…Cairo stories features a selection of stories from a collection of more than 200 interviews Barry conducted with Cairene women between the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the beginning of the Egyptian Revolution in 2011. The installation chronicles personal experiences of women from a variety of social and economic classes in Egypt and expands the artist’s concerns with notions of representation, history, subjectivity, and translation — particularly as these ideas circulate across cultures.

The fragmented, collaged city plan pictured above shows Cairo as it has spread from the banks of the Nile into the desert, the indigenous North African topography. Each moment in Cairo’s history has produced a new city. Cairo is a palimpsest of many different epochs encompassing a geographical area that is approximately 175 square miles, including the informal settlements. During Barry’s many trips to Cairo beginning in 2000, she crossed the city hundreds of times, traveling back and forth across vast distances: from the outer city where informal, working class, and public housing projects are located, to the many centers of Cairo – Pharaonic, Coptic, Islamic, and European – as well as into the gated communities of New Cairo patterned after the Emirates, which some call the Gulfication of Cairo. Her route mimicked the journeys that many of the women in these stories undertake each day as they travel to and from the informal, working class, and more affluent zones of the city. These arrows delineate their daily passage through many different neighborhoods underscoring the uniqueness of Cairo’s fluid historical and cultural diversity.

The many journeys foregrounded in …Cairo stories will be the subject of a series of events throughout September and October 2014. These include a public conversation on September 30th at 6:30pm, organized with Scribe Video Center’s Muslim Voices of Philadelphia project, that will feature Anne Norton, Nusrat Jahan Bashir and Judith Barry in dialogue. They will foreground a variety of perspectives that challenge contemporary representations of Muslim life in Philadelphia, Cairo and beyond. Nusrat Jahan Bashir and Judith Barry will begin by speaking about their own work in this regard, and the methodological and philsophical considerations that have shaped and structured their efforts. In addition, Anne Norton will speak to her recent book “On the Muslim Question” and critique the West’s ongoing fear of Islam. See below for a full list of upcoming programs.

Conversations

Screenings

Je Veux Voir (2008)
Joana Hadjithomas/Khalil Joreige, Directors
Monday, October 6, 2014
5:30pm at the University of Pennsylvania
Fine Arts/Morgan Building, 205 South 34th St

Alexandria Why? (1978)
Youssef Chahine, Director
Saturday, October 18, 2014
2:00pm at Slought

Nation Estates (2012), A Space Exodus(2009), Feast of the Inhabitants (2012), Sbara(2008), Soup Over Bethlehem (2007),Bethlehem Bandolero (2006)
Larissa Sansour, Director
Saturday, October 18, 2014
5:00pm at Slought

Domestic Tourism (2008-9), The Night Visitor(2011), 2026 (2010)
Maha Maamoun, Director
Monday, October 20, 2014
7:00pm at Scribe Video Center
4212 Chestnut St, 3rd Floor

The Square (2013)
Jehane Noujaim, Director
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
5:30pm at the University of Pennsylvania
Fisher-Bennett Hall #401, 3340 Walnut St

Chaos, Disorder/Harag W’ Marag (2012)
Nadine Kahn, Director
Location/Date TBD

Series organized by Omar Kholeif. Presented with the support of Scribe Video Center, and the University of Pennsylvania Fine Arts Department and Cinema Studies Program