Open Source Dance, Tilburg-Holland - Call for Applications

INCUBATE presents:

OPEN SOURCE DANCE

Space that must be filled, the dance program of Incubate, aims to give the audience and community of Incubate a new role as participant. It offers the Incubate audience a stage to show their own dance to the Incubate visitors. The (unwritten) laws of dance and theatre are hard to work with in a spontaneous way. Together with dance curator Sonja Augart, we are looking for a way to offer new insights in this discipline. By creating a rigid form of presentation, the stage is free for whoever wants to use it!

Anything goes, there’s no boundaries between academic styles, folk dance or urban/street/hip hop styles, as long as it fits the dogma we’ve created for the presentation. Performances cannot be over 10 minutes, only a standard light setting is permitted, there’s a maximum of four dancers on the floor at the same time and there’s only a single CD player. Change-over will not exceed 15 minutes and usage of props or décor is not permitted.

The program will take place on September 16, 17 and 18th at Theatre De NWE Vorst in Tilburg. Space that must be filled is a dance program where everyone is invited to give their own insights on dance and movement. The audience can walk in and out of the presentation room, they can choose to stay for a little while or come see a specific performance.

If you want in, you can send an email with a short text on your idea, show or presentation of max 100 words to: Sonja@incubate.org and the deadline for letting us know you want to participate is June 20th. The final schedule will be announced before July 4th.

Our Dogma is:

-the stage is 10 x 6 meters

-no special light settings (only a total light setting)

-no stands

-max lenght is 10 minutes

-max three dancers on the stage at any time

-cd player is on stage

-thematic work is preferred

-no artificial emotions

-use of sound and music is permitted

Collaboration unpacked: Cultural activists and artists discuss change

photo taken by Dina Shoukry

An article recently released on Al Masry Al Youm Newspaper on the conference "Co-change maps" that was held at Goethe Institut Kairo. The article is by Lina Attallah, and you can find the original article here.

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Cultural activists, artists and critics convened for two days late last week to discuss collaboration in cultural production and change as a precursor to redefining positions in a conference organized by HaRaKa, a dance development and research collective.

Though not a conference on the 25 January revolution per se, its programmers recognized that the radical uprising that toppled the regime in Egypt highlights the notion of change and prompts a conversation about how it would unfold in art practice and collaborations in production processes.

Networking and network creation meetings are one such form of collaboration, where groups get together, sometimes responding to the unwritten agendas of their hosts, which are ultimately political. A regional case in point in is social media and digital activism hype, a construct mostly created by the anxiety of outsiders to appropriate the narrative by calling for "activists' meetings and "activists' networks." The process had its reverberations in disrupting a personal and autonomous quest of unpacking collective engagement with online spaces and its political transformation.

Angela Harutyunyan, an art critic, said that we are complicit too in such entrapments.

“Network is a symptom of attention deficiency disorder,” she said, indicating how one is present but not engaged, constantly interrogating a process of managing relations and subjectivities.

Stepping beyond such established relations, Ranwa Yehia, director of the Arab Digital Expression Foundation, spoke of the importance of being critical and lucid. Having herself conceived a "network" of Arab artists and techies concerned about the promotion of self-expression, she constantly negotiates the intricacies of outside factors, such as funding, in a process that develops mostly organically.

“How can we find a balance between protecting the initiatives that have started in the Arab world that are made of concerned and responsible people and engaging in the work they (funders) are doing, even if you have good intentions?”

Yehia is particularly wary of the notion of ‘creating need’ that is the product of such interventions and the internalization of such constructed needs.

In such a context, funding is an inevitable conversation and site of various critical discourses. As depicted in many other encounters, Western cultural funding is perceived as a post-11 September political strategy, although Harutyunyan extended it to a post-World War II American model of exporting tools of ideological influence. This consciousness becomes indispensible for cultural producers and renders the process of autonomous production a more complex one.

But past deliberate funding agendas, William Wells, director of the Townhouse contemporary art gallery, pointed to lack of knowledge as one of the problems of external funding.

“The funders are bankrupt in ideas. They sit in these meetings of cultural operators, or the diplomat politicians, and they have no idea where to put the money.”

The fact proposes a more politically proactive stance from potential recipients in dictating the direction of such funding endeavors.

Part of the lucidity of producers resides in politicizing their quest for funding. Ismail Fayed, an art critic, spoke about how art operates in a public context and therefore should receive public funding. While public funding in the context of Egypt may have been a luxury in terms of access, it was also a space laden with corruption and nepotism, and now there is a process of re-building where state funding can be reclaimed. This is a particularly enticing proposition given the fact that Egypt's Ministry of Culture reportedly has the second largest budget after the Ministry of Defense.

Hana al-Bayaty, an activist and writer, reiterated that state institutions should be reclaimed and re-appropriated. Such a plea has the potential to put an end to the closed binary of state cultural institutions as opposed to independent institutions, a binary that has led to many reductionist understandings of art practice in the country.

However, Fayed issued a reminder that calling on the public to fund the arts would have its own toll on the practice. “Is art a very limited and elitist practice, or would there be any public support for artistic practices that have been underground and ghettoized? 
How do we make the public then fund this?”

