Though the sun  may be rising the breeze heavenly and the planets in bloom

The flower arches away from me

She will not sway in my arms

Her fears and analytical ways a wall between us

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And when you arrive holding your sign calculated words fall in a heap that says im nervous

Do my words make you nervous

Do you hate my angles and lines

Tell me what makes you nervous

That I may kill it in me… or revere it

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Tell me the way to your very own heart

That I may paint it in water

Weave sunrays

and leave this at your door

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Could it be that such love can flow inside of me?

Everyday People:

Lara Baladi, Image collector & Mixed-Media Artist

Lara Baladi was born in Lebanon to a Lebanese family that had lived in Egypt to witness the first days of the revolution before returning to Lebanon where Lara was born. The family then returned to Egypt with the start of the civil war. They then chose to go to France where they lived. Lara took leave to study in London then returned to Paris with her newfound love for photography and art. But it would be years later in Cairo, the city where she lives, that she would have one of her first significant exhibitions. The third in the fresh history of the townhouse gallery of contemporary art, ‘4 women’ would showcase the works of 4 artists living in Cairo; Huda Lutfi, Sabah Naeem, Dina Ghareeb and Lara Baladi.

What about photography drew you to take it up as a profession?

What first attracted me to photography was the way things or situations cold be fascinating but when photographed, they became flat. The challenge then was how to keep in the photograph, and even go beyond it, that thing which was fascinating about life.

Why the big collages?

I moved to a different kind of practice due to the lack of technical possibilities in Cairo, which led me to make all these big collages; big pieces that use a multitude of images rather than enlarge an image and work on perfecting the technique.

Photography is a powerful tool of expression, how can one maximize the resonance of the image within the audience?

Photography holds many different possibilities, and different people work at a different pace. The results depend on the practice and the person. Some people are obsessive, spontaneous or conceptual, stage images, etc. It is a very personal choice and a continuous process. By continuously working, one’s work, language continuously evolves and deepens.

The work itself reveals its limits and opens new creative doors. Inside existing works, the seeds for the next works are already present. In the end, all the works are related in the same kind of way Russian dolls are contained in one another. What matters is to continue the search, to ‘peel the onion’.

When you work away from commercial constraints and more towards Art you have much more space and freedom to elaborate a discourse. Usually these works are more personal, more reflective, more conceptual and also manage to keep all these personal qualities one puts in the process without losing integrity along the way.

If art is a language.. What dialects are not spoken in Egypt?

In Egypt, press articles about artists and art exhibitions are rarely able to look at art productions from a larger perspective and to contextualize them within the larger International Art world.

There is a fairly big community of artists in Egypt but there is no criticism of art, no discourse around art or very little. People who produce art in Egypt often need to exhibit in other countries before their work is noticed or analyzed in a professional way.

What else does the cultural scene in Egypt lack?

Freedom obviously. The essential element: freedom of expression. There is a very clear impossibility to do certain works or talk about certain subjects here.  A lot of my works which were and still are influenced by this environment, talk about certain subjects in metaphorical ways or ways that are not confrontational. Having to always work in those limitations and managing to get your point across can be challenging but on the long run very limiting and oppressive. It unfortunately tends to push creative forces outside the country instead.

Interests in artists?

Less and less I am interested in seeing one piece of work. I am more interested in seeing the continuity of the work in one artist’s life and understanding how that work falls into their own process of research. It’s almost like a chemical laboratory where the chemist will make his experiments until he finds a formula. I think artists work in that way in the sense that they take elements from their environment, their knowledge, their experiences and they transform them into something else, into work of art.

Latest project?

The last work I did was a commission for Images of the Middle East in Denmark. It was 20 projections on 20 screens along one kilometer of sea shore. It was something I was working on in the summer when the war started in Lebanon. I shifted a little in terms of the direction I was working on. I was obsessed like most of us with the news, following the course of the events and the number of deaths increasing everyday.

