Mada Market points to range and depth of arts initiatives with a local impact

This article is part of a series we are running ahead of the second edition of our Mada Market to feature the participating vendors.

It’s springtime again, and this year Mada Masr is taking the second edition of its Mada Market to Zamalek’s celebrated Fish Garden. The idea is to bring families and young people together for a day in the park where they can meet an array of artists, designers, innovators and founders of projects that have an interesting story to tell and present a unique concept to the local market.

This year, we have a particular focus on cultural operators to give the vendors the opportunity to expand their audience but also to give Mada Masr a chance to highlight their varied and invaluable contributions to the arts in Egypt. Apart from two long-established stalwarts, these initiatives have all been launched since 2011, and are a testament to the swell in grass-roots cultural production beyond the realm of the Culture Ministry.

Music: From listening to learning

Our music partner this year is once again Dandin.me, which will curate a playlist for the first half of the day, giving visitors a selection of the richness and diversity of alternative music from the region and beyond. The online sound and music platform is set up like SoundCloud, except Dandin is focused on sounds generated from the region. It has become a wonderful place to discover and share alternative music and sound that would otherwise go under the radar of many listeners.

Founded by former journalist and musician Abdel-Rahman Hussein and his brothers Tariq and Karim in 2013, the project has been in continuous development ever since, building up its list of contributors and valuable features. An English version of Dandin recently launched, in addition to a stronger focus on their blog, which publishes profiles and features on musicians.

A new feature that is particularly exciting for the music industry is the Dandin Gig Center, which connects musicians to venues and events, giving them broader access to performance opportunities. Read our interview with Abdel-Rahman Hussein here.

From online music to on-the-ground music, another vendor both participating with a booth and playing a role in the event's entertainment program is the 6 of October-based Arts Mania, who are leading a drum circle. Bring your percussion instruments — or anything else you can drum on.

With two branches in the neighboring satellite cities 6 of October and Sheikh Zayed, Art Mania offers a studio for rehearsals and sells musical instruments through their shops. They offer classes for both children and adults to learn certain instruments, but also courses on music theory. Arts Mania have collaborated with musicians such as Grammy Award-winning artist Fathy Salama on workshops, and hosted workshops for the Cairo Jazz Festival.

Arts Mania was also founded in 2013, by husband and wife Ossama El Shibini and Gehan El Shahawi. It remains focused on serving the artistic needs of Giza’s new suburb area, which has more limited options for engaging with art than its more central counterparts in Cairo.

Our final music vendor is none other but London-based record label Nawa Recordings. Established in 2014 (following an initial pilot release in 2011) by Syrian-born Iraqi musician and composer Khayam Allami, it focuses on new alternative music from the Arab world and beyond.

Representing the multifaceted Allami and Egypt’s own Maurice Louca — plus two of Louca’s collective projects, The Dwarves of East Agouza and regional band Alif — Nawa helps musicians focus on their artistic practice by offering sustainable support in production, release, sales and marketing. Nawa also released the original soundtrack for Tunisian filmmaker Leila Bouzeid's music-filled, award-winning 2015 film As I Open My Eyes, scheduled for release in Egypt soon.

Nawa also organizes tours in the region and Europe, and has built up a wide network of distributors world-wide to ensure that their CDs and LPs make it across continents – and to the Mada Market.

Books, self-publishing and the internet

A returning vendor this year is AUC Press, the most established and well-distributed English-language publisher in Egypt with more than 60 years of experience, operating under the umbrella of the American University in Cairo.

AUC Press publish hundreds of books in a range of categories including Egyptology, history, architecture, politics, travel, photography, Arabic language study and Arabic literature in translation. The press holds regular book sales at the university and was recently able to re-open the main entrance to its iconic store at AUC’s old Tahrir Square campus. Recent Egyptology publications include Aidan Dodson’s Poisoned Legacy: The Fall of the Nineteenth Egyptian Dynasty and Zahi Hawass and Sahar Saleem’s Scanning the Pharaohs: CT Imaging of the New Kingdom Royal Mummies (watch out for our upcoming review).