The other question, inspired by Bayaty’s comment, is how state funding is pitched as actual public funding. In other words, how public funding can refrain from dictating a subservient practice to the state and become truly public. Here, Harutyunyan proposed crystallizing research as an important practice for cultural producers that can seek public support.

Besides shedding light on the complexities of collaboration and funding in art practice, the meeting touched on a parcel of a practice by hosting director Tamer al-Saeed. Saeed is the director of “The Last Days of the City”, a docu-drama that has been struggling to see light due to constant funding pitfalls, and hence, has been in the pipeline for several years. In the process, its crew had to make a film in constantly changing production conditions.

Saeed used the city as his set, where the spontaneity of its flow served his low budget but was also a challenge to the art of the film. The awakening that was the revolution did not prompt him to change the line of the film, for it is about the last days of the city, where the point of departure is apocalypse. His affecting and engaging introduction to a film we haven’t seen on the niceties of production and autonomy of creative expression became a vivid illustration of the theoretical conversations mentioned above.

Communique regarding the last performance night "force majeure" -بيان بخصوص إلغاء ليلة العرض الأخيرة من معرض قُوّة قَاهِرَة

After meeting with the artists on 29th of April, the artists and the project partners that were present (Marie Christine Andre and Cristiano Carpanini representing Officina, Toni Cots representing L'animal L'esquna/CRA'P, Adham Hafez and Ahmed Moez representing HaRaKa) unanimously agreed to cancel the last night of performance.

Such decision was arrived at after deliberating with the concerned parties in light of the latest conceptual, critical and political challenges that the local host (HaRaKa) faced and that the artists were witness to and thus agreed to not hold the last night of the event but to instead to hold a private artists talk, in between the artists of the program and the present producers/partners.

بعد الاجتماع مع الفنانين المشاركين في المشروع ليلة 29 أبريل 2011، و بعد عرض الليلة الثالثة من "قُوّة قَاهِرَة"، و بحضور ممثلي المؤسسات المشتركة في المشروع (من أوفيتشينا: ماري كريستين أندريه و كريستيانو كاربانيني ، من "كراب و لانيمالا لاسكينا": توني كوتس، من حَ رَ كَ: أدهم حافظ و أحمد مُعِز)، تمت الموافقة –بإجماع الحضور- على إلغاء آخر ليلة عرض و التي كان مقرر لها أن تكون في الليلة التالية، 30 أبريل.

تم التوصل إلى هذا القرار بعد التداول مع الأطراف المعنية في ضوء التحديات التي يواجهها المضيفون ، مشروع حَ رَ كَ، و ذلك على هيئة تحديات معرفية و نقدية و سياسية.
حضر الفنانون المعنيون هذا الاجتماع و وافقوا أيضا على استبدال آخر ليلة من العروض بحديث فني مغلق بين جميع أطراف المشروع من الفنانين و ممثلي المؤسسات الشريكة به.

Force Majeure, a festival of many performances

Article on Ahram Online by Menna Taher, reviewing the event "Force Majeure". The original article is here.

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The size and architecture of the floor space at the Townhouse gallery gives it a lot of scope to mould and create a certain ambience. On 27 April, on the opening night of the project Force Majeure, the space was separated into different sections by various patterned blankets hung from the wall. This helped with the concept of having multiple performances in one night.

As I enter I find several pieces of video art and a welcome from Adham Hafez wearing a gallabeya (a traditional Egyptian garment), who is one of the organisers and introduces himself as “the other.” Cushions are strewn around and further along grass covers the floor.

Force Majeure, is a part of a larger project called ‘Miniatures Officinae’ which started in 2008 and ends in 2013 in Marseilles. The project, supported by the EU, is a collaboration of several countries in the Euro-Med region, with each country hosting the project for a year.

This year, Haraka Dance Development and Research are the hosts. Ahmed Moez another of the organisers, describes the idea behind the miniatures.

“Miniatures are a type of art, where a very small piece of work conveys a deeper meaning,” Moez explained. “It goes back to the Ottoman period,” he continued and said that this type of art is mainly for paintings. “This was the challenge for our artists,” he said. “They had to turn the idea into performance art pieces.”

The theme of this year’s project was Love and Otherness, however with the recent political events in the region, the title was changed to Force Majeure.

Force Majeure is a legal term for the conditions in which contracts are null and void, including war, riots, martial law, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. "That meant we were released from our contract,” said Adham Hafez, “yet we still went ahead as we were so interested in it.”

The eight participating artists, (two Tunisians couldn’t make it to Egypt), are from Spain, Italy, France and Egypt. Four performances will take place each night.

Christophe Haleb one of the artists, choreographed a piece in the grass section. Several men moved around in slow motion, sometimes lying on the grass and stroking it and communicating with others through hand and body movements.

“The part I enjoyed most about working on this project is meeting young people from the region,” said Haleb. “The idea was to show the variations of distance and what intimate and non-intimate spaces entail,” he continued. “What is privacy and what is public space were the ideas we tapped into.”

During the performance a young man named Hassan Farid repeated the words, “If I were there.” Farid later explained he meant Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the recent Egyptian revolution, as he was out of the country. Enthusiastically he told me that this is his first performance art experience.

Rhuena a former gymnast, performed an act of different acrobatic movements, where she stayed in each position for a long time.

