Global frequencies

At the Townhouse Gallery's Open Studio, Serene Assir encounters artists from all over the world

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Myiezer Matlhaku and Murat Ertel from Anabala collaborate at the Open Sound Studio hosted by the Townhouse Gallery

As he makes his way down the overcrowded staircase, the old man grumbles audibly, "all I can hear is 'Umm' and 'Ahhh' -- what's all this about?" Hailing from the countryside, this bewildered street character now lives in the Viennoise Hotel, a venue more often abandoned than not off Talaat Harb Square in downtown Cairo. And he has every right to be disconcerted. Tonight a bizarre experience besets his makeshift home: sound installations set up by artists from India, Lebanon, Turkey, Britain. One involves transmitting sound by laser from one room to another; another had beer bottles ceaselessly rattling against each other. Sounds reverberated powerfully, buzzing out onto streets and cafés; little did the passers-by know...

Within the space and time provided by the Townhouse Gallery -- perhaps the most active, interesting space Cairo has to offer independent artists and art lovers -- 17 resident artists and curators placed sound at the centre of this year's Open Studio programme, with experimental work overtaking the event. The work itself was perhaps less significant than the experience of producing it: the artists' individual and collective experiences in Cairo, with the gallery and with each other -- which came to constitute the more substantial result of the programme.

As the two-week programme drew to a close, spaces within the Townhouse Gallery's main complex and in the Viennoise Hotel were open to the public for two evenings. During this brief yet conceptually packed time, a small but part section of the city was transformed, hosting sounds and images as varied as the world's art scene is today.

And for each artist, the experience of living communally and producing work to a deadline in what was for the majority a wholly new environment made for interesting results. Pakistani artist and filmmaker Maryam Rahman, for one, described this, her second visit to Cairo, as far more enriching and profound than her first visit. "It's one thing to be in Cairo on holiday," she told Al-Ahram Weekly. "But it's an entirely different, immensely more rewarding experience to be here at work, to be given a chance to see the city's inner workings. As an artist, to come so close to a city this alive and vibrant has been something of a gift."

Responding to the city, some worked to meet the expectations of the immediate public. Greg Niemeyer, who teaches at the University of California at Berkeley's New Media Centre, transformed parts of his videogame-cum-art installation at the request of children in Fustat, who were the first in Egypt to try out this unique game, based on vocally controlled manoeuvres, in which two players share decision-making on the movements of a single canoe floating through a river filled with sweet-looking but no less menacing crocodiles.

"They didn't like the original name of the game, so I changed it to 'Good Morning Flowers'," Niemeyer explains. "They were very pleased." A videogame designed to encourage people to work together, Neimeyer's piece proved immensely effective among Cairo's adult audience; many shed the daily angst of their hard lives in favour of harmony, childish excitement and instant friendship with co-players, which though short-lived was nonetheless a powerful experience that broke with the moulds of normality.

Equally significant was the introduction of a wholly experimental, technologically-oriented sound-scape into an already noisy aural space -- and one that is constituted very differently: the Egyptian artist Mohamed Rifai, for one, seems to take an introspective path through electronic sound. His is the end of a dark corridor of the Viennoise produced vibrations reminiscent of terror to some, infinity to others. Others bridged other dualities -- ancient and modern, metallic and wooden -- creating experiences which, though cramped into dilapidated, darkened rooms, could reach across far wider systems of frequency.

Anabala, a Turkish duo working on sounds as new as they are old, performed to a stunned audience still fresh from hearing out Myiezer Matlhaku from Botswana co-perform with cultural activist-cum-musician George Wahib on drums. Stories accompanied beats as old as the earth, and the perfect sync achieved over a mere two weeks of collaboration between the two inspired and astounded audiences.

"Cairo has been very good to me," Matlhaku told the Weekly. "The people here, they have been very kind, very warm. I will take away many good memories." Similarly, the ability to co-exist with a place as culturally vibrant as Cairo provided filmmaker Rahman with the ideal platform to discuss an issue sensitive all across the Muslim world -- namely, whether music is considered haram (forbidden). In a short art video dedicated to her grandfather, musician and lifelong promoter of the arts Hayat Ahmed Khan, she pondered the question through interviews with religious scholars, supplementing her footage with clips of Cairenes singing on the streets of the city, and concluding with a moving shot of two friends singing a love song of Bedouin origin in such honest, moving tones that audiences left with an understanding of how crucial music is to human existence. "It is extremely important to work to clarify such issues, which are as salient in Egypt as they are in Pakistan today," she said, adding that such discussions need to be held internally within communities in which Islam is the religion of the majority, rather than in the West.

Unwittingly and in a separate interview, Matlhaku seconded her viewpoint, emphasising the crucial importance of music: "A person without music is like a dead tree: one without life, and without the ability to provide shade or solace," he said, as we sat on the staircase, listening to the various sound installations' final hums as nightfall heralded not only the end of the show but that of a two-week period as ephemeral as it was memorable, for artist and viewer alike.