Edited by: Engy Mohsen, Sarah Maher and Nour El Safoury

Chatrooms: On Curating Spaces - غرف الدردشة: عن تنسيق الفراغ


Published in Oct 2020 (Cairo), English and Arabic, ISBN 978-977-90-7752-9, 120 Pages, Edition of 1000.

Chatrooms: On Curating Spaces is a project by Engy Mohsen and Sarah Maher that took place between April 2019 and July 2020, and engages with five spaces for convening and conversing. The project ends with the printing of this book—which holds the same name—and is considered to be a sixth room. Through a compilation of reflections, texts, images, poetry, dialogues, and drawings, we engage with the knowledge accumulated throughout the project’s duration.

The book traces the rooms through dissected elements to create parallel narratives about, and around, the rooms that go beyond a direct documentation of past events. Nour El Safoury joined us to work on formulating an editorial vision for the book and an outline of its content that engages with the previous parts of Chatrooms. It includes texts written either by people who took part in the rooms, or people we have encountered over the course of our research and whose practices and theoretical works allow us to expand our understanding of our own convening practice.

Over the duration of the project, we hosted a series of happenings that we call "rooms". We created spaces for convening and conversing. For each room we invited participants to come together and engage in a conversation where the overlay of affective and physical components alluded to situational potentialities. The project explores different modes of participation, factors that impact social gatherings, emerging relations, and collective knowledge-making, while playing around with spatial settings, seating arrangements and the spaces where we meet.


Contributors: Andrea Thal, Ash Moniz, Daniel Blanga Gubbay, Engy Mohsen, MF Kalfat, Mai Amer, Malak Helmy, School of Intrusions (Noor Abed and Lara Khaldi), Omar Alsayyed, Omar Kassab, Rami Abadir, Rania Atef, and Sarah Maher.
Design and Illustrations: Engy Mohsen

Contents
- A Parallel Encounter
- The Gap
- A Conversation Between Andrea Thal, Sarah Maher, and Engy Mohsen
- What If Someone Makes Boats Out Of Paper Instead Of Writing On It? by Rania Atef
- Open the Map
- A Text on The Exhibition Room by Ash Moniz
- Cooking Notes from a Consumed Host by Omar Kassab
- Q & A with Mai Amer
- Misplaced Home, a poem by Omar Alsayyed
- Q & A with Rami Abadir
- Questions On The Way (Back) to School by MF Kalfat
- Q & A with School of Intrusions (Noor Abed and Lara Khaldi)
- An Email Exchange: Daniel Blanga Gubbay and Chatrooms
- The Erotic Ruse by Malak Helmy
- Working Together
- 31 Jobs I had to Perform by Engy Mohsen
- Bliss at Work by Sarah Maher
- The Underbelly: 11 Financial Facts About Chatrooms


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🇵🇸We Will Not Stand by in Silence:  ︎︎︎ Read the Statement & Add your Name to the Signatories🇵🇸 Read the latest text by Karim Kattan, At the Threshold of Humanity: Gaza is not an Abstraction  ✦  🇵🇸 Visit our page Resources for Palestine for a compilation of texts, films, podcasts, statements and ways to donate.