Publications for CABF
Publication 1 AGENTIVE BEINGS & ANIMATE POSSIBILITIES (2024)
Agentive Beings & Animate Possibilities
Book Description
“Agentive Beings & Animate Possibilities is a multi-authored, literary non-fiction publication that travels through time, whilst staying in place; 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.
Book Credits & Details
Editorial & Artistic Direction, Co-edited by Sara Fakhry Ismail & Shahd El Sabbag). Commissioned and Published by Genena (Sara Fakhry Ismail & Shahd El Sabbagh)
Co-Authors: Rym Jalil, Sara Fakhry Ismail, Mona Sadek Saad, Michel Hanna, and Shahd El Sabbagh
Performance Documentation Images by Eman Imam; Archival images by Michel Hanna.
Texts edited by Maie Panaga.
Copy-edited by Mahmoud Sharaf.
Design by Sherine Salla.
1st Edition published in Cairo, 2024. Offset print full edition.
ISBN: 978-977-94-9311-4
LSBN (Egyptian serial): 10748/2024
Publication 2 Vessels of Memory; Holding Each Others’ Cups (RISO zine 2026)
The publication hold Rym Jalil’s research and practice that was presented to a participant group in 2026 as part of Caring as Practice, a programme on caring for the self, the other and the earch through mundance, embodied as well as artistic praxes.
Publication 3 Higher Power (REPRINT - Edition 2 in RISO 2026)
The publication is a collaboration between Rym Jalil (poet, researcher) and Sara Fakhry Ismail (interdisciplinary artist), and is a meditaiton on beauty, perspective. In its second edition (100 copies), the publication retains the nuance provided by the loose-leaf structure, allowing it to come apart and come back to gether in a different order according to its reader’s perspective. The second edition is currently being printed.
Artist Zine
Rym Jalil & Sara Fakhry Ismail
Publication 3 MOON (2020)
MOON is an offset print, accordion publication with an insert, designed by Shahd El Sabbagh. The video above is captured as the paper receives black ink.
30 copies of this publication are limited hand-made hard cover editions. This publication uses material from a performance which I co-created alongside Dance Artist Emilia Robinson titled The Stuff Our Dreams Are Made Of. MOON features texts written for the performance and Polaroid photos which were taken during the performance as well as texts from the original pamphlet.
Artist Publication
Text by Sara Fakhry Ismail & Emilia Robinson
Images by Sara Fakhry Ismail & Emilia Robinson
Designer Shahd el Sabbagh