypt, a group of three designer-artists will launch a pilot project that explores alternative models of creative production in which agency, autonomy, and self-organization are the focal point. Establishing a lab in which they curate five exploration sessions, they aim to invite early-career cultural producers to respond to shared questions and themes, the formats of which will vary from walking tours to curated gaming nights to mapping workshops.
Jessica Sawan, Maissa Kassir, Mona Ayoub, Salam Ganat
A group of cultural practitioners aim to create an outdoor, agricultural, ecological, creative, and collective space in a plot of land in north Lebanon for their communities, focused initially on organic permaculture, food preservation, Flamenco dancing, and craft art. This space will serve as a community hub and these skills will be taught to one another through collective learning, shared resources, network-building, and working to create a collective and sustainable economic model.
Marouan Omara, Noureldien Ahmed, Rodrigo Brum
Three Cairo-based film producers want to invest their experience in the cinema industry through Front and Back, a series of workshops over three months, inviting 14 young filmmakers to experiment with different modes of self-exploration through the audiovisual, including video autobiography, diary films, and video letters. Focusing on first-person projects that explore the personal, by the end of the workshop, they aim for aspiring filmmakers to come out with a complete dossier, and will then select two projects to be produced.
Basel Abdulal, Farah Karaki, Ihab Abdelmoati
A group of cultural practitioners — editors, writers, designers, and photographers — based in Nahr al-Bared camp in Tripoli, Lebanon, will come together around an editorial project to create a monthly cultural magazine. The publication will serve as an invigorating creative space for youth in the camp where they can publish creative texts, poems, photographs, or articles discussing social topics, sharing their vision, knowledge, and thoughts.
Amr Amer, Huda Zikry, Yasmine Sedeik
Three arts practitioners interested in the narratives around Egyptian contemporary art history, as well as learning and knowledge processes, will create a comprehensive online guide mapping art spaces in Egypt and observing their impact in relation to urban and social change. The platform, which will be both a narrative and research tool, will include audiovisual material and oral histories of these spaces.