“When people perform acrobatics,” she said, “their movements are so fast you can hardly see the movement itself, their facial expression and the tension of their muscles. It’s only in photographs that you see that.”

During her research she looked at many photographs of gymnasts for inspiration. One of the most important was a still-shot from a documentary about sky jumping by the German filmmaker Werner Herzog.

Video works included Love Dance by Shaymaa Aziz, an animated piece of charcoal on paper that showed two lovers and the awkward and hesitant movements they make when touching amongst the prying eyes of society.

Leo Castro a Spanish artist, took footage of several individuals around Cairo while narrating their possible thoughts and worries.

Tonight's Event

Tonight's last evening of Force Majeure/Miniatures has been cancelled. We apologize for the inconvenience of this cancelling. A communique explaining the conceptual conflict regrading this will be sent shortly.

Donations - تبرع

HaRaKa is glad to announce that we are ready to donate a total number of 70 blankets, used for the set of Force Majeure event, and that we are waiting your suggestions on that.

There will be also around 85 sq meters of natural grass used in the same set, available for suggestions and ideas.

يسعدنا الإعلان عن استعدادنا للتبرع بعدد 70 بطانية مستخدمة الآن في عرض "قُوّة قَاهِرَة" و يسعدنا تلقي اقتراحانكم حول الجهات التي يمكن ان تستفيد بحق من هذا المورد، كما نعلن عن تواجد مساحة 85 متر مربع من النجيل الطبيعي النستخدم عادة في الحدائق و الذي تم استخدامه في نفس العرض، و اننا على استعداد لتلقي اقتراحاتكم بهذا الشأن.

A report on Force Majeure at Ahram Online newspaper, the link to the original article is here.

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The project Force Majeure is an artistic encounter that tries to reassemble elements of an event previously engineered by scripted regional politics of exchange, taking a position from which to look at those elements and exchange modes. Through various forms, this encounter is processed publicly.

Force Majeure was conceived by Adham Hafez and Ismail Fayed with the space designed by architect Samir Kordy. The project is produced and organized in Cairo by HaRaKa Dance Development and Research, and is supported by the Townhouse Gallery, Goethe Institute and the Spanish Embassy’s Cultural Affairs Section. The project is part of Miniatures Officinae, which receives the support of the European Union and is collaboratively produced by Officina (Marseilles), L’Animal A L’Esquena (Celra), CRA’P (Barcelona), El Teatro (Tunis), Indisciplinarte (Terni).

Performances and visual works will be presented for the first time by artists:
Andrea Abbatengelo (Italy)
Marie AlFajr (France/Egypt)
Shaymaa Aziz (Egypt)

Leo Castro (Spain)
Ammar Habli (Tunis)
Christoph Haleb(France)
Gruppo Nanou (Italy)
Filiz Sizanli (Turkey)
Imen Smaoui (Tunis)
Carme Torent (Spain)

Program
27 April 2011: Opening- FORCE MAJEURE
7pm at Townhouse Gallery- Factory
Open Event

28, 29, 30 April 2011: FORCE MAJEURE Miniature Performances and Visual Work
7pm to 10pm at Townhouse Gallery- Factory
Open Event

Parallel Events

21st April 2011- 5th May 2011: Research residency of renowned Catalan researcher, performer, educator and head of “CRA’P” arts organization; Toni Cots.

3rd May 2011: Film screening of Toni Serra’s work, presented by Toni Cots, at Townhouse Gallery Library

Force Majeure: How can we curate democratically?

An article was just published on Al Masry Al Youm news paper about HaRaKa and the new event "Force Majeure" - by Jenna Krajeski

Here is the link to the article on the website of Al Masry Al Youm.

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In 2009 the HaRaKa Dance Research and Development Project, then in its fourth year, began collaborating with international artists on a series of performances and projects called Force Majeur. The program, set to debut in Egypt in 2010, featured six new dance and performance pieces and four visual art pieces by artists from Italy, France, Tunisia, Turkey, and Spain, as well as Egypt. The topic, suggested by the French contingent, was “Love and Otherness,” and the overarching question, according to organizer Adham Hafez, was, “How can we curate democratically?”

Then, in December of 2010, the Tunisian revolution began, the artists from that country needed to rethink their submission, and the performances were delayed. When Egyptians began demonstrating in January 2011, the event was delayed even further. Now, Force Majeur is finally scheduled for 27-30 April at the Townhouse Gallery. In order to address the surprising manner in which the program itself was shaped and reshaped according to the regional changes, HaRaKa will hold a two-day conference called “Co-Changing Maps” on the 26 and 27 April, also at Townhouse.

Cultural and political activists, curators, festival programmers, journalists, artists, and anyone interested -- although Hafez, himself a dancer and choreographer, stresses that the conference should be “more talking than listening” -- will gather to discuss “change.” What does it mean and how can the cultural community react to it?

“Everyone is saying ‘change.’ We hope for change, but we just talk about change very abstractly,” Hafez said. He hopes that the conference will yield several more projects in a place where “in light of their political needs, the inhabitants are becoming more and more visible.” This visibility means that art can be used to break free from a mold dictated by politics -- past, present, and future -- ”the scripted politics of culture.”

