Description
In Arabic Cairo- Al Qahira- officially translated as the Vanquisher (or the Conquerer), standing strong against all odds, vanquishing its enemies across time and space. However, the Arabic word hold another meaning: the Oppressive one. The dichotomy of strength, driven by the city’s people, history and culture, and oppressiveness embedded in its very structure, is the work of the panelists. In a multidisciplinary approach, the panelists- six Cairenes- excavate the City’s memoires locked in its evanescent neighborhoods, and the muted voices of its resilient inhabitants. Through a critical political examination of the City; its material existence, as well as its erasure, its ever-changing tempos, the violence embedded in it, and the violence that expands with it, and resistance that raises and falls within it. While telling a story(ies), when things were said/ and things have been hidden and muted, the narrators question the linearity of time. While narrating spaces as Cairenes, the narrators question their belonging to the City, as the City expands at the cost of their memories and spaces of liberation.
