20 january - 29 Februar 2008
A multi-staged contemporary arts project curated by Aleya Hamza and Edit Molnarِ
Opening reception on Sunday 20 January 2008 at 7 pm
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.
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.
ARTISTS
Hany Rashed
Jean-luc Marchina
Katarina Ševič
Mahmoud Khaled
Mohamed Allam
Osman Bozkurt
Randa Shaath
Tarek Hefny
PROGRAM OF EVENTS
All events begin at 7pm at the main hall at CiC
20 January 2008
Opening reception of visual arts exhibition
22 January 2008
Open City: Istanbul, presentation by Istanbul-based artist Osman Bozkurt who will discuss his video Auto - Park / The Highway Parks of Istanbul, as well his experience as one of the initiators of Pist, an independent artists-run initiative in Istanbul.
6 February 2008
Mumbai Rising,presentation by British photographer Jason Larkin
Within the 18 million inhabitants that call Mumbai home lies an incredibly diverse reality of how people live their lives. Mumbai’s adoption of Western economic practices and the resulting boom has only served to highlight the disparity of Mumbai society. In the last five years property prices have increased by 80%, the highest rate in the world, yet 55% of its inhabitants are still homeless. To witness the development of life in and around Mumbai is a compelling experience. But can a city really move through fifty years of economic progression in five? The layers that build today’s Mumbai create a new picture, but a picture that feels forced upon you, be it by the people who are selling it or the consumers who buy it. Jason Larkin presents and talks about his latest photography project, which focuses on the young emerging middle classes of Mumbai and this rapidly changing landscape.
10 February 2008
Screening of The Tequila Gang, directed by Hudák László-Lenárt, a project by BIG HOPE (Dominic Hislop/Miklos Erhardt), 1998, 58 min (Hungarian with English subtitles)
After the completion of the photographic project saját szemmel/inside-out (www.bighope.hu), Miklós Erhardt continued to work with one of the participants from project, László Hudák, and his circle of friends, the ‘Tequila Gang’, on the making of a film. The film, part fiction and part documentary, was directed and filmed on video and super 8 by László Hudák and social worker, Lénárt Imre, and produced by the Balázs Béla Studio, Budapest.
17 February 2008
Book Launch of Tales around the Pavement: Chapter One
The book launch will be accompanied by a round table discussion with the artists who participated in the first chapter of the project, which took place on the streets of downtown Cairo. The publication is funded by the Young Arab Theatre Fund.
Moderator: Mohammed Yousri
24 February 2008
Form, Function and Commodity. Inventing the modern city through non-fictional film Lecture by Berlin-based artist and film curator Florian Wüst
The standardization of modern housing and city planning in the West relates closely to the advent of the capitalist consumer society. For propagating new living standards, car-driven urban landscapes or the efficiency of electrical appliances, film played a significant role. Florian Wüst will show and discuss excerpts out of various documentaries, educational films, advertisements and artistic films that present a multiplicity of perspectives on the topic – from the American suburbia of the 1930s to the post-war House of Tomorrow and today's Gated Communities and privately owned public spaces.
26 February 2008
Film screening of Chain directed by Jem Cohen, USA, 2004, 100 min (English language)
A dreamlike travelogue that transforms a mundane world into something strange and new, Jem Cohen's Chain crafts a fiction from visual documents, achieving a heightened sense of reality. Shot over more than six years, it was created from images of locations that global itinerants pass through en route to more memorable locales: brass-railed shopping malls, corporate parks, hotels and airports. Eschewing his love of disappearing architectural vernaculars seen in his previous films, Cohen focuses on the contemporary sprawl that has become invisible in its ubiquity. (Ed Halter)
With thanks to James Debbs, Antidote International Films, New York
This project is supported by Pro Helvetia: The Swiss Arts Council with additional support from Goethe-Institut Kairo and the ACAX, Agency for Contemporary Art and Exchange, Budapest
For more information:
Contemporary Image Collective
www.ciccairo.com --- aleya@ciccairo.com or edit@ciccairo.com -- +2 02 27941686