The term “revolution” before the events of Tunisia and Egypt and the subsequent revolutionary waves in the Arab world was a mere word dreamt about by some and mocked by others. It was just a word typed on paper, and no one knew what it meant to live a moment of a social and political change, to actually live a revolution.

The term “revolution” before the events of Tunisia and Egypt and the subsequent revolutionary waves in the Arab world was a mere word dreamt about by some and mocked by others. It was just a word typed on paper, and no one knew what it meant to live a moment of a social and political change, to actually live a revolution.

Revolution is also a word followed by a period; all the revolutions we have read about ended. They served their purpose in life as well as history and were over, while in Egypt we still live the “revolutionary moment.” We have found that it is not just a mere moment, but has stretched over two years and we have come to believe that we still have more years to live under the mercy of this changing anxious ‘revolutionary moment’.

Capturing an image

The question of how art will reflect the revolution is the most prominent one posed during the years of this revolutionary moment. How will artists produce their artwork during revolutionary time? Shall they wait unit they have absorbed the shock and later reflect it as art? Or should they momentarily answer the new questions and ideas posed by this revolutionary outbreak?

In this context, the fifth ‘PhotoCairo’ exhibition, organized by the Contemporary Image Collective (CIC) between November 14th and December 17^th,  artworks of participating artists are displayed at many venues such as Town House and Waghet Dukkan along with the CIC.

This year’s exhibition is titled ‘More out of Curiosity than Conviction’, which comes from a comment in German director Harun Farocki’s work entitled “Videograms of a Revolution,” which casts light on the motives of a Romanian Television cameraman during the outbreak of the Romanian revolution in 1989 when he quickly photographed an opposing demonstration, in violation of official instructions. “PhotoCairo” displays some of Farocki’s films that raise questions on community co-existence, power balance, politics, the cruelty of war and the steady increase of capital strength.

The participating artworks in ‘PhotoCairo’ appear to be an attempt at answering how art will reflect this ongoing revolutionary moment, taking into consideration that the Egyptian revolutionary approach has opened all possibilities, varying from the most fascist and bloody works to the most romantic and revolutionary ones.

Ode to buzzwords

At the Town House plant, visitors are greeted by the work of artist Samir El-Kordy’s “Monument of Buzzwords,” a sequence of prints split up by texts.  The work imagines a monument commissioned by the ruling authorities of the city – assuming from the prints, it is Cairo – to commemorate the revolution that toppled their regime. The monument is a 20 kilometer-long and five meter-wide stone structure that passes through places and streets where the demonstrations of the presumed revolution marched. With the succession of the images appears the huge stone wall that begins at the opera extending to Qasr Al-Nil Bridge and crossing the burned National Party Building to revolve around the TV building and then through the streets of downtown Cairo.

The stone structure looks like a nightmare crossing through the real places where the events of the first eighteen days of the Egyptian revolution took place, and the places that later witnessed bloody confrontations between security forces and demonstrators, such as Maspero Building. This fanatic and fascist visualization reflecting the tendency of an authority celebrating a revolution against it, is not far from the actual reality of Egypt today, especially with the arrival of new forces to power, the outmost purpose of which is to inherit the former rule with all its means of oppression and tyranny. In addition, the term revolution has become a word used by everyone, starting with the new leaderships and ending with the former regime figures, in order to eliminate the new energy that has spread in the country since the beginning of the revolution.

“Monument of buzzwords” by Samir El-Kordy reflects the fascist tendency of an authority to murder the revolution in the name of the revolution and to celebrate its victory by confining the city streets in the name of the revolution.

Citizen spies

At CIC, we watch ‘Bahari’, a short film written and directed by Ahmed Ghoneimy. The film is about two owners of traditional swings at the common neighborhood of Bahari in Alexandria where they interrogate a young man who has filmed children during their play at the swing sets. The little dialogue of the film demonstrates how an ordinary citizen could exercise the same security oppression practiced by the authority on his fellow citizen. The interrogation technique used by the swings’ owners is the same one used by state security officers against political prisoners. The owners also try to impute “homosexuality” to the young man and after a long night of “interrogation”, one of them issues his verdict that the young man should never visit the neighborhood again.

This true-story based film reflects the reproduction of authoritarian oppression with all its means and mechanisms, but this time by a powerful citizen against a weak one, and in the end, it is the stronger one who imposes his rule.

A wounded bird

One of the outstanding works at ‘PhotoCairo’ is Andre Maru’s work ‘Dance Epidemic,’ which is a narrated slideshow about a hysterical dance initiated by a woman in front of the European Parliament, who is then joined by others. While the slideshow displays different architectural forms, starting with the hall of the European Parliament, to the decorative Baroque architecture that began with the industrial era, and ending with other postmodern architecture, the continuation of the images with the narration of the dance, demonstrates the cruelty of a modern city authority with all its various forms and levels on the physical presence of an oppressed individual who reflects the story of the dance as a wounded bird’s dance proclaiming his rejection by its last blood splashing flutter.

The fifth ‘PhotoCairo’ exhibition displays an answer to the engagement of art with the revolutionary moment of Egypt, an answer that fears fascism and reproduction of oppression and domination, and celebrates the dreams of individuals to maintain and defend themselves and their bodies in order to enjoy a post-revolutionary moment.