Hafez previously described dance to Al-Masry Al-Youm as a way to use the human body as a “critical site or tool for self-expression.” In its first iteration following the 25 January revolution, HaRaKa will explore Hafez’s notion, as he described it in the same interview, that “Demonstrations lie in the performative realm. Protestors, including myself, are performing and physically embodying what they want to say.” Much like dancers take to the stage to express themselves, protesters took to the streets to call for change.

This analogy is, according to the press release, a main focus of Co-Changing Maps. “For longer than the past three decades the Arab World and the Middle East have existed and operated in an oppressive political milieu that was assisted and sustained by a network of specific interests that had very little to do with the true needs of the actual populations inhabiting the region,” it reads. HaRaKa cites a “cataclysmic rupture” in the way the region is viewed abroad and by its residents, and hopes to explore that in two ways: on “change” and on “maps.”

HaRaKa’s most recent dance seminar was held in late January, a week prior to the protests that started the revolution. Although that program, which “reflected on choreographic practices within cultures that escape contemporary discourse and aesthetics,” was pre-revolution, it displayed HaRaKa’s commitment to examining, discussing, and redefining accepted modes of discourse in dance. It’s that same commitment that will make the forthcoming program a revealing cultural response to the changes in the region.

More than that, the conference leading up to the performance is a way to attract an audience who might be a little distracted by the same politics Force Majeur aims to comment on. Hafez, a proponent of art as discussion, seems to understand that others need to be convinced of this notion. “If I put a poster on the street now saying, come and watch ten new dance performances and films, no one would come. The only people who would be interested are those who want to distract themselves totally,” he said. And the point of HaRaKa is not to distract, but to engage.

Force Majeure - قُوّة قَاهِرَة

“FORCE MAJEURE”
2009 a partnership contract is signed, uniting five institutions from five Mediterranean cities under the umbrella of a “Miniatures” project, supported by the European Union’s “Third Countries” collaborations exchange schemes. December 2010: a revolution erupts in Tunis. January 2011: a revolution erupts in Egypt. Within a state of emergency, and under martial law previous agreements are rendered legally and conceptually obsolete. “Force Majeure” is an artistic position/ encounter that tries to reassemble elements of an event previously engineered by regional scripted politics of exchange, and takes a stance to look at those elements and exchange modes processing this publicly through different platforms.
“Force Majeure” rejects the position of culture and the arts as a commodity offered on smoothed grounds, or as a propagandist political backdrop. It prefers the friction generated within a turbulent socio-political condition as a host, hoping to reassert the position of arts within the current Egyptian reality as a necessary space for alternative political thinking and the artistic moment of encounter as a site for reworking preset givens, or at least as an invitation to step into possibilities.
Adham Hafez

“Force Majeure” comes as a direct reaction to a contingent political reality, it happens in a context in which an artistic collaboration was supposed to happen with a specific political and production parameters within a no longer existing political reality. This forced the local host, the artistic partners and other involved parties to question the meaning of their position towards each other and towards this so-called collaboration.
The artists were commissioned through a network of five partners: Officina (Marseilles), HaRaKa (Cairo), L’Animal A L’Esquena (Barcelona), El Teatro (Tunis) and Indisciplinarte (Terni). The project “Miniatures Officinae” originally conceived by Officina took the relationship to the other as a departure point, and the Miniature as a form of interest. Miniatures being a historical artifact for the region and traditional format of documenting, illustrating, preserving, perpetuating not only national narratives but narratives about the other was chosen as the form and format for this artistic production process. It thus became an operative concept that allowed the artists to explore its meaning and possibilities, developing such strategies as minimalism, condensation, illustration, abstraction, and over-identification.

The artists used the Miniatures in a way of questioning if there are really shared historical narratives between those partners, whether this relationality could be expressed through this common medium? If this medium is valid at all?

The different ways through which artists responded was an indication of the evolving relationality and the continuous changing notion of otherness as the project unfolded through residencies within the Mediterranean region.
Egypt was chosen as a site for these works to be presented in 2009. In the light of a new unfolding reality and clear conceptual challenges to all kinds of artistic practices and partnerships working in Egypt, the miniatures project now comes under the clause, ' Force Majeure'

The very roles of its partners unpremeditatedly redefined and irreversibly changed. This process comes by 'force' of the events that are taking place across the Middle East region, the so-called 'Other', and raises the question of how valid are the previous assumptions about otherness and collaborating with the other and whether or not these assumptions and perceptions hold true in light of continuing changing reality.
The partners in this project seek to critically engage with this reality and support the position that art practices must adapt and evolve by continually questioning and problematizing the ways and contexts in which they are created.
Ismail Fayed


”Force Majeure” presents ten newly commissioned miniatures from the artists: Andrea Abbatengelo (Italy), Marie AlFajr (France/Egypt), Shaymaa Aziz(Egypt), Leo Castro (Spain), Ammar Habli (Tunis), Christoph Haleb(France), Gruppo Nanou (Italy), Filiz Sizanli(Turkey), Imen Smaoui(Tunis), Carme Torent (Spain)


Program

26, 27 April 2011
Conference: “Co-changing Maps”
Location: Goethe Institut Kairo- 6 Bustan Street
Registration Obligatory: haraka.project@gmail.com

27 April 2011: Opening- “FORCE MAJEURE”
7pm at Townhouse Gallery- Factory
Open Event/ Free admission

28, 29, 30 April 2011: “FORCE MAJEURE” Performances and Visual Work
7pm to 10pm at Townhouse Gallery- Factory
Open Event/ Free admission

Parallel Events
21st April 2011- 5th April 2011: Research residency of renowned Catalan researcher, performer, educator and head of “CRA’P” arts organization; Toni Cots.

