MyCairo

“It was the morning after the revolution in February 2011, a day as crisp and pure as a palm garden after the rain. The sediments of autocracy, of fossilised military rule were crumbling: Hosni Mubarak, eternal guest on the walls of coffee houses and juice stalls, carpentry workshops and petrol stations, was gone.” Sonja Zekri
Cairo today – Stuttgart artist Barbara Armbruster and Egyptian artist, filmmaker and photographer Hala Elkoussy narrate a city in photographic images. They follow their take a look at the megacity, in which time and cultural history are depicted as well as the tough struggle for new political systems, embedded in a rough as well as tender poetry of everyday life in Cairo. The photographs in turn provided the impetus for literary and essayistic texts by German-speaking and Egyptian writers and poets, experts, journalists, academics and cultural mediators. They have written short stories, poems or essays on the photographs. The sixth volume in the edition esefeld & traub series Stadtlesebücher is the photo and text book “MyCairo”, edited by Jörg Armbruster, former ARD correspondent, and the German-Syrian writer Suleman Taufiq. The Literaturhaus Stuttgart has developed an exhibition of images and text to accompany the volume and set selected passages in dialogue with large-format photographs, which can be seen at the Literaturhaus Stuttgart until March 2015. The volume contains texts by Martin Mosebach, Büchner Prize winner, Sonja Zekri, journalist for the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Claudia Ott, author and translator, and José F. A. Oliver, poet from Hausach, who was a writer-in-residence in Cairo as part of the “Midas 2004” network project commissioned by the Literaturhaus Stuttgart.

Info:
Literaturhaus Stuttgart
2015