Tips from the culture desk: State culture, counter culture, a dash of hardcore theory

We made it through the blazing heat dome. Now that the climate seems to have settled back down to a normal 30-something degrees, it’s time to leave the sanctity of dark, air-conditioned movie theaters and go back out into the real world.

With the exception, that is, of an exceptionally apocalyptic film screening at Zawya, the art house cinema’s big return to the public after a long hot summer off. But there’s also plenty to do outside the screening hall — the recent climatic events makes a talk about ecological architecture on Sunday very a propos, or perhaps go for something in a more grandly traditional vein, like a musical at the newly reopened National Theater or performances at the Citadel. And for those headed back to school shortly, a talk by controversial scholar Joseph Massad could help get your head out of the Sahel sun and back into the theory game.

A poetic talk about reimagining architecture – Sunday, August 23

Brook Muller, a professor at the University of Oregon, will be talking about reimagining architecture as an assemblage of ecosystems at AUC’s downtown campus on Sunday, an event organized by the architectural hub Megawra. The whole premise of the talk as laid out in the press text is woven out of esoteric, poetic language that doesn’t make a lot of concrete sense for this architectural layperson of a reader, but I find myself intrigued.

Elsewhere, Muller has spoken of architecture as a “magical form” that can be rethought to accommodate not only humans, but birds and plants and other beings; and he talks about rethinking architecture in terms of language and forms of knowledge (while still allowing plenty of room for doubt). Muller’s work seems to be part of the post-anthropocene turn to de-centering the human, and trying instead to think of humans as just one element in a large, relational network made up of many things, beings and spaces.

An Amazon review of Muller’s book, Ecology and the Architectural Imagination, said, “The beauty in the book lies in Muller’s language. Incredibly dense, every sentence, every paragraph, stimulates the mind, filling you with colorful possibilities creative ideas for both current architectural work and the future of architecture in general.”

In a world where concrete suggestions for change seem doomed to fail, maybe what we need right now is a beautiful and dreamy vision of the world-to-come, even if it’s not yet fully comprehensible.

You can get a sense of Muller as a speaker here, from an April 2014 talk at the HOPES Conference:

Lecture is in English and starts at 6 pm at the American University in Cairo’s Tahrir Campus, at the Oriental Hall, downtown Cairo.

Leila men Alf Leila at the National Theater – All week (except Wednesday)

One of Egypt’s most popular and respected theater and television actors, Yehia al-Fakharany, returns to the stage for the first time since he performed as King Lear 13 years ago, in Beram al-Tonsy’s classic Leila men Alf Leila (One Night from a Thousand Nights). Directed by Mohsen Helmy, the musical is staged at the newly renovated National Theater, which is also coming back to audiences after a long six-year pause. Seeing the refurbished National Theater, and seeing Fakharany on stage, are both valid reasons to see the production on their own, but bring them both together and there’s really no reason not to go.

The play will be performed every night except Wednesdays until September 13. Curtains open at 9.30 pm. It’s recommended to go in advance to find tickets and take your seats. Tickets range between LE30 and LE100. The box office opens at noon every day at the National Theater located on Opera Square, Attaba.

Citadel Festival for Music and Singing – All week

The majestic atmosphere of the Salah Eddin Citadel reigns over the 24th edition of the Citadel Festival for Music and Singing, which opens this year under the direction of Reda El-Wakil, head of the Cairo Opera House’s Artistic House. The 11-day festival, which kicked off on Thursday, August 20, features several concerts every day until its end on Monday, August 31. This week’s highlights include Grammy Award-winning musician Fathy Salama (Monday), Wave Jazz Band (Tuesday), Nesma Abdel-Aziz Marimba (Wednesday) and Tunisian performer Ghalia Benali (Friday).The full program is available on the official event page.

All events are in the evening with various starting times. Tickets are available at the Citadel and cost LE5.

Joseph Massad at DAAL – Monday, August 24

High-profile Palestinian scholar Joseph Massad writes on a wide array of issues, ranging from nationalism to Orientalism to questions of desire and sex in the post-colonial world, and the intersection of all those things. He’s particularly famous (or notorious, depending on your political alliances) for his vehement anti-Zionist stance — a rare (and sometimes dangerous) position to take when holding a position at a prestigious US university.

Though Massad teaches at Columbia, he spends much of his time in Cairo, and he’ll be speaking at DAAL on Monday. Much like the Muller talk, the PR text for this event is veiled in some mysteriously ambiguous language. It suggests that Massad will be talking about how his theoretical framework confronts the on-the-ground realities of the Arab world today, and more specifically, how the post-revolutionary social and political movements in the region enact and reproduce Orientalist discourse. The latter assumption is intriguing, but even more than that, one hopes that the broad framing of the symposium will allow for free-wheeling questions. So this could be a ripe opportunity for peppering the scholar with all the burning questions you ever wanted to ask regarding modern constructions of sexual identity, or his alleged "ethnographic blindness" when it comes to the identity politics surrounding Arabic translation.

To see what you might be in for, here’s a recent talk Massad gave at NYU Abu Dhabi in February:

The talk will be in Arabic at 6 pm at DAAL for Research & Media, 5 Ibrahim Naguib Street, Garden City, Cairo. Contact: 02.27.95.66.21, or 02.27.92.99.60

Zawya returns withWild Tales – Wednesday, August 26

After a long summer break, Cairo’s beloved alternative film cinema Zawya is returning with a new release. Relatos salvajes (Wild Tales, 2014) unravels six lugubrious stories filled with the stress, depression and rage engendered by the struggle to navigate the demands of an unegalitarian world. Written and directed by Argentinian filmmaker Damián Szifron (and produced by the master of surreally disturbing social satire, Pedro Almodovar), the film was nominated for a Palme d’Or at the Cannes International Film Festival (where it debuted to a 10-minute standing ovation), as well as Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards.

Starting Wednesday, the film will play all week at Zawya. Tickets are LE25, sold at Odeon Cinema, 4 Abdel-Hamid Said Street, off Talaat Harb Street, downtown Cairo.