Rolling Bulb

I made it a point not to review any of the previous shows put together at the Nile Sunset Annex because I felt it would be a little embarrassing to rip apart art shows curated by your flat-mates. Their latest show, however, “It’s Never Too Late to Talk About Love” by Mahmoud Khaled, I enjoyed so much that I just couldn’t not write about it. Albeit highly praising shows curated by your flat-mates is equally as embarrassing anyway.

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A Cabinet reshuffle two years ago by the Supreme Council of the Egyptian Armed Forces lead to a planning of a massive protest and sit-in in Tahrir Square on July 8, 2011. The cabinet reshuffle included a number of old time Mubarak-era figures, which did not convince the populace that the country was on the right track.

At the time, The Supreme Council and its various media outlets propagated the notion that protestors in Tahrir did not meet eye to eye and that they really didn’t know what they wanted. To prove a point and turn Tahrir square from a place of protest to a place of policy making, I got together with some friends of the smart type, namely Islam Mohammed, Ghada Shahbandar, Aida El Kashef, Amal Abou-Setta, and others, and we started designing a survey.

20,000 copies of it were printed, and between July 8 - 10, 10,000 were filled out and placed in ballot boxes set up around the square with the help of a a large number of volunteers from the Twitterverse.

Overwhelmed by the sheer number of surveys we gathered, the evolution of events in Cairo that hasn’t given us a moment’s contemplation, combined with our extremely limited resources, we weren’t able to extract all the data in a timely fashion. Today, I am releasing the results of the survey for the first time, and I believe the results are just as important today as they were two years ago.

After two years of on-and-off rioting, sectarian clashes, a whole lotta elections, farce trials, the new “Rebel” or “Tammarrod” movement aimed at unseating President Morsi, I think its important to examine the results of this survey conducted at one of the most crucial times of the Egyptian struggle for social justice: Post-Mubarak, Pre-Morsi, right when the Supreme Military Council was setting the stage for everything to come (or has already come for that matter).

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We are ruled by an undemocratic, Foucauldian hegemon that we’re barely even aware of – citizenship. How did this come to happen, and why do we need to change it?

[mural by Ganzeer in Mechelen, Belgium for Newtopia: The State of Human Rights - photo by Kristof Vranken]

Citizenship is a dual construct. It encompasses both privileges—social, economic and political rights—as well as duties. But the relationship between rights and citizenship is rarely this straightforward. There are many cases where rights can precede formal citizenship, as well as too many cases where citizenship fails to guarantee basic rights. Citizenship is also about demarcating borders, defining who is ‘in’ versus who is meant to be excluded from a given society. And while citizenship may bring certain benefits like community cohesion or a sense of belonging, the exclusionary aspect of this global institution has come to far exceed its positive features. In fact, citizenship has effectively become the determining factor in regulating the movement of people globally and distributing life chances for the majority of the world’s population. But this role – the ability of citizenship to affect life chances from the moment of birth, and to regulate who can go where and when thereafter – is being challenged. Immigration and demographic realities are forcing governments to realize that citizenship, as a means of determining who is entitled to membership and basic rights, is a broken, antiquated concept that needs a drastic overhaul. 

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[illustration by Ganzeer]

In September 2011, I visited the downtown Cairo headquarters of the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR) to interview its executive director Nadeem Mansour. This was just eight months after the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak and much of the international media was still focused on street protests and the inscrutable maneuverings of the ruling military junta.

Mansour and the ECESR were waging an underreported legal battle against the economic policies of the Mubarak regime. Chiefly, they opposed the privatization of state-owned enterprises and the subsequent erosion of wages and labor standards. During the regime’s last decade, hundreds of profitable state-owned enterprises were auctioned off at bargain prices to well-connected investors. This economic policy was adopted as part of an International Monetary Fund (IMF)-backed structural adjustment program designed to shift economic activity away from the public sector.

As I sat down with Mansour, the ECESR had just won a major case in Cairo’s Administrative Court successfully blocking the privatization of several state owned companies including the Tanta Flax and Oils Company and the Misr Shebin Al-Kom Spinning and Weaving Company. Although both companies had been profitable under government management, in 2005 after significant pressure from the IMF, the Mubarak regime auctioned them off to private investors.

The September ruling was the first of its kind. The court reversed a Mubarak-era privatization order and legally confirmed what Egyptian labor activists had been asserting for years – despite glowing reports from international financial institutions, Mubarak’s economic policies facilitated endemic corruption and resulted in an unprecedented transfer of wealth from Egyptian workers to a small group of capitalists.

