Tips from the culture desk: Expired ink, ordinary people, MASS, meteors and more

The Cairo film festival continues, as does the Contemporary Image Collective’s exhibition Evasive Routes. As part of the parallel program for the CiC show, on Tuesday and Wednesday Alexandria’s Wekalet Behna hosts two evenings of film screenings about migration across the Mediterranean and the representation of migration in fiction and documentaries from the Arab region. We also recommend these five events below.

Expired Ink — opens Sunday

Newly established cultural management foundation Transit organizes its first exhibition, Expired Ink, at Medrar for Contemporary Art. Extending Inktober, an international initiative whereby artists post ink drawings online daily for a month, the four-day show collects drawings by 10 illustrators and cartoonists, including Ahmed Hefnawy, Mai Koraeim, Ahmed Tawfig, Hicham Rahma and Makhlouf. Opening night sees two live drawing experiments by Rahma and Hazem Kamal.

Opening 7 pm, November 20, Medrar, 7 Gamal Eddin Abouel Mahassen, Garden City, Cairo. Runs through November 24, noon until 9 pm.

Ordinary People — from Monday

Zeinab Magdy, who is perhaps best known for acting in Laila Soliman’s archive-based plays Whims of Freedom and Zig Zig, has created a performance called Ordinary People with dramaturgy by musician and actor Shady El-Husseiny (Al-Tamyye Theatre Troupe, Darwasha) and a strong team of collaborators (image by Walid Taher above). The performance, which has a four-day run at Al-Nahda courtesy of Jesuits Culture Center, seems to be about disappearance and rooms. English subtitles will be available on Tuesday and Wednesday only.

8 pm from November 21 to 24, Al-Nahda Cultural Center, 15 Al-Mahrani Street, behind Jesuits School, off Ramsis Street, Fagala, Cairo. Booking required.

Nadah El Shazly + The Meteors Project — Wednesday

Zigzag’s live music nights are creating a small window for musicians to perform and for Cairenes who like to dance to enjoy these performance in a club setting. This week it’s a double bill of soulful singer and electronic musician Nadah El Shazly, who hasn’t performed in Cairo for a while because she’s been preparing her first album, and then chilled and spacey audiovisual performers The Meteors Project.

10 pm, November 23, Zigzag, 6 Qasr al-Nil Street, downtown Cairo. Tickets LE50 at the door.

MASS Alexandria exhibition — starts Thursday

The end-of-year exhibition for the MASS Alexandria independent study program for artists, this year run by German curator Berit Schuck, will surely be worth a visit — some of Egypt's most promising young artists have emerged from the MASS program. It includes installations, performances and talks by MASS students, as well as an events program with contributions from the likes of Swedish curator and writer Maria Lind, artist Hassan Khan (a performative launch of his sci-fi novella Twelve Clues, in collaboration with researcher Amro Ali), Belgian curator and former Tate Modern director Chris Derconm, and artist Wael Shawky (MASS founder).

MASS, 2 al-Madina al-Monawwara Street, Miami, Alexandria. Exhibition open November 24 (7-11 pm), November 25-26 (11 am-11 pm), November 27 (11 am-9 pm). Events program here. All free and open to the public.

Forced — Saturday

Three great women-led organizations — storytelling collective BuSSy, Nazra for Feminist Studies, and the beleaguered El-Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation for Victims of Violence — have come together to collaborate on a hard-hitting performance to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and within an anti-rape campaign called It Happens. The performance is based on storytelling from BuSSy’s and Al-Nadeem’s archives, but maintains the privacy of the story holders.

7 pm, November 26, Goethe Institute, 17 Hussein Wassef, Dokki, Cairo. Free, but audiences must register starting one hour before at the Goethe Institute. Facebook event here. Adults only.