Agentive Beings & Animate Possibilities
Agentive Beings & Animate Possibilities is a multi-authored, literary non-fiction artist publication that travels through time, whilst staying in place; taking its narrative arch from performance
A neighborhood in Cairo where gardens were destroyed, disappearing from reality and the future imaginal. The book performs various characters whilst maintaining a first-person perspectival narration, at no point performing objectivity, neutrality nor invisibility. No action here will take place on a white background. The book travels through the universe into land in which relationships to slowness may have grown. Instead, gardens turned into roads that move fast now into such a cemented future. As the narrator shifts, the book shifts shape, revealing histories of the specific, subjective narrator. Their stories jump timelines, addressing a future where those places no longer exist. Revealing a starkly mundane yet alien reality, the book acts as a menace; on the one hand, threatening those who would rather step into the future eyes closed; and on the other, narrating stories of refuge through truth-telling.
Editorial & Creative Directors: Sara Fakhry Ismail & Shahd El-Sabbagh
Co-Authored By: Mona Sadek, Rym Jalil, Michel Hanna, Sara Fakhry Ismail and Genena (Shahd & Sara).
Images by: Michel Hanna, Eman Iman,
Editor: Maie Panaga
Copy-Editing: Mahmoud Sharaf
Printing: Metropole, Cairo
