SIMIYYA is a platform for research, cultural production, and experimentation through thought forms and aesthetics. The platform operates through the formation of production-oriented research units and artistic formats. We engage the questions of technology and science, as it applies to both local and global political landscapes with a particular focus on the SWANA-region. Nomadic in context and symbiotic in structure, Simiyya embarks on a long-term commitment to spectral knowledge production and transdisciplinary artistic practices.
Our core activities include hosting interdisciplinary events, workshops, and screenings; supporting and commissioning research and artistic projects; providing a digital space for the exchange of ideas; and establishing symbiotic partnerships with like-minded organizations, initiatives and individuals.
SIMIYYA is built to play a connective role in consolidating the platform model of cultural practice as it enables individuals and groups in diasporic contexts. Questions concerning the treacherous conditions of labor and migration that face many diasporic cultural and political practitioners are of core significance.
SIMIYYA is conceived as a connective tissue, reinforcing the platform model of cultural practice by not only empowering individuals and collectives within diasporic contexts but also by conducting research and experiments in the infrastructural, technical, and cultural dynamics of the platform model. This endeavor aims to cultivate an ecosystem that thrives independently of the Eurocentric modus operandi – a space open for alien infestation of thought and practice as the state of affairs. Through this, we support and commission research and artistic ventures, curate a digital agora suitable for ideas mutations, and forge symbiotic alliances with entities of shared vision and purpose.
The Nordic Cultural Foundation Globus funds the first year of SIMIYYA's operations with additional funding from Swedish Arts Council and the Danish Arts Council. Simiyya is initiated by Mostafa El Baroody, Assem Hendawi, and Mandus Ridefelt.
Assem Hendawi is an artist and filmmaker. His work focuses on the ideas of “public space” and spaces that could be or spaces to come: the non-private space, the virtual owned space, and space that is accessible by imagination. Architecture and systems theory are recurring themes in Hendawis production that recently has been shown at f.x. Berlinale Forum Expanded, Edith-Russ-House for Media Art and TANK-TV. He currently lives and works in Egypt.
Mandus Ridefelt is a researcher and curator living in Copenhagen. His work manipulates the relationship between natural sciences and arts through analytical, organizational, and poetic means. Mandus is currently exploring higher-dimensional aesthetics and how science grapples with not knowing. Mandus has recently worked with Diakron, Medical Museion, Ars Scientia, Society for Multidisciplinary and Fundamental Research, Copenhagen Science Slam, and REAL-Lab at the IT University of Copenhagen.
Mostafa Elbaroody is a Cairo-based architect and visual artist. Elbaroody’s practice incorporates different forms of digital image production, from generative design to immersive/interactive experiences as ways to imagine and articulate more representative and viable imaginaries for our co-dependency within ecological and technological systems. He is currently pursuing his independent studies as a researcher at The New Centre for Research & Practice. As an architect, he has worked on local projects and international competitions as well and extensive teaching of computational design.
A NOTE ON AESTHETIC REASON AND THE INTERESTS OF SIMIYYA
The ambiguity of the current technological moment presents challenges to linking the local and the global, to the possibility space of the political, and to the increasing metaphysical rupture between the rapid operationalization of techno-scientific axioms and their either unsupervised or paranoid implementation of techno-social systems.
As the techno-political discourse of today has become divided into two broad narratives - one of capture and extraction, and one of diversification and minorization - both have proven insufficient in reigniting the political potential of technology and its scientific fundaments, as well as falling short of warding off the ongoing neocolonialist techno-expansionism. SIMIYYA recognizes an urgent need to construct interfaces between decolonialist and rationalist perspectives within the current techno-political landscape. The outcomes of such an interface are yet unsettled. As a platform that operates across vastly different geopolitical contexts, SIMIYYA aims to take on this challenge and support those who invest in this goal as well as becoming an actor in its own right.
SIMIYYA is interested in the emergent interchangeability between mythology and infrastructure, in the possibility of a universalist techno-politics, in scientific cosmologies, and in the limitations and potentials of cosmo-technical practice. From this point, SIMIYYA explores what building aesthetic reason can be. A forensics of science? A wisdom of the machinic? Our commitment is to facilitate critical discourse and collaboration at the intersection of historical, analytical, and future-oriented interventions, promoting the development of forms of aesthetics and thought forms that transcend local and global boundaries. The productive and discursive organs of SIMYYA are an undecided number of Research Units focused on specific sub-questions of the overall frame and cultural production related to these.