Since 1991, Mubarak’s economic agenda was dictated by international financial institutions like the IMF and molded around the assumptions of the Washington Consensus. The conventional development thinking in the early 1990’s viewed Egypt’s massive public sector, feisty unions, and highly regulated financial markets as impediments to growth. Mubarak came under intense international pressure to remake Egypt’s economy in the image of the newly deregulated economies in Latin America by shifting economic activity away from public sector.

In Egypt, the inequities created by these economic policies resulted in an unprecedented decade of labor-action, yawning economic inequalities, rising unemployment, and eventually, a popular uprising.

Now, eighteen months after the Egyptian revolution, and eight months after the Administrative Court’s landmark ruling, Egypt’s newly elected government has requested $4.8 billion in economic assistance from the IMF to help stabilize Egypt’s floundering economy.

The loan request has been, with few exceptions, universally lauded as a sign of Egyptian political maturity and pragmatism. The myriad press reports announcing the recent visit of IMF President Christine Lagarde to Cairo all contained the same cloying praise for this move toward so-called “economic stability.”

Few Egypt-analysts seem willing to frankly confront the IMF’s checkered legacy in Egypt, its cozy relationship with the Mubarak regime, and its role in facilitating the very policies that sparked a popular uprising over one year ago. As Egypt’s newly elected government moves toward accepting IMF assistance, a close examination of the organization’s legacy is essential.

The IMF’s Disputed Legacy

The IMF’s role during the Mubarak years is thoroughly misunderstood and widely mythologized. International financial institutions and their constellation of development specialists have hailed Egypt as an economic “miracle.” Timothy Mitchell from Colombia University summed up the conventional wisdom this way:

“The conventional story is that by 1990-1991 the Egyptian economy was in crisis, no longer able to support loss-making public industries, an overvalued currency, ‘profligate’ government spending, an inflationary printing of money to cover the budget gap, and astronomical levels of foreign debt. After fifteen years of foot dragging and partial reforms, in 1990-1991 the government was forced to adopt an IMF stabilization… These ‘prudent’ fiscal policies were implemented more drastically than even the IMF had demanded, achieving a drop in the government deficit that the IMF called ‘virtually unparalleled in recent years.’”

The real history of the IMF in Egypt is vastly more complex. The Mubarak regime introduced IMF proposed reforms in a number of stages. In the early 1990s, Mubarak implemented some of the less controversial aspects of the IMFs policies including currency and banking reform. Still, domestic resistance was intense.

Writing in the beginning stages of the structural adjustment regime, World Bank economist Hans Lofgren predictedthat reforms would only take root if the population remained “quiescent.” Lofgren goes on to admit that many of the IMF’s proposals would be to the immediate detriment of “most of the population.” Nonetheless, Lofgren reasons that domestic resistance could be quashed because “since the 1970s, businessmen have emerged as a strong and unified force, independent from government control, while trade unions, pro-democracy organizations, and opposition groups remained ‘divided.’”

Lofgren proved to be prescient and Mubarak was able to thoroughly neutralize domestic dissent. As Eberhard Kienle illustrates in his groundbreaking book, A Grand Delusion: Democracy and Economic Reform in Egypt, economic reform in the 1990s coincided with a wave of political repression designed to anticipate and squash any potential political opposition. The early 1990s saw an uptick in raids on NGOs and mosques and a systematic neutering of trade unions. In 1993, the government officially took over Egypt’s professional associations, which had formerly been one of the only outlets for independent political mobilization. At the same time, the regime began to haul the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood in front of military tribunals.

By the late 1990s, the first wave of economic reforms had failed to deliver results. From 1990 to 1991 and from 1995 to 1996, both rural and urban poverty increased by over 10% and real wages sagged. IMF economists argued that Egypt needed to increase the pace of reform by accelerating the privatization process. In 1996, the IMF reached a deal with the Mubarak regime to extend additional credit to Egypt in exchange for an aggressive privatization agenda.

Privatization, Repression, and Corruption

Between 1996 and 2011, nearly 345 Egyptian public companies were privatized and sold on the Egyptian stock exchange. Under the premiership of Ahmed Nazif from 2004 to 2011, Egypt experienced the most intense wave of privatization with 172 state-owned businesses sold for nearly 60 billion Egyptian pounds.

