For Us, With Us, By Us: Ontology
This roundtable discussion examines notions of culture and identity, centering the voices of SWANA cultural practitioners.
For Us With Us, By Us–لنا، عنّا، معنا is a series of conversations centered around voices of cultural practitioners in the SWANA region, exploring themes of transnational identities beyond the western canon. Through two online roundtable discussions and an offline event in Cairo, the program aims to promote an active exchange between Arab cultural workers and their Swiss-based counterparts.
In the first roundtable “Ontology,” designers and researchers Rasha Dakkak, Sabah Elhadid, Imad Gebrayel, and Iskander Guetta question notions of culture and identity, and bring forth the multiplicity of positionalities within SWANA. The event is moderated by Randa Hadi and Sherine Salla.
Rasha Dakkak (she/her) is a Palestinian designer and educator with curatorial and publishing projects. Dakkak is the founder of Bayn, a platform honoring the different facets of visual culture and their entwinement with the daily while questioning power canons, authoritative narratives, knowledge formation, and access.
Sabah Elhadid (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist, independent researcher, and graphic designer based in Cairo, Egypt. Her work focuses on the intersection of archives, data visualization, print, and physical interactive installations, speculating alternative future scenarios to inspire the potential of change.
Imad Gebrayel (he/him) is a Lebanese designer, lecturer, and researcher. He is currently undertaking ethnographic research on the negotiations of Arab-Arab identifications in Sonnenallee-Berlin, as part of his Ph.D. project at the Humboldt Universitv of Berlin.
Iskander Guetta (he/him) is a designer, mostly based in Lausanne, Switzerland. Practicing between design, research and activism, his work focuses on the intersecting issues of ecology and decolonization. He works as a fellow designer at the SELCO Foundation in Bangalore.
For Us, With Us, By Us
The second online roundtable discussion “Narrative” will take place on April 13, 4 pm CET. In “Narrative” Farah Hallaba, Nadia Ghanem, Nadia Mounir, and Naïma Ben Ayed will activate the conversation in relation to the construction of identity in the SWANA region. The event is moderated by Noureldin Ahmed and Randa Hadi.
The offline event in Cairo will be held in May. “Practice” will be a culmination of conversations that took place in “Ontology” and “Narrative” how they affect a way of making.
This program is a collaboration between For Us With Us, By Us—لنا، عنّا، معنا (Mayar El Bakry, Noureldin Ahmed, Randa Hadi, Sherine Salla, Nada Ezzeldin, and Sohaila Khaled), Archief Cairo, cifrcifrcifr, and Futuress.
Archief Cairo is a multilingual lab for research, preservation and communication in Egypt. Their interest lies in researching, documenting, and understanding the visual/ aesthetic fabric of the city.
Cifrcifrcifr is an independent artistic research practice, working to create instances (virtual or physical) to collectively learn and unlearn, question the status quo and initiate critical conversations with, and about, their surroundings.
Please reach out to fuwubu.info@gmail.com if you have any questions or to get in touch.
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