The Guide for Using Life

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An exhibition featuring all the artwork in “The Use of Life novel” by artist: Ayman Al-Zorkany Along with First book signing with the author: Ahmed Naji

A contemporary experimental by Ayman Al-Zorkany featuring the visual language used in the novel with all it’s diverse mediums, using shorthand and extending the material to take the audience through a unique visual experience, where the visual language is connected to the script in it’s structure and contradicting in it’s practices with the tools used in the same script to introduce what is more like a guide for using life.
accompanying the opening the first book signing for “Using Life” novel published by “Dar Al-Tanweer” and an interview with Ahmed Naji and Aymen Al-Zorkany

On the sideline of the exhibition, limited editions of Ayman’s work will be offered for sale along with other comic publications for “Dar Al-tanweer” (Marsoom)

Opening at Medrar for Contemporary Art will be from Monday 24th of November 2014, 7pm, and the exhibition will continue until Monday the 1st of December, all days of the week except Fridays, from 4 pm until 10 pm.

7 Gamal El Din Abou El Mahasen,
Garden Cit,
First Floor, Apt.4, Cairo, Egypt
Medrar Contact info/ Phone 02 27957714
Email info@medrar.org

ROZNAMA 3

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Roznama 3 

 Roznama 3 is a periodical competition and exhibition for contemporary visual art by young Egyptians 

From 12 October to 30 October 2014

Opening Sunday 12 October 2014, 8 pm

Daily from 4 to 10 pm, Closed Friday

The competition’s objective is to encourage creative contemporary art works, which are different from the orthodox forms taught at art academies. This is achieved through providing a space for experimentation, research, and mixed media and multimedia production. Roznama also takes interest in traditional art forms, such as painting, sculpting, and avant-garde photography. Roznama aspires to become a platform that presents distinguished art works, introducing artists from Egypt and supporting them by all possible means.

 Awards: 
Medrar for Contemporary Art would like to congratulate artists Hend Samir and Sara Nabil for the Roznama 3 Competition Award (Shared 1000 USD) and Solo exhibition at Medrar, While also congratulating Artists Marwa Adel Benhalim and Sherifa Hamed upon receiving the Jury Selection Certificate of Appreciation.

PROFIT | PROPHET

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The first offense: Kopernikus. The second offense: Darwin. The third offense: Freud himself. The fourth offense: ††. Habitually modest, team titanic invites to a two-part cooperation project with Medrar for Contemporary Art: PROFIT | PROPHET. The message is the message. A bi-urban, transcontinental exhibition- and performance-series.

Geminoid, quantified-self, object of consumerism, analysis and data. No new info: the body is more than the sum of its organs. However its surroundings are getting lighter: polypropylene, polyurethane, spandex, silicon, and 3(H)D scans are the materials of the sport and technology industries. Profit, much like biology, is based on selection and competition, investment and return. Profit is a little alchemist, that transfers immaterial goods (trust, speculation, time) to presentable formats (even more spandex, money, sculptures). CGI or synthetic organism: what difference does it make?

Prophecies are in itself not bound to the verifiable. Their messenger himself dispatches from the the non-verifiable omnipotence. Nonetheless, by utterance and medium, something concrete lies within this ‘immaterial forecast’. Prophecies exist in all religions and cultures, and fall within a long tradition in human society – not least in the economy. Mankind clings onto the prospects of tomorrow. Something vital (and mortal) yields from something as immaterial and inanimate as code.

The participating artists are asking questions of anonymity versus collectivism, (self-)marketing and future strategy, the visual and the virtual. It is a community, bound by and through local circumstances, asking similar questions. Ultimately, a condition, rather than the work, is at the fore: fleeting, dedicated to the process, and open. Before the spectator is after the spectator. This – an actual extension of the freudian triad – is the fourth offense. Less than ever, the works require on the observer or the artist as an individual with identity. This isn’t regrettable.

The title is to be understood as the basis of working together: by bringing together two cities, as the works of artists from Cairo and Berlin convene, exchange reaches a physical here and now. Prophet. The program, as a result of the encounter, can be seen as the prognosis of an already set future. Profit.

Come in and buy out.
Sincerely
Goldilocks, Cheeta & Schlomo
aka
††

SATURDAY, 20.09.2014 | 6 PM
Exhibition Opening with:
Ahmed Shoukry (Kairo),
Peter Feiler (Berlin),
Khaled Galaledeen (Kairo),
Anne-Sophie Kneer (Berlin),
Kareem Lotfy (Kairo),
Hanne Lippard (Berlin),
Pussykrew (Berlin),
Sarah Samy (Kairo),
Islam Shabana (Kairo),
Santiago Taccetti (Berlin),
Britta Thie (Berlin),
Helga Wretman (Berlin)

Performances by:
Quit Together (Kairo),
COCKPIT (Berlin),
Soda Plains (Berlin)

SUNDAY, 20.09.2014 | 6 PM 
Panel talk with:
Quit Together,
Medrar & team titanic

Exhibition – Visual Lab Rats

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Installations exhibition by Alaa Abdelhamid