This privatization process amounted to a massive transfer of resources from the public to the private sector. IMF experts predicted that the shift would unleash an explosion of productivity. Yet, the process of privatization took place under a cloud of political repression and intense corruption. In the end, the promises of increased productivity proved to be illusory. Many of the privatized companies were liquidated or significantly downsized, and many Egyptians associate privatization with employment insecurity and abuse. One of the most iconic cases of privatization gone wrong is the 2007 sale of the state-run department store Omar Effendi to a Saudi Arabian holding company. The holding company rebranded the company as a budget clothing store, closed several historic branches, and rescinded the employees’ long-term contracts.

According to the Administrative Court’s September ruling, a significant portion of privatized enterprises was sold to regime cronies at a fraction of their real value. The Shebin Textile Company, for example, sold for 175 million Egyptian pounds, despite being valued at over 600 million Egyptian pounds. The Al-Nasr Company for Steam Boilers and Pressure Vessels sold for 17 million Egyptian pounds even after a government audit valued the company at over 35 million Egyptian pounds.

The process for auctioning off these public enterprises was opaque and characterized by massive corruption. The most famous case is that of Ezz Steel. The government sold the formerly public steel company in 2001 to Ahmed Ezz, a National Democratic Party politician and friend of the president’s son, Gamal. Ezz was seen as a rising star in the Egyptian political scene, and he was easily able to leverage his political connections to get a bargain deal on the massive steel enterprise.

Under new private ownership, the management of newly privatized companies proceeded to gut the labor force. At the Tanta Flax and Seed Company, for example, the new Saudi Arabian owners cut the workforce by half and reduced health benefits. Naturally, the privatization program provoked a wave of strikes. Between 2004 and 2010, there were more than 3,000 labor actions in Egypt. In addition, for the first time, Egyptian labor unions demanded the ability to operate independently of state-controlled labor syndicates. Political oppression escalated as Hosni Mubarak moved to transfer power to his son, Gamal.

Meanwhile, the IMF applauded Egypt’s progress. Although the new economic policies failed to raise standards of living, they did produce record-level GDP growth averaging nearly 5% annually. The sale of hundreds of public companies did, indeed, generate short-term macroeconomic growth and attract significant foreign investment. In February 2010, exactly one year before the popular uprising, the IMF issued a glowing report praising Egypt’s commitment to economic reform and trumpeting the country as an example of a successful economic transition.

Conclusion: Looking Forward

To her credit, Christine Lagarde has acknowledged that the IMF made mistakes in Egypt. Speaking in Cairo in August 2012, Lagarde explained that “One thing that the IMF has learned as a result of the Arab transition…is that numbers do not tell the whole story and we have to really examine precisely what is behind the numbers. Who benefits from growth? Who benefits from subsidies? How are the fruits of growth allocated in a particular country?”

In the coming weeks, an IMF technical team is slated to land in Cairo to set conditions for economic assistance. No details of the conditions have yet been made public, but Adam Hanieh, a political economist at the School for Oriental and African Studies in London, is not optimistic. “The conditions will likely be the usual set of ‘reforms’ – privatization, deregulation, and opening up to foreign investment flows, ” he said. “I don’t think the IMF has changed its approach at all. We just have to look at the policies it is advocating elsewhere round the world (e.g. Greece). It may be becoming more astute in how it tries to present these ideas – partly in recognition that these policies have had such disastrous consequences and thus need to be wrapped in a different rhetoric – but they remain the same policies in essence.”

Egypt’s newly elected leaders are under tremendous pressure to deliver results. The Egyptian economy is in crisis with currency reserves plummeting and unemployment spiking. After exhausting the largess of friendly Gulf States, Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood are looking elsewhere for an economic boost. The IMF is an attractive and obvious source for economic assistance.

In the absence of an active parliament, President Morsi has been conducting the negotiations unilaterally. Even without formal channels for dissent, the looming IMF deal has already sparked significant domestic debate. Some Islamists are voicing opposition to the deal on religious grounds while leftists are expressing concern about the IMF’s respect for unions and public sector employees. Meanwhile, Morsi and the Brotherhood are doing their best to perpetuate IMF amnesia and paste over the IMF’s legacy in the interest of a quick economic turn around.

But in a time of mass mobilization and widespread political participation, the high level IMF deal is bringing back memories of the backdoor dealing of the Mubarak years. Going forward, the IMF’s penchant for elite-based decision-making appears to be on a collision course with Egypt’s ongoing political awakening.

—

This article first appeared in Muftah. 