3rd May 2011: Three short films by Toni Serra, founder of the video archive OVNI, followed by a presentation and a talk with researcher in residency Toni Cots
7pm at Library of Townhouse Gallery

Force Majeure is conceived by Adham Hafez and Ismail Fayed
Artists Selection took place collaboratively within the partners network

The project “Force Majeure” is produced and organized in Cairo by HaRaKa Dance Development and Research, and is supported by the Townhouse Gallery, Goethe Institute and the Spanish Embassy’s Cultural Affairs Section. Media partner: AlMasry AlYoum .
“Force Majeure” is part of “Miniatures Officinae” which receives the support of the European Union, and is collaboratively co-produced by Officina (Marseilles), L’Animal A L’Esquena (Celra), CRA’P (Barcelona), El Teatro (Tunis), Indisciplinarte (Terni)
Further support to the project “Miniatures Officinae” is supported by Marseilles Provence Cultural Capital 2013.

”Miniatures Officinae” is a project of production, dissemination and reflection, carried out by Officina (Marseilles), that started 2008 and culminates in large scale cultural event in Marseilles Provence Cultural Capital 2013

*The views presented within this project are solely the views of the artists and organizers, and do not represent the views of the European Union

For more info: www.miniatures.officinae.fr

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"قُوّة قَاهِرَة"



"تم توقيع عقد شراكة فنية يجمع بين خمس مؤسسات من دول متوسطية في عام 2009، و ذلك تحت مسمى "مشروع المنمنمات" المدعوم من برنامج الاتحاد الأوروبي لدعم التعاون و التبادل مع دول العالم الثالث.
في ديسمبر 2010 ، اندلعت ثورة في تونس.
في يناير 2011 ، اندلعت ثورة في مصر.
في ظل "حالة طوارئ" و تحت "الحكم العسكري" تعتبر كل الاتفاقات السابقة لاغية و باطلة. "قُوّة قَاهِرَة" هو لقاء فني يحاول استجماع شتات عمل تم تصميمه وفقا لسياسات تبادل ثقافي بين دول هذه "المنطقة" تم إعدادها مسبقا ، و يأخذ موقفا للنظر في عناصر هذا العمل و آليات تنفيذه بشفافية من خلال سُبُل مختلفة. يأخذ "قُوّة قَاهِرَة" موقفا برفض الرأي القائل بأن الفن و الثقافة يمكن أن تشكلا سلعة، أو أداة لتسويق أفكار سياسية بعينها، في الوقت الذي يفضل فيه الاحتكاك مع واقع ثقافي و اجتماعي مضطرب،و يأمل هذا الحدث في التأكيد على الفن كمساحة ضرورية لطرح طرق تفكير بديلة في الواقع السياسي المصري، و التأكيد أيضا على الفن كوسيلة لإعادة النظر في المُسَلّمات ، أو على الأقل النظر إليه كدعوة للانفتاح على الممكن.
أدهم حافظ




"يأتي "قُوّة قَاهِرَة" كرد فعل مباشر لواقع سياسي دقيق، فالعمل كان من المفترض أن يحدث ضمن سياق انتهى واقعيا، سواء السياق السياسي أو سياق الإنتاج الفني، هذا "التغيير" أجبر المُضيفين و المؤسسات المشاركة –فنيا و غيره- على التساؤل عن معنى مواقفهم تجاه بعضهم و عن موقفهم تجاه هذا التعاون المُزعم.
تم اختيار الفنانين من خلال مجموعة تعاون فني مكوّنة من خمس شركاء هم "أوفيتشينا – مارسيليا(فرنسا)ا" و "حَ رَ كَ – القاهرة" و "لانيمالا لاسكينا – برشلونة(اسبانيا)" و "انديشيبلينارته – تيرني(إيطاليا)" و "التياترو – تونس"، بدأت في مراحلها الأولى من خلال "أوفيتشينا" الشريك الفرنسي. اتخذت هذه المجموعة "العلاقة بالآخر" كنقطة بدء ، و اختارت "المنمنات" كمَصَب للاهتمام."المنمنمات" تراث فني و تاريخي مهم لهذه "المنطقة" استُخدم في التأريخ و التوثيق و الشرح و الحفظ، و أيضا التخليد لرؤى، ليست قومية فقط و إنما عن النفس و عن "الآخر"، و لهذا اختيرت "المنمات" كشكل و كقالب لعملية الإنتاج الفنية هذه. و بذلك أصبحت "المنمنمات" هي المبدأ الذي انشغل الفنانين باستكشاف أبعاده و امكانياته، مطوّرين في ذلك استراتيجيات مختلفة مثل التصّغير و التكديس (التركيز) و الشرح و التجريد.

