Cultural Dimension
Overview
The cultural dimension aims to address existing assumptions and help develop mutual perspectives through art, literature, cinema, and music. Culture contributes by identifying new narratives and by providing unconventional and non-stereotypical representations of the region, offering innovative models and examples.
This year, the Saudi artist Ahmed Mater, the Algerian artist Koraichi and the young director Egyptian Nour Nasreldin have enriched the Forum with their creativity, overcoming the imposed temporal and spatial boundaries, which is one of the prerogatives of art.
Rachid Koraïchi, with his project Garden of Africa, aims to create a sacred space to keep alive the memory of migrants drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. Nameless corpses are buried in this place, in Tunisia, that wants to be a Garden of Eden for the “forgotten ones”. An artistic and politic project that is an invitation to rethink relationships between Africa, the Mediterranean and Europe.
Nour Nasreldin ideated and directed a short film on her experience of lockdown in Cairo, on the unusual silence in such a noisy city and on the role of new generations to envision and foster change.
In the previous editions, film-screenings of selected films were organised in collaboration with the Locarno Film Festival. The exhibition Broken cities. A virtual journey from Syria to Iraq – an imaginary route to four cities laid waste by conflicts whose violence has turned them into theatres of war in recent years – was set up in collaboration with e-REAL Logosnet and Iconem. A multimedia installation by the Egyptian artist Moataz Nasr and the photo Exhibition Journeys through our Fragile Heritage, several concerts and a conference on Mediterranean, Middle East and North Africa cuisine made up the cultural dimension and framework during the MEM Summer Summit 2018.