AUC Press also have an exciting new imprint for Arabic literature in translation, Hoopoe, which focuses on more contemporary and genre works — also stay tuned for our reviews of the first four Hoopoe books.

Read our story on the growing phenomenon of English-language publishing in Egypt, published on the occasion of last year's Mada Market, here.

Another player in the publishing world participating in the Mada Market is e-publisher Kotobna, the first self-publishing platform in Egypt, winners of the “Ideas Track” of the MIT Enterprise Forum Arab Startup Competition held in Kuwait.

Co-founded by writer Mohamed Gamel, essentially Kotobna allows any writer to become a published author, in addition to promoting, selling the work and reaching readers directly. Writers pay an LE50 yearly subscription fee, and their book goes from being free to costing LE5 or 10 depending on how many times it is downloaded. (More traditional publishing services are offered if the writer goes “premium.”)

In this way Kotobna provides free e-books and nominally-priced e-books (that can be purchased at nominal prices via credit card or through Fawry locations) spanning various categories from novels to comics, poetry, education and more. The app is available for download on both Android and iOS devices.

Read more about e-publishing here. 

Innovative visual art and alternative cinema

Medrar for Contemporary Art started in 2005 as a collective of visual artists keen on making video art and technology-based interactive art more widespread in the city. Later established as an official space and institution by artists Mohamed Allam and Dia Hamed — first in Sayida Zeinab and now in Garden City — it is involved in a diverse range of activities.

In 2005 Medrar started its annual Cairo Video Festival, which brings hundreds of video artworks and experimental films to screens and exhibition halls in the city for two weeks. It also curates video art programs by Egyptian artists for art festivals abroad. Another ongoing project, which has taken various forms over the years, is Open Lab Egypt — workshops on technology-based interactive art and exhibitions produced by collectives of artists and computer scientists.

Besides regular exhibitions by young artists such as the annual competition Roznama along with solo-shows and group shows, the space also hosts art workshops by notable artists, such as Hany Rashed, Aya Tarek and Mark Lotfy. Medrar’s rooms and equipment can be rented out for rehearsals, study groups, performances and exhibitions.

Zawya cinema is a major player in the alternative cinema sector in Egypt. Known to many by now, and probably one of the most commercially successful alternative art projects, Zawya was founded in 2014 by Youssef El-Shazli and Alia Ayman through Misr International Films – Youssef Chahine, and its main location is one of the Odeon’s screens in downtown Cairo.

Zawya, which tags itself as a cinema for the films that don't make it to the cinema, hosts local, regional and international releases that have gained recognition in film festivals yet never seem to get picked up by Egyptian distributors. Besides its regular weekly releases Zawya ahosts an array of programming from filmmakers’ retrospectives work to thematic programs and regional focuses.

Zawya also offers its screens to other festivals and curators, for example for D-CAF's recent film program and a program by the French Institute on Arab cinema and civil war.

One notable initiative that Zawya hosts – which we can even say paved the way to have a permanent screen for non-commercial films in Egypt – is the Panorama of the European Film, a dense annual program that has brought the year's best films from festivals to Cairo screens in eight editions since 2004, drawing thousands for the most recent one in 2015.

And Outa Hamra

Finally, a market in a park would not be complete without a dash of performing arts. This year Mada Masr brings street clowning troupe Outa Hamra (Red Tomato) to present their performance Super Duda (see photo up top).

The troupe, which came together in 2011 after an intensive workshop with Clowns Sans Frontier (Clowns Without Borders), specialize in going beyond the confines of a traditional stage to present street performances to marginalized comminities. They have shown their work in public spaces around the country in addition to working with refugee comminities, youth prisons and street children. They tackle social issues with a big dose of humor under the motto "having fun is our serious business."