من خلال "المنمنمات" كفكرة و كأداة و كنوع فني، تساءل الفنانون عمّا إذا كان هناك حقّا رؤى تاريخية مشتركة بين الشركاء في هذا المشروع، و هل هذه الرؤى و العلاقات –ان وجدت- يمكن التعبير عنها من خلال استخدام هذا الوسيط المشترك؟
لقد شكّلت الاستجابات المغايرة لدى الفنانين لهذه الأفكار و الأطروحات معيارا يقيس العلاقة المتطورة باستمرار بين أبناء "المنطقة" و التغيير المستمر في فكرة "الآخر" ، و ذلك مع مرور الوقت و دخول المشروع في مرحلة الإقامات الفنية في المنطقة المتوسطية.
تم اختيار "مصر" كموقع لاستضافة هذا الحدث في عام 2009. في ضوءالواقع المتغير باستمرار، و مع التحديات القوية التي تواجهها الأنشطة الفنية و الأنشطة ذات التعاون المشترك مع دول من خارج المنطقة، في ضوء هذا الموقف يقع مشروع "المنمنمات" الآن تحت طائلة فقرة "قوة قاهرة".

على غير المتوقع، تغيرت أدوار الشركاء في هذا المشروع و اختلفت بشكل لا رجعة فيه. هذه العملية الفنية تلتقي اليوم مع التغيرات المفاجئة و الأحداث التي تتفجر في منطقة الشرق الأوسط، كما تلتقي مع "الآخر" المزعوم، كما تثير أسئلة عمّا إذا كانت الافتراضات السابقة عن "الآخر" و "التعاون مع الآخر" هي افتراضات مازالت صالحة حتى يومنا هذا، و عما ان كانت هذه الافتراضات و الأحكام المسبقة لا تزال صحيحة في ضوء التغيير المستمر في الواقع.
يسعى الشركاء في هذا المشروع إلى الارتباط بشكل "نقدي" مع الواقع المحيط، و دعم القول الداعي بأن تكون الممارسات الفنية قادرة على التكيّف من خلال التساؤل المستمر و مناقشة المشكلات التي تواجهها خلال عمليات الإبداع الفني مما يؤدي إلى تطوّرها بشكل صحي في النهاية."
إسماعيل فايد




البرنامج

26 و 27 أبريل 2011
مؤتمر: "تغيير الخارطة معًا"
المكان: معهد جوته بالقاهرة – 6 شارع البستان

27 أبريل 2011: الافتتاح – "قُوّة قَاهِرَة"
7 مساء في التاون هاوس جاليري – المصنع

28 و 29 و 30 أبريل 2011 : "قُوّة قَاهِرَة" – عروض أداء و أعمال بصرية
من 7 مساء حتى 10 مساء في التاون هاوس - المصنع

أحداث موازية
من 21 أبريل حتى 5 مايو 2011: فترة الإقامة الفنية للسيد "توني كوتس" الباحث المعروف دوليا و المؤدي و المنشغل بالتعليم و رئيس منظمة "كراب" الفنية ، من كاتالونيا- اسبانيا.

3 مايو 2011: عرض ثلاثة أفلام قصيرة للفنان "توني سيرا" مؤسس أرشيف الفيديو الشهير "أوفني – OVNI " يليها حوار مع الباحث المقيم "توني كوتس" لتقديم هذا العمل.
7 مساء – في المكتبة بالتاون هاوس جاليري.

يقدم "قُوّة قَاهِرَة" عشر "منمنمات" تعرض للجمهور لأول مرة للفنانين:
-أندريا أباتاتنجيلو (إيطاليا).
-ماري الفجر (مصر\فرنسا).
-شيماء عزيز (مصر).
-ليو كاسترو (اسبانيا).
-عمار حبلي (تونس).
-كريستوف حلب (فرنسا).
-جروبو نانو (إيطاليا).
-فيليز سيزنالي (تركيا).
-إيمان سماوي (تونس).
-كارمِه تورنت (اسبانيا).

مشروع "قُوّة قَاهِرَة" يتم إنتاجه و إدارته بالقاهرة من قبل مشروع "حَ رَ كَ" لتنمية و بحث فن الرقص ، و يلقى دعم التاون هاوس جاليري ، معهد جوته بالقاهرة و القسم الثقافي بالسفارة الإسبانية بالقاهرة. الشريك الإعلامي للحدث: جريدة المصري اليوم.
"قُوّة قَاهِرَة" هو أيضا جزء و مرحلة من مشروع "منمنمات أوفيتشينا" الذي يلقى دعما من الاتحاد الأوروبي، و يتم انتاجه بالشراكة مع مؤسسات "أوفيتشينا" بمارسيليا ، "لانيمال لاسكينا" و "كراب" بإسبانيا، و "التياترو" بتونس، و كذلك "انديشيبلينارتِه" بإيطاليا.
يتواصل المشروع "منمنمات أوفيتشينا" بدعم إضافي من مؤسسة إدارة احتفالية "مارسيليا و بروفانس" عاصمة للثقافة الأوروبية في 2013.

*تنويه: الآراء المطروحة في هذه الأعمال هي الآراء الشخصية للفنانين و المنظمين و لا تعبر بأي حال من الأحوال عن آراء الاتحاد الأوروبي.

