Videonale

DETOUR aims to develop a workshop with artists out of different artistic fields from Cairo (Egyptian and Sudanese artists) and Germany dealing with and reacting to the constant change of urban space in Cairo due to the arbitrary erection of road blocking, especially in the neighborhoods around Tahrir Square. How do these blocking affect the daily life of the neighborhood and how do the inhabitants deal with these obstacles? How does our urban environment in general affect our (cultural) identity, movements, behaviors and interactions? With these questions in mind the artists in cooperation with the local community will perform different research and artistic activities to approach and to affect these specific urban situations. Our goal is to create a platform where on the one hand artists from different cultural contexts meet and work together on a topic which concerns both sides in different ways (German and Cairo-based artists) – the use of public urban space – and which on the other hand offers activities to the local community (working-class and middle-class citizens of the neighborhoods in which we will be working) which gives them a different understanding of their own behavior in relation to urban space.