Kharita 01

Kharita 01
Symposium on Urban Trajectories in Cairo

January 16th-17th, 2009
Rawabet Theatre


The Kharita symposium is the first public event of an ongoing initiative that explores multiple urban orders simultaneously at play within Cairo.
In recent years, suburban complexes and town centres have been emerging along the outskirts of the capital at an unprecedented scale. These real-estate developments are under construction in parallel to an incessant proliferation of informal settlements across the city's districts. Meanwhile, educational institutions, multi-national corporations and government apparatuses are moving out of the centre and into those new zones.

At a moment when notions of centre and periphery collapse into each other, we invite a number of architects, artists, curators, urban planners and scholars to rethink what it means to live in Cairo. Through a series of interviews, lectures, videos, panels and performances, we look at how the circulation of power operates within the city, while inscribing our notions of value, difference and desire.

We approach the current moment of building cities as a potential site for articulating new positions vis-à-vis sentiments of nostalgia and the function of criticality. The Kharita symposium considers the impact of cities-to-be on art practices and discursive activity in Cairo.

Contributors:
Amr Abdel Awi, Sherif el-Azma, Hisham Bahgat, Clare Davies, Eric Denis, Marwan Fayed, Markus el-Katcha, Alaa Khaled, Aglaia Konrad, Samir el-Kordi, Akram al-Magdoob, Omar Nagati, Marion von Osten, Katja Reichard, Joseph Schechla, Peter Spillmann and Brian Kuan Wood.


The Kharita symposium is organised by Pericentre Projects - Nida Ghouse, Malak Helmy & Shahira Issa, in collaboration with the Townhouse Gallery.