Opening Wednesday, June 25th 2014, from 7 pm to 10 pm, till July 16th, 2014
Daily from 10 am to 9 pm, Except Fridays
Throughout the month of Ramadan from 12 pm to 5 pm
Address: 7 Gamal El Din Abou El Mahasen St. Garden City, First Floor, Cairo

/// Visual Lab rats ///
Long after cold wars have been deployed by regimes to assure their survival, such wars have become a contemporary reference for visual and audio media. Governments utilize this process to monitor their citizens. Furthermore, citizens are lured into cooperating with these systems by means of repetition, either through recurrent images or audio messages. Such messages are stored in the minds of the public. Results of such practices are variable from one person to the other, in accordance with his/her interests and degree of awareness. Accordingly, a person follows, rejects, or alters between different interpretations of the given information. However, he/she might have to resort to the toughest choice after all, which is self-doubt.

In this project, Alaa Abdelhamid attempts to incorporate the viewer and enable cross-visibility. This quality results from the pieces acquiring liveliness, which in return, alters the visual according to the surroundings. The project stems from Abd El-Hamid’s research on the rules of reflection, and ipso facto the perceived image.

1971, Sun Ra in Egypt

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by Tom Bogaert

May 15 to June 13, 2014
Saturday to Thursday from 5:00 p.m to 9:00 p.m.
Opening reception: Thursday May 15 at 7:00 p.m.

Please join us for the opening of Tom Bogaert’s “1971, Sun Ra in Egypt” including a special performance Dwarfs of East Agouza & Invisible Hands, that will pay tribute to Sun Ra’s music.

One hundred years after 1914, Medrar for Contemporary Art is celebrating Sun Ra’s birthday in a special exhibition. Bogaert’s “1971, Sun Ra in Egypt” is an ongoing research project based on the life and work of Sun Ra – the legendary American jazz pioneer, mystic, poet, and philosopher. The project exists as a series of performances, lectures, installations, videos, art objects, and a related publication and it takes as its starting point Sun Ra’s 1971 visit to Egypt.

Besides Bogaret’s art works, the exhibition will also feature a make-shift museum for Sun Ra, which includes books written about him, his records, and other objects.

Sun Ra (1914-1992), born in Alabama in the United States, was a legendary jazz pioneer, mystic, poet and philosopher. Born as Herman Poole Blount, he changed his name to Le Sony’r Ra after a visionary experience that led him to believe he came from the planet Saturn. From this point on Sun Ra was fascinated by both outer space and ancient Egypt. His incorporation of the Egyptian sun god Ra into his name was the first of many invocations of ancient Egypt’s culture and beliefs. Sun Ra was famous for his music as much as his eccentricity with his unique sonic productions that reflected a myriad of approaches and inspirations. From the mid-1950s until his death in 1993, Sun Ra led a band called “The Arkestra”, which continues to perform its eccentric mix of free jazz, bop, and electronic music under the leadership of Marshall Allen.

This project is supported by the Flemish authorities, Embassy of Belgium in Egypt and Roberto Cimetta Fund.

1971, Sun Ra in Egypt

Event Details

’1971, Sun Ra in Egypt’ opens on Thursday 15 May at 7pm.

The exhibition is ongoing Sunday to Thursday until 13 June 2014.
Opening hours: 10am – 5pm

7 Gamal El Din Abou El Mahasen Street, Garden City, 1st Floor, Cairo, Egypt

Exhibition – Blink 2

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Medrar hosts ‘Blink’ exhibition by selected students of the American University in Cairo

On Saturday 7 December 2013, Medrar for Contemporary Art is set to host ‘Blink’ exhibition, featuring the works of selected students from the Visual Arts Department at the American University in Cairo.

‘Blink’ is curated by visual artist and associate professor in AUC’s visual arts department Shady El-Noshokaty, and will be on show in Medrar’s space in Garden City until 25 December 2013.

The works presented include contemporary photography , experimental animation along with audio and video art works. The artworks, presented by 21 students explore the moment of art making that turns an idea into a unique creation process.

Exhibiting artists include: Aya El-Mofty, Habiba Allam, Hala Hisham, Lina Nabrawy, Malak Yacout Saleh, Nada I. Fathy, Nazly Abaza, Mohamed Talaia, Omar Ashour, Omar Hamdalla, Omar Mobarek, Rawaa Sherif, Riham Ali Kassim, Salma Aboul Hussein, Tuqa El-Harouny, Yasmina Kabbara, Zeina Madwar, Nathalie Lothfy, Maya Shafei, Islam Shabana and Nadine El Awadly.

The opening night will start at 8pm on Saturday 7 December and the show will be on display in Medrar for Contemporary Art until 25 December.

Opening Hours: Everyday (except Friday) from 4-9pm

Blink: The moment of unequivocal, uncertain, unspecified and unrealistic judgment is one, which travels through a narrow wormhole to infinite space with no gravity. This moment might also teleport itself with magically accelerated speed from one point to another in one corner of our mind. The process described is an act of thinking and research.

