Tips from the culture desk: Altered states, colors of film and solo artists

This week several arts events continue in Cairo, including the Cairo Video Festival (see our ongoing festival blog), an exploratory group exhibition at Townhouse, a painting and drawing show at Gypsum, and the 2B Continued festival with two Shaymaa Shoukry dance performances. But if you want to go to something completely new, try one or more of the following three events (one of which also features the busy Shoukry). If you live in the capital, you can’t say there’s not much to do.

Procession Toward the Unknown — Saturday

Procession Toward the Unknown promises “ambient avant garde music that strives to guide both performer and listener towards altered states of perception.” This experimental and likely intense experience is provided by Sammy Sayed (vocals) Sherif Elias (keyboard) and Cherif El-Masri (synth) and presented at everyone’s favorite low-key Heliopolis venue, Balcon Lounge. 

Recent performances, which are non-stop rather than being split into tracks, have included a changing variety of other artists, including Aya Hemeda (vocals and bells), Alan Bishop (sax and trumpet), Dimitry El Demerdashi (upright bass, rababa and throat singing), Graça Carvalho (violin, flute, and vocals), Adham Zidan (guitar, synth, FX), Mina Wardakhan (percussion), Michel Khater (drums) and Sandrine Pelletier (video and automatic drawing), resulting in a multinational 11-person line-up that looks a bit like an expanded Invisible Hands. 

December 19, 8.30 pm Balcon Heliopolis, 26 Sohag Street, Heliopolis, Cairo. Entrance: LE35. For more details, call 01229314690.

Talk About Film Colors — Sunday

This talk sounds intriguing. Zurich-based filmmaker Kerstin Schroedinger will talk (in English with simultaneous Arabic translation) about film-historical developments that trace certain aspects of color in film. She will also screen films made by herself in collaboration with Mareike Bernien (about the history of color filmmaking) as well as films by American artist Jenny Okun and late British filmmaker Sandra Lahire, and other short clips and excerpts.

“Colour simultaneously brings memories closer and alienates them from us,” says the blurb. “Colour in film also has a tendency to support the ideological intent of images. At the same time colour can disturb those implications, and inscribe itself into the images as a distortion.”

7 pm, December 20, Contemporary Image Collective, 4th Floor, 22 Abdel Khalek Tharwat Street, downtown Cairo. Free entry. See Facebook event here.

Solo project series — starts Tuesday

After attracting a sizeable crowd last spring, Rawabet’s Solo Project returns with new music and dance for three consecutive nights. The premise is that artists propose solo shows and Rawabet curates them together in a complementary fashion.

Tuesday features Abdallah Miniawy who most often performs his poetry accompanied by experimental electronic music by Ahmed Saleh, so it will be interesting to see what he does by himself. Wednesday sees a contemporary dance performance by Shaymaa Shoukry, followed by a classical guitar performance by Shady Nagui. And on Thursday Hossam Abd Elhameed of Ezzat Ezzat Dance Studio offers some more contemporary dance, followed by Rami Abadir with some experimental electronic music. A snazzy poster design by Ahmed Hammoud feels like a good sign.

8 pm, December 22 - 24, Rawabet, 3 Hussein al-Memar Street, parallel to Mahmoud Basiouny Street, downtown Cairo.