للمزيد من المعلومات برجاء زيارة:

www.miniatures.officinae.fr

Force Majeure

Force Majeure

6 Newly commissioned live performance & dance pieces :
-Marie Al Fajr (France - Egypt).
-Christophe Haleb (France).
-Gruppo Nanou (Italy).
-Imen Smaoui (Tunis).
-Ammar Habli (Tunis).
-Carme Torrent (Spain).

4 Newly commissioned visual art pieces:
-Shayma Aziz (Egypt) - Video.
-Filiz Sizanli (Turkey - France) - Video.
-Leo Castro (Spain) - Video.
- Andrea Abbatangelo - Installation.


The project “Force Majeure” is produced and organized in Cairo by HaRaKa Dance Development and Research, and is supported by the Townhouse Gallery, Goethe Institute and the Spanish Embassy’s Cultural Affairs Section. Media partner: AlMasry AlYoum .

“Force Majeure” is part of “Miniatures Officinae” which receives the support of the European Union, and is collaboratively co-produced by Officina (Marseilles), L’Animal A L’Esquena (Celra), CRA’P (Barcelona), El Teatro (Tunis), Indisciplinarte (Terni)
Further support to the project “Miniatures Officinae” is supported by Marseilles Provence Cultural Capital 2013.


27,28,29,30 April - @ the factory space of the Townhouse Gallery - Cairo.

Press Conference - 21st April

مؤتمر صحفي اليوم في التاون هاوس جاليري بوسط البلد السابعة مساء عن:
-معرض "قُوّة قَاهِرَة" في الأيام من 27 إلى 30 أبريل - التاون هاوس جاليري.
-مؤتمر "تغيير الخارطة معًا.." أيام 26 و 27 أبريل - معهد جوتِه الألماني بوسط البلد.

للمزيد من المعلومات برجاء الاتصال بمسئولة العلاقات العامة بـ حَ رَ كَ :
pr.haraka.project@gmail.com
أو
haraka.project@gmail.com

Press conference today on our new events:
-"Force Majeure" that will take place from 27 to 30 April @ the Townhouse Gallery.
-"Co-change maps.." conference that will take place @ Goethe Institut Kairo on 26th and 27th April.

For more information you may contact our PR:
pr.haraka.project@gmail.com
or
haraka.project@gmail.com

The conference will take place at the factory space at the Townhouse Gallery - Downtown Cairo.

Co-change maps - Conference by HaRaKa

Conference “Co-Changing Maps…”

Conceived and Organised by HaRaKa Dance Development and Research

In partnership and with the support of Goethe Institut Kairo

26 and 27 April 2011
(Attendees Registration only on haraka.project@gmail.com)

Etymology | Change: alter, barter, exchange, bend, crook, turn…

Context | This conference comes at a critical junction in time and space where practice, theory and policy conflate and conflict. For longer than the past three decades the Arab World and the Middle East have existed and operated in an oppressive political milieu that was assisted and sustained by a network of specific interests that had very little to do with the true needs of the actual populations inhabiting this region, but had to do instead with serving certain alliances and certain distribution networks beyond the geography of the so-called Middle East. This “network” scripted and suspended change, in a way that aspired to gauge the possibility of cataclysmic and unforeseen ruptures, the generation of potent new thought, or of unstable grounds

Change of Context | Socio-demographic changes and unforeseen effects of certain developments reversed the course of history and created a cataclysmic rupture within the paradigm through which the Arab world has been viewed, from within or from a distance.

In a moment described by many analysts to be very similar to the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, the Arab world succumbed to a wave of revolutions that swept away these ailing and aging regimes replacing impotent tissues with the physical presence of, or with the mere thought of, a new tissue of change

The conference works on two planes
On Change: Looking at what it could stand for historically, politically, culturally, or philosophically.
On maps and meshes: Addressing policy, practices, representation, objects, subjects and their positions. Addressing how maps of exchange, of survival or of hegemony are generated, utilized or short-circuited.

Through the brief examining of history as a context for policies and of the creation of maps or networks- where history is not an independent variable but rather one affected by multiple factors such as post-colonialism, post-capitalism, globality and supra-cyber awareness- and by inviting key figures in the fields of art theory, cultural policies, political science, law and culture making, the conference aims at generating thought, publishing texts and initiating processes of practice: on historical, cultural, and political constructs -that were/are being made - and how change breaks epistemological edifices across time and space, opens dense-information, redefines objects and positions, while addressing (re)presentation as a pivotal site in how these policies used to manifest, how policies or dramaturgies of exchange (or scripts that gauge change) co-author artistic processes, products, subjects positions and sometimes the frame of looking.

In the light of the so-called Arab Spring, how do we continue with these pre-manufactured cultural, artistic and political practices and maps that used to obscure the Arab subject (and perhaps the Mediterranean subject also), wondering are we witnessing the replay of old fetishisms and misconceptions, or could we exist in a new map of embodied subjects with articulated (even if fleeting) positions, needs, links and zones of possibilities.

مؤتمر "تغيير الخارطة معًا.."

ينظمه مشروع "حَ رَ كَ" لتنمية و بحث فن الرقص، بشراكة و دعم معهد "جوتِه" الألماني بالقاهرة
التاريخ: 26 و 27 أبريل 2011
(بالإمكان التسجيل للمشاركة في هذا المؤتمر فقط من خلال مراسلة الإيميل:( haraka.project@gmail.com

أصل الكلمة "تغيير": غَيّر: بدّل ، حرّف ، هذّب.