The King’s Land from GILLIAN MCIVER on Vimeo.

This is a short film of a project in progress.

A 22 minute documentary about Egyptian artist Nazir Tanbouli’s project to create a site specific mural installation all throughout a semi derelict East London housing estate.
April 2012.

Murals Nazir Tanbouli, Music Massar Egbari, Film by Gillian McIver.

 See also the website http://www.kingslandmural.co.uk  and http://kingslandmural.wordpress.com/site-specific/

I had a dream many years ago. It was set in a big kitchen. I was with a group of friends, none of whom I knew from waking life. 

One of the girls walked to the fridge. She turned to me and asked if I wanted anything to drink. I nodded and squeezed my head and shoulder together; it was a “yes, maybe.” A shrug towards agreement. 

She handed me a glass of something orange; I took it and went to stand outside by the kitchen’s door. As I waited, Raphael (I knew that was his name) came and stood opposite me by the other side of the door. 

There was a long silence, his intense look. Another half-shrug, and eventually he opened his mouth as if to speak. Instead, he let out a filament of blue smoke. It hovered above his head and settled exactly between us. It slowly took the shape of an embryo, suspended in midair, exactly at eye level, translucent blue, slightly fluorescent. “Raphael, what do I do with this?” I asked. No answer. We both waited in equal awe, transfixed by the event.

Dreams are by definition made of unlikely events. However, the event here came to interrupt familiar spaces and gestures, challenging me to accept it as “real,” its very existence depending on my bewilderment. It was an event in progress and I greeted it with a question. The question confirmed its presence. 

An event in progress—in life as in my dream—is a shy proposition, hovering unborn, endearing and most fragile. It is visible, but unfixed like a nagging ghost at the threshold of our perception demanding to be integrated, to be loved. A work of art is never finished in this sense; it is never assertive and confident of its presence. It is hesitant, and that’s why it needs an audience. The hovering breath is not to an audience; it is with and waiting for an audience. 

Very little art today is conscious of the importance of fragility and incompleteness. And very few artists are sensitive to the subtle interactions in the space created by these important motions. 

Rana ElNemr is. In her recent photography series entitled Giza Threads, began in 1999 and exhibited at the Townhouse Gallery, she set out to find the unlikely interruptions in the landscapes of Giza and surrounding vicinity. She photographs open spaces, private and public. Spaces defined by ambiguous ambitions to enclose or expand them. Quiet ambitions tucked in behind fences, or wild ones springing out of tight containers. Every ambition is an event, and every event is a negotiation over—and hesitation with—space. 

There are many events in progress in Rana ElNemr’s photographs. These events slowly take shape before our eyes. Absurd events, powerful enough to drive their own narratives, odd enough to disappear altogether. They are isolated and integrated. They are at the threshold waiting to be seen, nagging. It is the subtlety that if we chose to see them, they reveal themselves and a sense of completeness—a sense of sense in and of themselves. 

ElNemr’s photographs are not cryptic, nor are they illusions of perception. We see the image’s elements very clearly but still fail to comprehend the photograph’s temporal logic. They are images of compressed, fleeting time, and we can only experience them as durations. We are gently led to discover how life pierces through like bamboo shoots imposing upon a new landscape. Plastic flower shops growing on highways. Two axes collapse into one another, the when and the how, the extension of time and intensity of life. Barely contained and barely containing. What remains is acceptance. 

Life here could be as unsettling as one clay flamenco and three mushroom-lamps planted by the side of the road. What happened? Who abandoned the cotton candy? The dinosaur forever fixed in ridicule by the house gate: what is he waiting for if not love? Love, life, whim or necessity, are no longer the only options. ElNemr is not concerned with binaries, side-by-side juxtapositions, or clean-cut distinctions. There are regularities of space and irregularities of ambition, but they are felt at once, whole, emerging entangled onto a single visual plane. 

When one watches intensity and humor—in a place, surrounded by creatures and gestures that seek only to displace time—the viewer finds himself or her/himself to be post-interruption. The various parts of Giza ebb and flow and interrupt each other. We are asked to see through the cracks created by these flailing movements. This vision must be achieved with least bravado and most delicacy. We must stumble upon it, maybe like the artist did. She claims no authority, not even with her compositions, but merely points there and allows us the journey. 

