Friday March 29th, 2024
Download SceneNow app

5 Incredibly Cool Events Happening at D-CAF 2016

From playfully interactive games at real Cairene homes, to macabre multimedia performances, these five D-CAF events break all boundaries between audience and performers.

Staff Writer

The Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival kick started with a mind-blowing installation at the Old French Consulate last week, and the city center soon lit up with dazzling events promising to escalate as the festival rolls on. From interactive games, to macabre visual arts displays designed to trigger emotions, and absurd performances, we’ve chosen five unusually interesting events.   

Home Visit (Germany)
What? An interactive performance held at strangers’ apartments, the performance invites participants to play a game where they will have to follow the commands generated by a printer-like machine. What is a nation, after all? The artist, Rimini Protokoll, contrasts the abstract idea of a nation with the individuality of a private apartment as 15 people sitting in a living room become part of a performance that interweaves personal stories and the socio-political mechanisms of the city. You can host Home Visit Cairo in your own home or be a guest in a stranger’s private apartment.
When? 4th April - 14th April (multiple dates).
Where? Multiple locations
Bi kaam? 20 LE
Note: Registration required at least 24 hours in advance.

Gaze (UK/Egypt)
What? This innovative dance production involves exceptional dancers with disabilities, and non-disabled dancers. Created by the Stopgap Dance Company, the dance performance will lead the cast to blend, balance and borrow from one and other, and together the group find a language that needs no words.
When? 15th and 16th of April
Where? Alfy Bey Street / El Shawarby Street
Bi kaam? Free

Diespace (The Netherlands)
What? With a little satire and creativity, this interactive multimedia show re-creates an online community – for the deceased. This crazy-cool idea will give members from the audience light-pointers and be given instructions on how to use them to create a dazzling show of flashes and fizzles geared to build memory beyond the earthly life.
When? 21st and 22nd of April
Where? AUC Falaki Theatre
Bi Kaam? 20 LE

Gardens Speak (Lebanon/UK)
What: This is an intense, macabre interactive sound experience aimed at enacting the gardens of Syria; spaces that conceal the dead bodies of activists as well as protect the living from the violent thrusts of the regime. The audience will lie down in a dark, dank basement venue and listen to real testimonies of the lives of martyrs of the Syrian conflict, as told by their friends and relatives, revisiting the continuing collaboration between the living and the dead throughout these domestic burials.
When? 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th of April
Where? 17 Gawad Hosni Street
Bi kaam? 20 LE

In the Shadows of the Waves (France)
What: In an attempt to collect and delve into the world of collective subconscious, Kristoff K. Roll’s brings his audio-speaking siestas to Cairo. You will be invited to recline on a deckchair and will listen to a series of real dream stories reworked, edited and marked with a musical imprint by the artist. A dreamlike journey, literally.
When? 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th of April 
Where? 22 Abdel Khaleq Tharwat Street; Radio Cinema Courtyard; Old French Consulate Rooftop; Greek Campus Rooftop
Bi Kaam?
 20 LE

Check out our 2016 Performing Arts guide as well as the Musical Highlights coming to life for D-CAF. For more events, visit D-CAF’s Facebook page.