The images I used were the accumulation of icons from the West to the Middle East, from Christianity, Hinduism to Islam, from consumerism to Art, from past to present.  They were ‘unfolding’ like a sketch book, notes and metaphors across the sea, looking back at September 2001 to the world we live in today -in appearance simplistic (the global effect) but in reality extremely complex.

The popular appealing surface of the images was a way for the viewer into something entertaining. Yet, underneath that familiar surface, questions were raised and at times unsettling.

Heroes ?

Everybody and nobody. I think there are heroes everywhere in our daily lives.  We can all be heroes in our own life depending on the way we manage life challenges.

Re eVolutionZ

From the pain come the dream
From the dream come the vision
From the vision come the people
From the people come the power
From this power come the change

                                                                           - Fourteen Black Paintings. Peter Gabriel

Different revolutions are happening to us all. Revolutions have something to do with how we choose to handle everything we know, coupled with our constant thrive to understand that which we do not know.

It’s really the inner re-evolutions going on inside and around us all the time. It’s about knowing what you want. It’s not settling for less. And if such a reality would not exist, then it is also our ability to create that reality, by taking back our right to dream and building the monuments in time that we would like to see.

Us.

And it’s never too late.

The peoples’ mind has been voiced.

The wheels are set in motion…

*******

Part I. The Music

Location : Cairo Jazz Club

Name     : Ammar Dajani

Notes    : still dim, no smoke, not a soul to be seen.

           [oriental chilled music almost inaudible].

There have been times when all musicians could do in Egypt is dream. I guess a few dreamers took it upon themselves to help make it come true. For others.

Your name ?

Ammar.. It’s what I go by. Ammar Dajani if you want I’ll give you the spelling later..

Is what we’re witnessing in the music scene a revolution?

I don’t think it’s a revolution. It’s an evolution. It’s been happening for a while. Where we are now is a result of kaza [several] stages.. plateaus of maturity; we reach a certain level, we stay there for a while and then we grow again. All that’s happening is that the scene has reached a level that’s a lot more visible. It has grown both in size of the events hosted, and more importantly in terms of audience. It’s been growing for five or six years. So if this is a climax of sorts, then it is only one of many to come. This is not the end, not the revolution. This is just bigger, better, faster than we’ve seen happen. Like SOS last time, you’re talking about 15,000 people as opposed to 2 or 300 in a club or even a thousand in Sawy. But it’s the beginning of a new level or stage.

But don’t you think that this stage comes with an abundance of rich sounds, that have not been seen in Egypt for a while, and that’s contributing to this visibility?

All I’m saying is that this has been going on for 5 or 6 years, which is a short time. But bands have been getting together, the older bands are reaching higher levels of maturity, the younger bands have something to see, to aspire to.. 5 or 6 years ago no one wanted to be like anyone because there was nobody to see. Now the younger musicians see more established bands like Eftekasat, Wust El Balad and they finally have someone to want to be like.

Like we say , we’re not the heroes, the music is the hero. I can tell you about how we got involved with the jazz club, that‘ll explain a few things. It started out with 3 partners that took over in 2001.

[Waiter serves soup]

So you’re gonna have me and my soup on tape.

Well the jazz club was around since ‘97 and was owned and operated by a man called Nicha, a major name in the nightlife business and a good friend of ours. So when Nicha came to leave the jazz club, he knew we were looking for a venue, so he told us to take over from him instead of reinventing the wheel. We took it in 2001, closed for a couple of months, totally revamped, and opened the place, Alex, Akram and I.

Thing is Akram and I are musicians, we play music- I don’t want to get anal about the definition of a musician... We wanted to provide a space. A space we didn’t have when we were growing up when we could have done more with the music had there been the space. We wanted to make sure a space was available to musicians that have something to say . So we were able to provide a stage where they can explore their musicianship.

.. Nothing packaged ?

Yes. And we worked with a lot of bands like Wust El Balad, I’m just using it as an example because they’re the biggest now. So when they first started out, I don’t think this should be in print, they won’t like me saying this probably but, we had a few empty nights, nobody knew them. But we still stuck around, still stuck it out with them, kept booking them till things picked up. Now they’re like.. The biggest thing.