Rana ElNemr, Giza Threads. Townhouse Gallery for Contemporary Art, Cairo

26 February – 4 April 2012

“Allah Yenawwar” or “May God light your path” says the smiling police officer to me as I work on a four-meter high mural together with Ammar Abo Bakr. The mural is an image of a protester being dragged by two Military Police officers and its based on a sketch that Ammar drew just last night, which is based on a photograph taken in Alexandria and posted online only yesterday afternoon.

People hanging around the near by parking lot bring us tea and coffee, and the guy running the public toilet close by tells us we can pee for free. At least six Central Security trucks are parked in close vicinity, but we work away without trouble. Nothing can seemingly go wrong today, I think to myself.

Five hours later, however, I am proved wrong. A crew from Japanese television shows up and starts filming. A little commotion starts around the crew and a debate about the Egyptian military leads to a debate about the mural-in-progress.

“This is wrong!” some people proclaim. Others ask “why don’t you draw something nice about the military?”

Ammar and I try to explain that we are merely drawing a factual scene, not even expressing a personal opinion. Someone proclaims “well maybe the military police is arresting a thug and protecting the country.”

Okay, I say. So if I’m drawing military police arresting a thug, you shouldn’t be offended. The mural should make you proud of military police, I argue.

“Well, it doesn’t say that he’s a thug in the drawing, does it?!” he notes.

Exactly, I respond, so you will see him as a thug if you think they’re doing the right thing. Someone else might think they’re arresting an innocent protestor. It’s up to the viewer to decide.

“No, I don’t like it! ERASE IT NOW!!” he commands us.

Why do you want to blind people from the truth, I ask? Let them see it, go home, and think about it.

“WE WANT TO STAY BLINDED,” he screams, “WE’RE A NATION OF SONS OF BITCHES, OKAY?”

Okay, I say. And we pick up our things and leave, as hordes of people rush to deface the incomplete mural.

I could not decipher the living riddle of my body
put it to sleep when it hungered, and overfed it
when time came to dream

I nearly choked on the forked tongue of my spirit
between the real and the ideal, rejecting the one
and rejected by the other

I still have not mastered that art of storm-riding
without ears to apprehend howling winds
or eyes for rolling waves

Always the weather catches me unawares, baffled
by maps, compass, stars and the entire apparatus
of bearings or warning signals

Clutching at driftwood, eyes screwed shut, I tremble
hoping the unhinged night will pass and I remember
how once I shielded my flame.

ترددت كثيراً قبل ان أقرر الجلوس للكتابة حول حالة مزاجية لمستها في الحدث الفني المعاصر الحالي في مصر.  حالة مزاجية تتميز بحداثة السن والإيجابية بل وربما إلى حد ما بعدائية.  وقد وجدتني طوال الأسبوعين الماضيين بصدد عدد من النقاشات حول طبيعة تلك الحالة وبالأخص فيما يتعلق بمحاولتين بعينهما وقعتا – لا مصادفة - في يناير/ كانون ثاني 2012.  أولى هاتين اللحظتين هي كايرو دوكيومنتا في دورته الثانية، وثانيتهما هي معرض شفت ديليت ثرتي (وأعتذر إذ لم يتكبد منظمو المعرضين على حد علمي أي مجهود لتعريب الاسمين).

أججت تلك النقاشات التحليل التالي إذ صارت وقوداً له.  ورغم ما قد يبدو للبعض تهميشاً لذلك الكم من الأعمال الفنية والفنانين الذي تشكلت منه كلا اللحظتان، فقد ارتأيت أن أتجنّب نقد أياً من تلك الأعمال.  ربما شفقة بذاتي، إذ لا قبل لي بأن أجد لي مدخلاً لتفكيك ذلك النسيج الفني المتشابك، عسى أن أتحرر يوماً من ذلك الذعر.  إلى أن يأتي ذلك اليوم فسأكتفي بأن أحاول في الصفحة التالية أو ما قارب إرساء سمة مشتركة لمستها فيما بين المشهدين.  كلا اللحظتان في رأيي فعلا استرداد فاشل، رؤيتا تمكين أجهضتا بينما تحاولان التهام أكثر مما يتسع فاهما، فلفظتاه كما هو.