How can we measure the distance between these very points in a vacuum that reconstitutes itself with each and every attempt to capture an idea that alters all sites, vanishes certainty, and starts a new journey of sequential trace for a new idea? What if we stopped observing and analyzing the horizon from a distance and started testing our ability to detect and experiment in another domain, perhaps a virtual one?

When do we stop pursuing remnants of those pictures, letters and sounds scattered in the neglected rubble of files in our memories. And when do we stop trying out the joy of detecting their magical creativity when they are composed and reformed again in uncertain new systems, ones that are not fixed, and are unrealistic…  This is an invitation to pursue that moment of renewable dissatisfaction, curiosity and wonder in every attempt at a new discovery. It is the essence of art and constitutes a mystical experience.

A group of students exhibiting at Medrar for Contemporary Art present their creativity in the performing arts, audio, video processing, and animation. They strive to reproach that moment in these experiments, that may still be one of the earliest phases of creation and may change momentarily to become a new creation.

ROZNAMA 2

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 Roznama 2 

 Visual arts exhibition for young Egyptian artists 

In Urdu, Roznama refers to daily occurrences. A collection of days, weeks and months of human life, that host events and occurrences, giving them shape, texture and taste. In the second edition of this group exhibition, Roznama attempts to present a curated collection of visual contemporary art works dealing with an array of mediums for expression. The artworks are concerned with socio-political realities and events that shape the world around us through this moment of change we are witnessing.

Roznama 2 looks beyond the obvious, perhaps even naive representations of events that are part of our daily intake of them, and jumps into the deeper analysis of the human experience surrounding them.

Opening Saturday 26 October 2013, 8 pm From 26 October to 16 November 2013

Daily from 4 to 10 pm, Closed Friday Roznama 2

INTERLAB ARTIFICIAL EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

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Cairo – Dresden

Artificial Emotional Intelligence

This exhibition creates a space for innovative interaction through modern technologies designed by media artists and technologists from Cairo, Egypt and Dresden, Germany. The artworks come to life only when the audience interact with them, and the audience are thus invited in this process to either create or be the artwork.

InterLAB: Artificial Emotional Intelligence is made with the support of The Culture Resource, MitOst, European Cultural Foundation, Robert Bosh Stifung, Mimeta, Stichting Doen Foundation

Workshop and Exhibition – Bearing Witness

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Bearing Witness

Through a series of artistic work sessions through five weeks. The workshops were planned as to discuss real stories experienced or witnessed by ordinary people in extraordinary situations and times, as base to produce inspired art projects, by proposing methods to approach the artistic problem, concept, and form, taking into consideration their relation to the community. Through ‘Bearing Witness’ participants produced individual and group projects based on the discussions with contexts relating to the current social, ideological and political shifts.

Bearing Witness: the stories of ordinary people living during extraordinary times is a contemporary art theory and practice project that is based on the methodology of Plexus International’s co-operas.  Dr. Sandro Dernini and a group of international artists founded Plexus to create large-scale collaborative art projects known as co-operas during the 1980s in New York City’s Lower East Side.

The objective of Bearing Witness was to provide an artistic eyewitness account to the extraordinary experiences of ordinary Egyptians living during these extraordinary times.  During extraordinary times, stories tend to be told more sincerely.  Sharing and appreciating such stories helps bridge individual differences by creating a collective consciousness and awareness of the “other.”

The Workshop

A workshop for the production of collaborative multi-disciplinary projects around the concept of bearing witness to stories told by ordinary people living during extraordinary times, based on the methodology of Plexus International’s co-operas. During the three weeks of workshops, investigation and collaborative work was developed in a context of community dialogue, personal encounters, and collective learning using both theory and practice.

Exhibition

Display of art works realized by the participants during the Bearing Witness workshop, most of the works where the first exhibited piece of the artist, featuring films, multimedia installations, photography, sound art performances, paintings and ceramics

Bearing Witness was conceived by artist/educator Arturo Lindsay and is being developed in collaboration with Atlanta and Cairo based artists, educators, technicians and students.

SOLOUS IRISH/ARABIAN ‘AVANT-GARDE’ FILM TOUR

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The Solus Irish/ Arabian avant-garde film tour brings the works of over 20 filmmakers and artists from Muslim, Arabic speaking countries to 8 venues around Ireland in autumn 2009, running concurrently with the screening of work by 15 emerging and established Irish/international filmmakers in 3 North African and Middle Eastern venues.

Medrar curated a special programme within the Irish tour, which the final stop of was at the Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray, Co. Wicklow / Sunday, November 15th / 3pm – 5pm

MEDRAR Curated Programme:

The Pick 4: Exhibition in Townhouse Gallery

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The fourth edition of The Pick, Townhouse’s bi-annual exhibition, introduced the latest generation of artists, featuring works by students and recent graduates. Most of the work on view in The Pick 4 was new, developed through close discussion with the curators. In this way, the exhibition serves not only to promote and encourage young artists but also to expose them to the curatorial process and critical collaboration.