Workshop

Arts in the City: Marks and Claims

10/03/2025 - 01/05/2025
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This module explores imprints of the art(s) in shaping urban social-cultural landscapes. Participants will examine the power dynamics of the social and the political as they are narrated in realms and levels of the official, the subversive, the planned, the improvised, the individual, the collective, the imagined and the illusory. They will engage with the notion of public accessibility of art, while exploring charged pockets within the city that are not necessarily public or accessible. The module also investigates how artistic approaches and cultural interventions interpret placemaking policies and ambitions, as well as how they respond to city representation across various mediums and diverse cultural and contemporary curatorial practices.

  • Expand their toolbox by adding new – and unconventional - research tools to engage the city users in the co-production of knowledge.

  • Comprehend the possibilities for alternative processes of making sense, reading, and build in-depth understandings to the complexity of the networks that connect the different users, and how does that shape and govern city spaces (gender, socio-economics, social dynamics, formal/ informal relationships, city memory, conflicts, narratives… etc.).

  • Acquire abilities to communicate and understand the users’ perspectives in producing and appropriating city spaces.

  • Capitalize on the potentials of the existing dynamics through learning from the surrounding, rather than rushing to fixed solutions.

  • Since the way of producing art is by default interdisciplinary, the students from different disciplines will learn to engage in a collective research project, where each plugs in by their own knowledge, to complement one another.

Instructors

Samir al-Kordy

Samir El Kordy is an architect based in Cairo, Egypt. He graduated from the Architectural Department in Cairo University. Samir El Kordy developed work in a wide spectrum of fields such as object design, research, architecture, urban design, and art exhibition design. He has worked for OMA/Rem Koolhaas in Rotterdam, and Herzog & de Meuron in Basel. In Cairo, El Kordy has realized a number of projects and has collaborated with CDC/Abdel Halim Ibrahim in major architectural initiatives in Egypt and the Arab Region. His practice includes a range of realized architectural and urban, theoretical, research-based projects in New York, Paris, Munich, London, Rotterdam, Saint Louis, Saint Petersburg, Dubai, Ibb, Riyadh and Cairo. He was the design architect for the exhibition at Haus der Kunst, Munich “The Future of Tradition and The Tradition of Future” 2010-2011.

rana el-nemr

rana elnemr's practice is anchored in questioning what it means to live & experience place and time. Her process incorporates formal image-making techniques with contemporary art & strives to integrate various forms of collaborations & alternative pedagogical practices. rana elnemr's work has been exhibited & acquired world-wide. In 2004, she was one of the founders of the Contemporary Image Collective (CIC) of which she remains an active board member.