المشهد الأول: كايرو دوكيومنتا

لا يخفى على المتابع للدورة الأولى من كايرو دوكيومنتا عبث تلك المنظومة لدى مقارنتها بالإعلان الذي أطلقته المبادرة قبل عام واحد لا أكثر (انظر مقال مي الوكيل الرائع حول الدورة الأولى). لقد كان جوهر الحدث عندها – بل واليوم كذلك على الرغم من المساعي المتعمدة لتجريد المعرض والأعمال من أي تسييس أو سياق -  هو عدائه للمؤسسة ولممارسات القيمين في محاولة لتصوّر ديناميات أخرى وسلطة أخرى ليست بالضرورة سلطة القيّم.  ما كان مقدر لها يوماً أن تكون تربة خصبة لمجموعة من أكثر عناصر جيلهم إبداعاً من أجل نمو ما قد يكون أحدث أنظمة صناعة القرار وتمكين الفرد، استكملت دورتها وتوصلت لاستنتاج أنه من العسير على قرابة 25 فرداً التوصل لقرار جماعي، ليس بشكل عملي أو في إطار زمني فعال على الأقل.  لابد لمجلس الستة أن يقرر عنهم، وعلى البقية أن تتبع القرار.

التلويح هنا كان بفعل استرداد الفرد لاستقلاله عن المؤسسة، وهي محاولة شديدة الإثارة حبسنا أنفاسنا في انتظار ما قد تسفر عنه من تجليات جديدة.  منيت المحاولة بالفشل، ولم يتم استرداد شيء.  لقد أنشأت مؤسسة بين الأفراد ولكنها مصمتة هذه المرة.  أكرر أن أنه قد جرى تجريد متعمد للأعمال من السياق، فصرنا نتساءل ازائها عما نفتقده فيها.  أود أن أزج برأيي هنا، إذ أعتقد أن ما كان ينقص التجربة هو الفضاء الحواري.  هل من المفترض أن نصدق أنه لدى منح الفنان مطلق الحرية لدى تقرير جميع الأمور ابتداء من ظروف العرض وانتهاء بالعلاقات الجمالية والمساحية بين الأعمال وبعضها البعض، فإن الفنان يقرر الخيار الاعتيادي بل التوفيقي؟ أشارت صديقة في حصافة إلى طرافة تعليق جميع الأعمال تقريباً على ارتفاع واحد، باستثنا عملين أو ثلاثة.

المشهد الثاني: شفت ديليت ثرتي

يختلف المذهب هنا جملة وتفصيلاً عن كايرو دوكيومنتا، فنحن هنا بصدد قيّمتين اثنتين لهما موضوع قيميَ جليّ أسفر عن عرض مسيّس واستجابي بل ارتكاسي إن شئنا القسوة.  عدد الفنانين أقل هنا الأمر الذي يلمح إلى مقاربة أكثر انتقائية بالمقارنة بالمنهج التشعبي.  لا يمنع ذلك تكرر حالة الاسترداد.

إننا هنا إزاء قيّمتين تحاولان العمل ضمن المنظومة الرسمية، فإن مركز سعد زغلول فضاء حكومي في نهاية الأمر.  تسهى القيمتيان في شجاعة إلى الدفع بالممارسات القيّمية في قلب أجهزة الدولة، وإلى تقديم أعمال نقدية وسياسية لجيل شاب من الفنانين تحت أنف الدولة وباستخدام مواردها، وإلى أن يجري كل ذلك بشكل جيد.  ثمة هنا تفوّق واضح في الاهتمام بظروف العرض والتجهيز، وعلى الرغم من ذلك فإنني بصدد الدفع بفشل محاولة الاسترداد تلك أيضاً.

إن إشكالية تعامل الدولة مع الفن متعددة الأوجه.  لا جدال حول أهمية السعي إلى استرداد الموارد، ولكن ما ينبغي استرداده ربما أكثر من الموارد لهو الموقف من الفن، إنه الاهتمام بالخطاب الفني أو الاستجابة له على أقل تقدير.  ليس ثمة استرداد طالما لا يزال عشرون موظفاً أو ما ينيف يلتهمون شطائر الفلافل في مكاتبهم الضيقة التي تفتح أبوابها على قاعات العرض.  يمكننا بالطبع التجادل حول مسألة “القيمة المقدسة” لفضاء العرض، ولكن لا مجال لذلك الجدل إلى أن نعترف به، إلى أن نفسح له مجالاً في العقلية العامة.  وبالمثل فقد حقّرت الدولة من قيمة النقاش العام لأسباب لا تخفى على أحد، وإنني لم أر أي استرداد في وضع برنامج نقاشي عام ثم إهمال ترويجه للجمهور – ربما لتسرب شك الدولة المضمن في قيمته إلى عقليات المنظمين - بل والفشل في تظيمه بشكل يحترم المتحدثين ويليق بهم.  وأخيراً فليس ثمة أي استرداد في تنظيم عرض يتناول محو ثلاثين عاماً من ذاكرة جيل دون تقديم فنانة واحدة وكأنما تقيّدنا – بلا وعي - القيم المترسبة لدولة سلطة الذكر.  إن التأثير على السرديات الرسمية ومنظومة قيّمها ومؤسساتها ودينمايات القوى فيها إنما يبدأ بتحدّي تلك المسائل وليس باعتناقها.