It wasn’t just a passive space that we provided, it was an active space. Because we were musicians, audience and club owners. We had a sort of foot on stage and a foot in amongst the audience. This helped us better understand this relationship; helped us provide the right audience with the right band. And it helped us give the bands real feedback on what the audience thought. Not only in terms of if they liked it or not- it’s not background music for people as they’re having dinner, the people are here for the band. We never imposed any limitations, only helped direct the flow. In fact our only criteria for choosing bands has always been quality, not style or otherwise. Even the kind of music we cannot have on our stage, like freestyle jazz, we try and sponsor n other venues, as we did with the townhouse. Then there was ‘The Mangroovy Sensation’ a festival in Nabq, Sinai where we helped book the bands. Thus being in the center of the live music scene we’d get contacted by people for parties, or weddings even, as we knew all the bands, and through us we helped get them gigs, and that was really it- to get the bands working, getting the bands playing more often. It’s as simple as that. There’s a certain level of maturity you have to reach, there are may levels of maturity that you have to go through, in anything, in life, the same is true of music. So there is this basic level where you work your ass off as a musician and then you know you can carry your own space. That was lacking in this country, coz there simply wasn’t enough gigs. As soon as you step out of the commercial scene or pop scene, there’s nothing. Or rather used to be, but now choices are available.

Part II. Visual Logos

Location : Karim Francis Gallery, Downtown.

Name     : Karim Francis.

Notes    : Karim’s office, [surrounded by a vivid

           panorama of Egypt’s contemporary art scene].

There are those of us who are deemed crazy, simply because we dare to abide by a certain set of codes that places us in a position to potenti-ate change, no matter how intimidating the opposing flow may be.

Part A. Then And Now: A take 

The gallery opened in ‘95, coz I had the space.  And at a time there was a need for spaces and shows, so I said let’s give it a try and it worked. Then in 2000 I opened in Zamalek, then in front of the AUC, then I used a lot of restaurants and spaces to hold shows. The idea was to familiarize people with the arts, not in a gallery space, but in a public space.

Do you think we have more people getting interested in the arts?

Yes some people are getting interested, and it’s growing, but it’s not yet something. It’s positive. If I compare these times to the time when I first opened the gallery; today we have an audience, people that come, buyers, people that are interested. Before it used to be that the artists would come and no one would show up except his friends and my friends. At that point there was no real public interest in the arts. And step by step, it’s growing. Like they say you go to the mountain, the mountain doesn’t come to you; so I took the art to the restaurants, to the streets, to the people, and the question of them taking that step to come to the gallery, that’s another story completely… 

The more you have spaces, venues, the more you have a chance to influence the public and culture. You need places where the artists feel at ease. Not like they’re being used. They need where they feel that you’re standing by them, a place to call home. And that’s what’s lacking here.

 re available.23..

Part B. ‘Nitaq’ [reach]: an eye-opener.

Beyond existing horizons

Speaking of taking it to the streets and to the people, you cam up with Nitaq, care to give us of what it was like in retrospect?

The basic idea was to do something for the millennium, a visual art plan that was to take place between the galleries; an attempt to use the millennium to attract public eye to the galleries as a common conscious effort on the galleries part. It was also an attempt to redeem the reputation downtown receives for being a baladi, crowded area. Sure if you go through at 2 in the afternoon, it’s hell, but come 4/5 you can move around, park, live your life. Many people live in downtown, I live in downtown. The other thing was to try to exhibit contemporary art in old buildings, to try and bring that contrast into play as well. The idea was to have the seven arts including architecture, as in old buildings, hosting modern, contemporary art. It began with visual arts, but it quickly evolved as we started thinking about ways of drawing people in; so music, since I know a lot of musicians. We used to host a lot of musicians and poetry readings on a weekly basis, in order to bring people in or develop a public. Music as a form of art is the form that attracts the most people, [in comparison to visual arts].

