Kayfa ta is a publishing initiative that uses the popular form of how-to manuals (how=kayfa, to=ta) to respond to some of today’s perceived needs; be they the development of skills, tools, thoughts, or sensibilities.
These books situate themselves in the space between the technical and the reflective, the everyday and the speculative, the instructional and the intuitive, the factual and the fictional. Kayfa ta was founded in 2012 by Maha Maamoun and Ala Younis.
Kayfa-ta is the beginning of a sentence. When spoken, the listeners assume that there will be a continuation; a complement or closure. They await. We explain: Kayfa-ta is a non- profit Arabic publishing initiative that uses the popular form of how-to manuals (how=kayfa, to=ta) to respond to some of today’s pertinent needs; be they skills, thoughts, sensibilities, emotions, tools or other. The manuals are originally published in Arabic, a language that is short on publishing, and has 295m native-speakers.
As artists and cultural producers, Kayfa-ta believe in the relevance and need for various perspectives and languages, and that these languages are not, or need not be, as exclusive or isolated as they sometimes are in the art world. One of the impetuses for this project is to attempt a collapsing of some of the distance between art and non art, its producers and receivers, by bringing the voices and perspective of a range of producers, in an accessible form, to a shared platform, wider audiences, accessible places (e.g. newsstands) and prices (e.g. US2$); facilitated by fundraising and cost-effectiveness. The popular vehicle of How-to books is Kayla-ta’s act of mediation, or a ‘Trojan horse’.
Everyday we express a need to think differently about the tools that we have, the bodies that we inhabit, the houses, communities, geographies and histories that shape and are shaped by us. While how-to’s are most commonly used as a strict transmitter of technical and practical knowledge, Kayfa-ta aim to commission and publish manuals that attempt to open up a space for a different kind of reading and readership within this technical and didactic genre. Kayla-ta would like to place this series of monographs in the space between technical and reflective, everyday and speculative, instructional and intuitive, base and poetic, where art and life borrow from each other, in the space of a bookstore or a newspaper-stand, and between the needs of today and tomorrow.
Books from Kayfa-ta in our shop: Click here.