لقد تعلّمت منذ فترة وجيزة ألا أتساءل حول دوافع أي فنان، وإنني لست بصدد ذلك الآن بأي شكل.  إن ما يثير فضولي هو ممارسات الاسترداد التي باءت بالفشل ومحاولات التمكين المحبطة وفوق كل شيء التساؤلات والجدل الموازي لها وما ينشأ عنها من تغيير في الديناميات.

عن مدونة غاردن سيتي moabdallah.wordpress.com

I hesitated a great deal before sitting down and writing about a certain temperament I identified in the current Egyptian contemporary art sphere. It is a temperament that is young, proactive, and to some extent aggressive. I have in the past weeks been engaged in multiple conversation and debates about two particular attempts that took place in January 2012, the date is no coincidence. The first moment is the second edition of Cairo Documenta, the other is Shift Delete 30.

The conversations fueled the following reflection. At the risk of margenalising the multitude of artwork and artists involved in those two moments, I have decided not to critique the art. Perhaps out of shear pity for my own self as I have no clue where to begin unpacking that wealth of artistic production, a sentiment perhaps I may free myself of one day. For the moment I will try in the next page or so to establish a specific common feature I have identified between the two scenes. Both moments are, in my view, failed acts of reclamation, two frustrated visions of empowerment that bit more than they could chew, so they spat it back as it is.

Scene one: Cairo Documenta

I am smoking a cigarette inside the make-shift exhibition space of the 25 or so young Egyptian artists showing in the Viennoise building. One of the leading figures of that initiatives is explaining to me and to others the mechanism of participation and selection, and it goes like this: at the core there is a group of 6 artists (The Board) whose work is of course shown, each of the six nominates two other artists, each of whom in turn nominates two more in a branching scheme. There is no theme, there is no curatorial notion, there is no discussion, and there are no spatial restrictions. The only thing there is a group of six (did I mention they refer to themselves as The Board?) who ultimately decide who is in, and who is not.

Anyone who is familiar with the first Cairo Documenta is aware of the absurdity of this system when cross examined with their published manifesto no more than one year ago, which ‘proposed an alternative model for exhibition design, one that is free from the conditions and frameworks imposed by art institutions and practicing curators,’ as Mai Elwakil puts it in her brilliant review last year. The gesture then, and even now despite the deliberate apoliticisation and decontextualisation of the show and the works within, was supposedly anti-institutional, an attempt to imagine different dynamics, a new authority that is not curatorial. What started out as a fertile soil for a group of the most creative individuals in the country to try and develop what could have been the most novel system for decision making and individual empowerment completed its full orbit and came back to the conclusion that 25 or so people cannot decide for themselves, at least not in a practical and time effective way. A Board of six must make some decisions and the rest will have to comply.

The gesture here was an act of the individual reclaiming her agency from the institution, a most intriguing attempt that many of us held their breath in anticipation of some new revelations. The attempt fails, and nothing is reclaimed. An institution is created within the individuals, only this time it is an opaque one. Again the work was deliberately decontextualised, we are left with a lot of question marks hovering over our heads, we feel unsatisfied and somehow wondering what it is we feel is missing. I personally argue that it is the discursive space that is missing. Are we to believe that when artists are given absolute agency over deciding everything from the conditions of showing to the inherited spatial and aesthetic relationships between artworks, the artists would opt for not only the conventional but even the compromising? A friend so rightfully pointed out that it is most interesting that with the exception of one or two pieces all the artists installed their work roughly at the same height.

Scene two: Shift Delete 30

The ideology here is radically different than that of Cairo Documenta, there are two curators, a forceful curatorial theme, and the show is political and responsive, perhaps even reactionary if you wished to be cruel. The number of artists is smaller too, implying a more selective approach than the branching scheme. However there is reclamation here no less.