The Greek club wanted in a way to start promoting arts, so when the festival came, I proposed the idea of using their space for musical performances, and they encouraged it and that helped bring in the people. 10 days of ongoing events in the festival brings in everyone, from prince to riff raff. We had a few incidents of harassment or fights, but with almost anybody and every body there. That was part of the package. But there’s an upside to that, though it was over a thousand people packed into the Greek club for the final night, and though for deciding to go to the bathroom it took me over half an hour to get back to the sound- equipment, Gerard was playing and to him it was the most surreal performance he has ever managed in Cairo. It was something about the mix of different people that were there sharing the experience.

Nitaq accomplished 10 percent of what I had projected.

..But it was a positive step, and in many respects a forward and successful one. It was like something on the tip of everyone’s tongue.. And you went ahead and said it.

Part C. ‘Occidentalism’: West through Eastern eyes.

Life after Death

Wherever we look nowadays, it seems death and destruction, persecution of minorities and ethnic groups, poverty, hunger and looming destruction hang in the air. It has almost become part of our daily dose of sustenance. We almost seem to need it to propel ourselves in our respective lives. Every now and then, one or many shall take a moment to reflect, to understand, to process, create and elevate common consciousness on a certain topic or argument. This attempt to shift opinions and events is in the end, a point of view, open to debate and discussion. But even in that respect it will have fulfilled its purpose. The discourse is the real focal point.

…….

Occidentalism..

 “An idea that I was approached to do in Spain a couple of years back. I didn’t find enough material at the time, and I thought that it was an important subject that cannot be rushed. The idea stayed with me, and due to what’s going on in the middle east, and the fact that it does not already exist, I decided it might be the time to do something like this. In the same respect that AlJazeera is a point of view, why not voice ours. So I loved the idea, and I talked to the artists and they loved the idea. And with all the enthusiasm, the artists’ and mine, I decided to go for it last March. Then it was  a question of looking for the funds, and then I managed to find them, and now it’s on. A lot of preparations are going into it. Because it’s a commissioned work, and a collective work. I made a point of meeting with the artists individually and in groups to try and best bring out what the collective vision is that contains the individual standpoints on the west.”

The artists’ coming together for this project, this unity, will surely benefit this event. But more stands to be gained by their unity in terms of evolving and furthering their art.

“Twenty local artists representing the contemporary Egyptian art scene have been commissioned to create works of art surrounding the present-day theme of Occidentalism, or the West in Egyptian Eyes.

The objective of the exhibition, which is to be held in May 13th 2007, is to transmit and communicate current Egyptian visions on the theme, raise questions regarding ambiguous complexities in the socio-cultural rapport between East and West, which will later tour the west in 2008.

Our general objective is to contribute to the dialogue between cultures and civilizations, which currently stands fragile, unify the Egyptian art scene, and provide a platform for the expansion and recognition of emerging and prominent artists in the Egyptian pantheon.”        

                                                           - Occidentalism Concept Brief.

Participating Artists ;
Adel El Siwi, Amal Kenawy, Hani Rashed, Hazem El Mestikawy, Hazem Taha Hussein, Heba Farid, Hisham El Zeiny, Huda Lutfy, Islam Zahr, Khaled Hafez, Lara Baladi, Mahmoud Refaat, Mohamed Abla, Mohamed Taman, Nader Sadek, Nermine El Ansary, Sabah Naim, Shady El Noshokaty, Sherif El Azama, Wael Shawky, amongst others.

This event is funded by the European Union.

Moments…

The paths of all who have come before lay the tracks for the future, heroes be they or villains, and ultimately every one is a bit of both. To choose which way to go is an inner formula bubbling within us as we speak. The push and pull effect of circumstance, selfishness or selflessness as we go through our days, is the cornerstone of our well-being . We can use our experiences and choices to propel ourselves higher or allow them to lead us down the spiral to a situation where things look pretty dim. And even then we truly have a choice, where to go..

Where do you wanna go from here …?

*****

Maria Golia

Writer

Author. Cairo: City of Sand

Columnist. Daily Star of Lebanon

I’m a writer. I’ve lived in Egypt for a long time before that I travelled. I was managing a performance arts center in Texas. I have been an expat for most of my life. Arrived in 1981, left in 1985. Came back in 1992.

