Event curation and production
Online and Offline
Workshop
Descritption
For Us, With Us, By Us—لنا، عنّا، معنا is a bilingual series of conversations centring the voices of SWANA (South West Asia and North Africa) designers, practitioners, educators, and researchers that explore themes of transnational identities beyond the western canon. Two online roundtable events examine the topics of Ontology and Narrative, aiming to promote an active exchange between Arab cultural workers and their Swiss-based counterparts:
Ontology with Imad Gebrayel, Iskander Guetta, Rasha Dakkak, and
Narrative with Farah Hallaba, Nadia Ghanem, Nadia Mounier, and Naïma Ben Ayed
The program concluded with offline panels and presentations in Cairo centred on the guests' practice. From unpacking collective stories of Egyptians in the Gulf, running a podcast exploring Arab-migrant voices in Berlin, and exhibiting photographic archival work in a Cairene context to interrogating meme culture during the early days of Covid-19, proposing a passionate curriculum for studying multiscript type design, and rattling the Western hold on product design practices, our guests for our final event titled “Practices,” let us in on their experiences, methodologies and positionalities.
Throughout these discussions and talks, our aim is to showcase the non-homogenous ways of working, which is a constant negotiation against the reduction of SWANA identities. During this session, they will also attempt to locate cultural dynamics and connections between their Praxises. This event is the cumulation of many on and offline conversations, collective observations, and an ever-growing wish to centre this vast history and ways of doing, resisting the dominant narratives prevalent in many conversations about design.
The talks are recorded and will be available on futuress.org's website soon.
The program is curated by Mayar El Bakry, Noureldin Ahmed, Randa Hadi, Sherine Salla, Nada Ezzeldin, and Sohaila Khaled, in collaboration with Archief Cairo, cifrcifrcifr, and Futuress.org.