Here is two curators working within the official sphere, Saad Zaghloul Center is after all a governmental space. The curators’ courageous attempt is to bring curatorial practice within the official apparatus, to present the political and critical works of this young group of artists under the nose of the state, and with its resources, and to do it well. There is evidently far more superior attentiveness to the conditions of showing and installation here. However I would argue that this attempt at reclaiming the state’s venues is yet another failure.

The problem with the state’s interaction with art is multifaceted. Reclaiming resources is undoubtfully crucial, however what needs to be reclaimed even more is the attitude, the attentiveness to artistic discourses, or at least interacting with them. No reclamation is successful as long as the 20 so idle government workers are still having their falafel sandwiches in their crammed offices with open doors exposed to the exhibition space. We could surely question the “sacred value” of the exhibition space, but we can’t do that before we give owe to it, before we create a room for it in the public mindset. Similarly, the state has for a long time and for obvious reasons undermined the value of public discourse, I didn’t see any reclamation in putting together a potentially critical discursive programme and not only fail to publicise it, perhaps again unconsciously subscribing to an official disbelieve in its value, but even fail to organise it in a fashion that is respectful even to the speakers. There is no reclamation whatsoever in a show about cancelling 30 years of generation’s memory that doesn’t feature one single female artist, as if, even coincidently, bound by the inherited values of a patriarchal state. Affecting an official narrative, system of values, structure, power dynamics begins by challenging those very issues, not taking them on.

I have learned a while ago never to question an artist’s motives. By no means am I doing that here. What I am most curious about is failed acts of reclamation, frustrated attempts of empowerment, and above all the questions and debates adjacent to a those attempts and the shift of dynamics they evoke.

Originally published on Garden City moabdallah.wordpress.com

During my time at SidLee in Montréal earlier this year, I was fortunate to be exposed to such a myriad of national and international talent. Among the inspiring people that I encountered, Henrik Leichsenring & Sofia Gillström are one of the few that stood out amongst the crowd. Not only are they extremely cheerful individuals, but they also are a supreme dynamic husband & wife creative duo. Being around them, one can’t help but feel really motivated to be the best version of themselves and aspire to reach constantly new creative heights. Once again, I’m truly grateful to know such creative talents.

I: What’s the earliest memory of a creative activity you did?

S: I remember thinking I could build a robot, I must have been 5 or 6. I made it out of cardboard boxes. I guess I was disappointed when I realized I couldn’t make it walk or talk.

H: I’ve actually tried on something similar. I was about the same age trying to build a helicopter with just one piece of wood and a hammer. I was hammering on that piece of wood for a while until I realized that wood will never fly. I gave up on that and carried on playing with toys not made by me.

I: If you weren’t doing what you do right now, what would you be doing?

HS: We would be inventors. We would hook up with like minded developers and business savvy people and make cool shit happen. In fact, that’s the next step for us I believe. We have a lot of ideas we want to see come to life, you know walk the walk, not just talk the talk.

I: Inspiration, who? what? where?

S: Maybe the most obvious answer right now, but Steve Jobs was an amazing smart and creative person. I guess you don’t appreciate people as much when they’re alive as when they pass away.

H: I get inspired by people around me that is about to move to new places, take on new challenges, getting into the unknown if you will. People taking risks in general inspires me and broadens my mind.

I: Share any of piece your work, recent or old and talk about it.

HS: Mixable Dancer is probably our favorite work up to date mainly because it was an idea we had that we could execute by ourselves in our apartment. It was a cool experience that you could make a lot of buzz on the internet with a simple idea that didn’t cost us more than a rabbit mask to make.

It is basically an interactive YouTube video where the user mixes the song and visual. It has almost 100 000 views today and the reaction on blogs was great and we even got an interview on Underwire (Wired magazine blog). We have a dozen ideas like this waiting to get started on, just need a few more people in our network to make it happen. Good times!

I: Name 5 websites that you check often.

S: Facebook and twitter is the first thing I check, there I have a collection of all my friends cool links. Buzzfeed gives me a daily dose of LOLs and other cool stuff. I get design inspiration from sites like Behance, awwwards and ffffound. Dvice is my favorite site to get insights about technology and some insights for what the future holds. I’m all into fashion and pop culture, and the Nylon blog does a good job of bringing me both.

H: Same here, I get my daily dose of cats out of twitter, Facebook and YouTube like everyone else. Lately I’ve been working on web related projects so I’ve been camping on sites like awwwards, siteinspire, cssdsgn and similar for cool stuff to steal. Lastly I spend a lot of time on feber (fever) a Swedish blog about everything news worthy.