PhotoCairo4: The Long Shortcut

PhotoCairo4: The Long Shortcut is a large-scale visual arts project that explores the dynamics between informal and official modes of operation that continue to shape the social reality in this region and beyond.

The program revolves around a number of loose coordinates. One main site is Cairo itself as a quintessential example of an explosive mega city situated in a state characterized by a mode of perpetual crisis. Under these conditions one can think of informal structures and strategies of existence as creatively pragmatic answers that are by definition - rather than design - subversive.
On the one hand, we would like to examine transformations in images of officialdom and the rhetoric of power through media representations. However, we are also interested in poetic accounts of daily life, personal narratives and creative strategies employed by Individuals faced with the reality of navigating these mutating hybrid structures.

Artists: Agency, Ala’ Younis, Ahmed Kamel, Artur Żmijewski, Babak Afrassiabi, Bernard Guillot, David Thorne & Julia Meltzer, Doa Aly, Hala Elkoussy, Hassan Khan, Heidrun Holzfeind, Ihab Jadallah, Kareem Lotfy, Larissa Sansour, Leopold Kessler, Maha Maamoun, Mahmoud Khaled, Mandy Gehrt, Mohamed Allam, Pages Magazine, Raed Yassin and Rana El Nemr

With publications, presentations and film programs by: Bassam El-Baroni, Ganzeer, George Azmy, Florian Wüst, Karim Tartoussieh, Martí Peran, Motaz Attala, Nat Muller, Pages Magazine, Sarah Infanger and What, How & for Whom curators’s collective (Ivet Ćurlin, Ana Dević, Nataša Ilić and Sabina Sabolović)

PhotoCairo4: The Long Shortcut is curated by Aleya Hamza and Edit Molnar

Venues:
Contemporary Image Collective
Townhouse Gallery
Rawabet Theater
Hungarian Cultural Institute
Downtown apartment (Please check www.ciccairo.com for address after 1 December 2008)

PhotoCairo4: The Long Shortcut is supported by Alcatel-Lucent (main sponsor), the Danish Center for Culture and Development (DCCD), Prohelvetia: The Swiss Arts Council, Goethe-Institute, Foundation for Arts Initiatives, Mondriaan Foundation, RWE Dea (catalogue sponsor) with additional support by the Spanish Embassy in Egypt, The French Cultural Center, Magix and Nestle Egypt and The Art Review Magazine as a media partner.