I’ve been invited to Alexandria, Egypt by the Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF) to work on a site-specific project, as well as lead a workshop with local art and architecture students. I’ve begun a web site for the project here. I’ll also be posting photos regularly on Flickr to this photo set. Here’s a somewhat “official” blurb about my anticipated work:

Pedestrian histories suggest a multiplicity of stories and perspectives from which to consider a place, from which to consider Alexandria and the people who inhabit it. These petites histoires, or minor histories, depend upon the itineraries and movements of inhabitants between static points of rest (places) within the city. They are performed anew with each subject, with each singular instance, although paths will often be repeated, practiced, refined, cross-referenced in the process. Pedestrian histories possess a pacing, a slowness, a particular kind of looking, and are instrumental in the creation of political, historical, cultural, social, and vernacular spaces. Borrowing from Michel de Certeau’s writing on spatial stories, this project locates pedestrian histories at the intersection of the map and the tour, somewhere between what de Certeau calls “a place projection totalizing observations [and] a discursive series of operations.” As an artist-tourist encountering Alexandria for the first time, this conceptual pairing (these touristic tropes) also presents a useful framework with which I can enter Alexandria and perform my own pedestrian histories in the city as I research countless others present there.

As an addendum to the loose network of site-specific and web-based Place In Place Of projects, Place In Place Of: Alexandria will manifest itself as a set of site-specific interventions, performances, and documents. Equally important and essential, this project will be co-created as a collaboration between myself and local art and architecture university students. The research and documentation will be collected, reconstituted, and recontextualized on the Web at http://alexandria.placeinplaceof.net; the online component to the project functions as a translation that attempts to connect the Web and Web users to physical localities from disparate geographies and cultures.

Place In Place Of: Alexandria is being created for CLEOTRONICA 08, a new media festival organized by ACAF in Alexandria, Egypt which will take place in the first half of 2008. CLEOTRONICA is envisioned as “a space for both cultural dialog and alternative methods of education, research and collaboration by focusing on establishing an extensive workshop program which will invite international artists, designers, artist collectives and independent art spaces from different contexts to work with local artists, art students and cultural workers.” [blogged by Jeremy Beaudry on Meaning Building]

ALEXANDRIA CONTEMPORARY ARTS FORUM (ACAF)

Place In Place Of: Alexandria & Upcoming Lectures by Jeremy Beaudry :: January 18, 22, and 24, 2008 :: Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF), 10 Hussein Hassab Street, Flat 6, Azarita, Alexandria, Egypt.

18 January (Friday): Starts at 7 pm
Artist-Run Culture and Initiatives Today in the North-East US, live Arabic translation, Location: ACAF

22 January (Tuesday): Starts at 7 pm
Artist talk by Jeremy Beaudry about his work and artistic/research processes, live Arabic translation.

24 January (Thursday): 6-8 pm
Lecture and rounding up presentation about the Place In Place Of: Alexandria project, live Arabic Translation, Location: American Center Alexandria, 3 Pharaana Street, Azarita, Alexandria.

Jeremy Beaudry is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, educator and activist from Philadelphia, USA. With a background in both art and architectural practice, Beaudry works across these disciplines to understand and engage the role of personal and collective memory in shaping our experience of physical and virtual spaces. Through online projects, site-based curatorial and creative work, and activism around issues of land use and urban development, he engages a variety of audiences from diverse fields in and out of the academy. Among other things, he is currently the Director of the Department for the Investigation of Meaning in the Think Tank that has yet to be named, an artists group that initiates site-specific conversations, performative actions, and educational projects to interrogate contemporary urban issues.

This project was made possible by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs U.S. Department of State and the American Center Alexandria

Related Links:
http://meaning.boxwith.com
http://thinktank.boxwith.com
http://alexandria.placeinplaceof.net