PhotoCairo 5

More out of curiosity than convocation
A contemporary art project in Downtown Cairo
PhotoCairo5 is a large-scale contemporary art project organised by CIC and curated
by Mia Jankowicz that explores the notion of paradigm shift.
PhotoCairo 5 is about ways in which reality is splintered and shifts of subjectivity are
made. Involving international and I ocal , emergi   ng and established artists, this
exhibition explores the ability of art to trigger affective responses within the
viewer.
PhotoCairo 5 explores forecast play in reshaping reality, such as paranoia, the act of
recognition, and altered states of consciousness. Bodies, materials and knowledge
radically reconciled to their political, architectural, institutional surroundings
appear across the show from the tale of a hysterical dancing spree near the site of
the European Parliament, to an impossible   monument to the revolution, and the
absurd power dynamics of a reenacted citizen’s arrest gone wrong.
The project takes its title from a passing comment in Harun   farocki’s Video grams
of a Revolution, i n which existing footage of the Romanian Revolution of 1989 is
narrated with attention to the position and motivations of the person filming. The
comment refers to the decision * more out of curiosity than conviction * of a
state TV camera operator to glance the camera sideways at an emerging protest,
against instructions. Farocki’s treatment of the material calls attention to this
gesture over the depicted event. If art is to handle ‘revolutionary acts’, here the
camera operator’s innocent curiosity and bodily uncertainty takes the ill ace of
grand representational gestures, yet crucially, allow us to witness the awakening
of a radical reality.