سياق المؤتمر: يحدث هذا المؤتمر في توقيت و مكان بالغي الأهمية، حيث تختلط –و تتصارع- النظرية مع التطبيق مع السياسات الحاكمة لهذا الخليط (النظرية و التطبيق). لقد عاصر العالم العربي و منطقة الشرط الأوسط لأكثر من ثلاثة عقود حالة من القهر السياسي الذي ارتكز على دعائم لا علاقة لها بالحاجات الفعلية لأبناء هذه المنطقة، و لكنه كان يخدم تحالفات بعينها و هياكل اقتصادية موجّهة بعيدا عن اهتمامات المنطقة المسماة بـ "الشرق الأوسط". هذه الهياكل كانت تهدف إلى الحد من احتمالات حدوث التغييرات الجذرية المفاجئة ، و إلى تحجيم الجيل ذو الأفكار المؤثرة و الذي يقف على أرضية متغيرة دوما.

تغيير السياق: لقد أدّت التغييرات الديموغرافية و الاجتماعية التي حدثت في المجتمع ، بالإضافة إلى التأثيرالغير مرئي اللاحق لتطورات مجتمعية معينة، إلى تغيير مسار التاريخ و خلق تغييرات جذرية في القالب الذي وُضع فيه العالم العربي.
يخضع العالم العربي حاليا -في لحظة وُصفت بأنها مشابهة جدا لانهيار جدار الشيوعية في أوروبا الشرقية- إلى موجة من الاحتجاجات و الثورات التي تزيل الأنظمة الحاكمة المتهالكة الطاعنة في السن، و هي بذلك تقوم باستبدال أنسجة تالفة و شبه ميتة بأنسجة ممتلئة بالحياة .. هذا الاستبدال قد يكون فعليا –بتغيير الأشخاص و الأنظمة- و قد يكون استعاريا بتغيير الأفكار و التوجّهات المجتمعية و السياسية.

سيعمل المؤتمر على محورين:
-التغيير: محاولة استكشاف ما الذي قد يرمز إليه مفهوم التغيير تاريخيا و سياسيا و ثقافيا و فلسفيا.
-الخرائط و الشبكات: تناول السياسات و الممارسات الثقافية، و التمثيل الثقافي ، و وضع كل من "الأشياء" و "الأشخاص". تناول كيف يتم خلق خرائط التبادل الثقافي و خرائط البقاء أو الهيمنة الثقافية، و الاستفادة منها بل و إنهائها.

يهدف المؤتمر إلى خلق مجموعة من الأفكار، و نشر نصوصها، بالإضافة إلى بدء عملية اختبار التكوينات التاريخية و السياسية و الثقافية –التكوينات الموجودة بالفعل أو التي يتم بناؤها- و بحث كيف يهدم "التغيير" هياكل معرفية (إبستمولوجية) عبر الزمان و المكان ، و كيف يقوم "التغيير" بتفسير الكثافة المعلوماتية في بعض الأحيان و إعادة تشكيل الأشياء و مواضعها بالنسبة لبعضها، و ذلك من خلال:
- النظر إلى التاريخ و البحث فيه باعتباره سياق عمل "السياسات" و رسم خرائط التعاون الثقافي، و ذلك مع الوضع في الاعتبار أن التاريخ هو عامل متغير في هذه المعادلة حيث أنه يتأثر بشكل كبير بأفكار "ما بعد الاستعمار" و "ما بعد الرأسمالية" و "الاتجاه نحو العولمة" و الوعي المتشكل بمساعدة العوالم الافتراضية.
-دعوة شخصيات مهمة متخصصة في "السياسات الثقافية" و "النظرية الفنية" و علم السياسة و القانون و صناعة الثقافة.
كما يقوم المؤتمر ببحث كيف يقوم التغيير بتناول الأفكار و التصورات المسبقة كموضع محوري يظهر من خلاله تأثير هذه السياسات ، و كيف أن هذه السياسات أحيانا ما تتدخل في عملية الانتاج الفني و المنتح الفني، و كذلك في مواقع الأشخاص بالنسبة للأعمال الفنية و أيضا في كيف يتم تقديم هذه الأعمال.

في ضوء ما يُسمّى بـ "الربيع العربي" ، كيف يمكن أن نستمر في نفس الممارسات و السياسات التي اعتادت أن تحيط الشخصية "العربية" و "المتوسطية" بهالة من الغموض، و نتساءل هنا هل نحن نشهد استئنافا للمفاهيم المغلوطة القديمة, الهوس بحبس الشخصية العربية في قالب واحد أم أننا أمام فرصة لإعادة تشكيل هذه الخارطة لتحوي مواضع –و إن كانت متغيرة متحركة- لكل الأطراف و احتياجاتها و الارتباطات بينها و مناطق تأثيرها، بما يفتح الباب أمام جميع الاحتماليات لكل الأطراف.

للمزيد من المعلومات، و من أجل الحصول على البرنامج و المنشورات المتعلقة بالمؤتمر برجاء زيارة:
www.harakaproject.blogspot.com