Culture Resource is pleased to announce the selected projects for the Exceptional Grants – RedZone 2017 that aims to support creative projects approaching freedom of expression, and focuses on artists who have decided to face the social and political system through their creative and professional choices. The selected artworks will be premiered at the third edition of the RedZone Festival which will take place in the Arab Region in Spring 2018.
Music
Jimi ElGohary (Egypt), Band member with Jimi and the Saint
Project:Jimi and the Saint
An extended play record (EP) of Jimi and the Saint band. It consists of 5 songs and music videos that tackle the ability of youth to express freely and challenge the barriers imposed on them socially and politically in order to revive the social openness that was previously witnessed. Consequently, youth is the main target group of the project.
Performing Arts:
Wael Kaddour (Syria), Writer & Dramaturge
Project:The Confession
This project attempts to compare, in artistic terms, violence and forgiveness in the Syrian society, examined through both the context of the Syrian uprising shifting from peaceful protest to armed conflict, and how these events can be compared to events in the 1980s. The project will also explore how to express death becoming a day-to-day thing and returning to the past, artistically and dramatically, with the goal of questioning the present. The performance is based on “theatre within theatre” approach and is an adaptation of The Death and The Maiden, a Chilean play written by Ariel Dorfman.
Khalid Benghrib (Morocco), Performer, Choreographer, and Pedagogue
Project:Them
A dance performance that can be considered as a sociological research far from the exaggerated mourning of humanity. The performance aims to question the phenomenon of religious extremism and to extract the fragile component of the human psyche based on dreams, art, mythology, religion, symbols and philosophy. The performance features six performers inscribing on their metallic tablets very delicate texts next to a black table, in a stage lighting, as if the scene is a borderless cartography, which drives the movements of the body to the extreme point of signification.
Visual Arts:
Mohamed El Masry (Egypt), Visual Artist & Photographer
Project: Economy of Power Pays the Price
This project is based on the idea of using tanks as a model representing the whole system of industrialization and the consequent economic policies and political conflicts at the expense of many human considerations. The tank in the project represents mass production that is neither justified nor necessary. Gold represents the value of this product, as gold acquires the symbol of holiness in the collective human conscious. The tanks also represent the sovereign, political, economic and elite approach that manipulates people and their destinies in order to find a market for these tanks.
Multi-Disciplinary Production:
Chrystele Khodr (Lebanon), Independent Theater Artist
Project: I Once Entered a Garden
A performative installation project by the theater maker Chrystele Khodr and the installation artist Bissane Al Charif. The starting point of the project is the love stories and first sexual experiences taking place in the landscapes of war. These stories question automatically the paradigms of the intimate space. What is it? How can it be rebuilt when the public one is continuously metamorphosing? How can the storyteller reframe that particular relation between the body and the space?
The jury is consisted of:
Music:
Kamylia Jubran – Musician (Palestine)
Fathy Salama – Music Composer (Egypt)
Zeid Hamdan – Singer & Music Producer (Lebanon)
Performing Arts:
Hanane Hajj Ali – University Professor, Researcher & Theater Actor (Lebanon)
Suleiman Al Bassam – Theater Director, Playwright & Actor (Kuwait)
Samar Haddad King – Dancer & Choreographer (Palestine)
Visual Arts:
Larissa Sansour – Visual Artist & Director (Palestine)
Tarek Aboul Fetouh – Art Curator & Scenographer (Egypt)
Tammam Azzam – Visual Artist (Syria)
Multi-Disciplinary Production:
Kamylia Jubran – Musician (Palestine)
Tarek Aboul Fetouh – Art Curator & Scenographer (Egypt)
Suleiman Al Bassam – Theater Director, Playwright & Actor (Kuwait)
19 September 2017
