The Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival

The first of its kind to Egypt, the newly launched Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival (D-CAF)  is set to bring a unique international multidisciplinary art and cultural event to Egypt. D-CAF kicked off last Thursday, March 28, at Townhouse Gallery and will be running for the coming two weeks until April 14. D-CAF will include performances by 50 Egyptian artists and 60 international ones from different disciplines, including art, theatre and music. Ahmed El Attar, theatre and studio direct and D-CAF’s artistic director, explains D-CAF intends to create a cultural and artistic event that will be up to the standards of festivals the artists normally go to. “We want to have something like Festival De Cannes in Paris here in Egypt,” says El Attar. “We are capable of bringing good artists, programming properly and [have the technical abilities to support the performances] with professional people who can handle it.” Attar says that the goal is to have the festival annually in to put Egypt back on the map as a cultural hub. “In the past years Egypt hasn’t been at the centre of artistic performances, Dubai Art fair attracts more people and the Marrakech film festival as well,” says Attar.   The festival aims to introduce new settings for the performances held to shed light on much-forgotten venues in downtown Cairo. “The idea was to have a revival of downtown places and connect with the audience using different locations,” says El Attar. Areas to be used for performances will include the Radio Theater on Talaat Harb Street, The Viennoise Hotel and a building located on Mahoumd Bassiouny Street that has been occasionally hosting art exhibitions. Artist’s talks and performances will also be showing at the Townhouse Factory space, at the Falaky theatre in the old American University in Cairo (AUC) campus as well as street performances in front of the Egyptian Stock Exchange. Although the festival is based largely on independent efforts, it is funded by the cultural sector of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, foreign NGOs in Egypt and two private institutions. But El Attar recounts, getting funding was no walk in the park. He explains that the lack on interest for finer culture goes beyond average Egyptians who haven’t received proper educations, it also has to do with the private sector’s lack of a cultural vision to support projects like D-CAF. Experimenting the arts Amongst the international artists performing during the festival is renowned British theatre group Forced Entertainment, coming for the first time to Egypt. Established in 1984, the group experiments with contemporary theatre and has taken their performances worldwide in the past years. Ranging from silent performances, to making a mess on stage, as they put it, the group “is interested in making performances that excite, frustrate, challenge, question and entertain,” as their official website says. Internationally renowned French jazz trumpeter Eric Truffaz  will also be preforming his hip hop, rock and roll and dance infusions. Choosing Tuffaz and others like him was not a haphazard choice, it was an intentional one to display infusions of musical genres and open new horizons to the Egyptian audience. Musical Program Curator, musician Mahmoud Refaat , explains he wants to highlight the experimental side of music with different genres, like jazz and rock. The festival aims to show people who different genres have evolved and how the artists experiment them.   “It was important for us to show the idea that we can take traditional or classical music to other levels,” explains Refaat. He adds that he is confident that the audience will receive these performances well and will be able to appreciate the whole festival. Artistic Director of the Contemporary Image Collective in Cairo, Mia Jankowich, curates the visual arts section of the festival. “After the January 25, a huge amount of creativity was suddenly possible, we want to embrace this and [allow] for this new freedom to continue,” says Jankowich. Jankowich says the festival will allow space for arts that couldn’t be displayed before and were largely ignore, thus she adopted an “empty” exhibition theme. “It is also a way of reminding us what the world would be like without arts,” says the curator. For more information about programming and schedules, check out D-CAF’s website. Tickets are available at the Radio Theatre, 24 Talaat Harb St., Downtown and at Orient Productions, 19 Emad Eddin St., Downtown.