Abdo Zin Eldin is a Cairo Amstrdam-based film director and multidisciplinary artist, holding a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy from Cairo University. Over the past decade, he has garnered extensive experience in audiovisual production, focusing on projects in Egypt's rural and marginalized areas. Abdo has directed short films and documentary videos, compiling a diverse archive of social movements and local cultural events. In 2019, he founded "GalalaLive," a platform and musical group dedicated to recording and reinterpreting traditional music and rituals from Egypt's marginalized communities with contemporary production styles. Now he is a resident at Rijksakademie and committed to his film sound and art installation practice by assembling hauntologies that summon beings, worlds, and histories deemed immemorial by the current ruling discourse. He also creates interactive installations using recycled materials, collaborating with local artisans to address contemporary subjects and matters through fictional worlds. Abdo's work has been showcased at international film festivals and museum, including the London Film Festival and Cinema Du Reel, The Centre Pompidou.
A heavenly inquiry lands in a village to inspect the sleep of a peasant and his renegade goose. Led by the hums of a spectral apparatus, the visitation detects esoteric frequencies from a spiritual reality cloaked in the peasant's home and land. A threshold pierced by the gaze of a saint. A whirlwind spun from the faith and hunger of Cairo's City of the Dead.
The Bearer of the Asphalt showcased in the 2023 group exhibition Masafet El Sekka, curated by Nour El-Fakharany in Cairo. It features an angel observing car journeys, offering viewers a symbolic ride through fleeting, fragmented moments of life on the road. The installation centers on a Peugeot 7-seater, a car iconic in Egypt for intercity travel and nicknamed the "flying coffin" (النعش الطائر). Inside the car, A film documents a decade of drives through Cairo from a driver’s perspective, paired with immersive sound design by Valentina Ciniglio, featuring stereo and binaural field recordings. Props and decorations were created with Ali Al-Gazzar, completing this reflection on movement and transition. The car also served as a film set, where random strangers were invited to take a trip with the "Angel of the Driver" to their destination. However, they soon realized the car wasn’t moving, leaving them locked inside to confront one another.
Galalalive is a sound collective and a live music and sound band that was founded in 2019 by Abdo Zin Eldin who started recording and archiving sounds and live music happening in the marginalised underworlds of Egypt such as spiritual festivals (mawālid), raves, weddings, funerals, processions as it is vulnerable to disappearance as gentrification takes place across the country, It then developed during the Covid pandemics into a solo music live project that aimed to create a contemporary electronic form of Egypt’s underworld sound and music. Galalalive performed around Egypt and Amsterdam in independent and commercial places such as Bardo clubhouse, Cairo Jazz Club, Vondelbunker.
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