Egypt has changed tamaman [totally] since the 80s. Cairo more specifically was still a magical place. There was half as many people, the hash market was thriving. Everyone was spying on everyone else. It was delightful.

It was still [partially] isolated from this western culture of time and money, it was still innocent somehow prior to the assassination of Sadat.

Following the assassination of Sadat things started to change really fast. And when I came back in the 90s there was this whole thing with liberalization, “economic reform” business, which opened the flood gates to all sorts of trash basically, or this western style of development, [resulting in] this veneer of wellbeing as everything is getting worse and worse.

The 80s were more honest somehow. Tab3an [of course] there was corruption, of course people didn’t have it all, but it was honest, more upfront. Now of course the government tries to disguise what it’s doing with all this great rhetoric; ..reform and open market, as people are starving to death.

For one thing the very next-day to Sadat’s assassination, there was a tank in the market-place in Batniyya, and a big crackdown on the hash dealers, but at the same time heroin started hitting the streets in a big way which had never happened before and this totally changed the face of the city. Hashish was one little thing that people could allow themselves, a small pleasure, a recreation. When that was substituted by heroin, you started getting more violence. There was this great uncertainty surrounding Mubarak, and then things seemed to spiral from then on. I think the population [increase] had a lot to do with it. At some point things must have become unmanageable.

In the beginning when I first came here, I’d lived in Europe [Paris, Rome], and tab3an I’m American, Cairo was just so different. It seemed to have all the pluses of a city; in terms of being cosmopolitan, all sorts of strange things going on at all hours of the day or night… But it didn’t have any of the drawbacks; it was perfectly safe, the people were just in an amazingly good mood. There was this idea of mazagg [lucid wellbeing], and people really had mazagg.

There was no McDonalds, no fancy shmancy stuff. Of course there were rich people, but they always did their thing over there [gestures a circle in the back], but there never seemed to be that many of them. Really what was happening was with the people, and the people were fun, and curious, and open- just very pleasant to be with, and very welcoming and again there was this safety that was just fantastic. I’ve been mugged, stalked, robbed, and God knows what else in all sorts of beautiful first world cities, but never in Cairo.

I got my boob grabbed for the first time for the first time in 2002, and I actually sat down and wrote about it. Because I was so shocked. It was just 3 kids in broad daylight, I was dressed like a nun and walking when one of them grabbed my boob. The one who grabbed me turned and ran really fast, so I turned to the ones who were there and I started hitting them with my empty shopping bag, shouting stuff like ‘yekhrebeitku’ [woe unto your homes], and ‘go tell your friend’… I didn’t know what I wanted them to tell him, but I was hitting them for his sake. What amazed me was that people just stood and watched. This would have never happened before. Before the shop owners would have ‘yeshteku’ [filed a complaint], or beat them up themselves. My theory at the time was that it was post 9/11, tourism was down, everything was pretty much shit, the intifada was escalating, unemployment was very high…  There was this general sensation that things were not going well. This wasn’t just about getting my boob grabbed, kids were being more nasty, shop-keepers were ruder- all these forms of rudeness, to me it seemed that people were trying to acquire a false illusion of strength in their ordinary conduct. Imposing themselves in such a way gave them the feeling that they had some power over their lives, which in reality they don’t. And since then it’s gotten worse. In the old days if some guy wanted to flirt with you, they’d sing you a song, the most insulting thing about it would be if it were out of tune, or they’d call you a ghazal. Now it’s “you’re a cunt, you’re a this, or a that, fuck me..” etc. etc. there has been a general descent in the literary content of the average flirtation. Its powerlessness, frustration, it’s hard to get married, let alone have sex. People don’t work, they have no entertainment, they have energy with no place to put it. Plus the state itself is abusing women. It’s beating them up at demonstrations, in police interrogations, May 25th… the state is not setting an example for respecting women, at the same time religious authorities are always dealing with absurd fatwas that make women out to be a threat to peoples’ religious well-being, rather than promoting women in society. You’ve got it from all sides, the state setting a bad example, religious authorities demonizing women, plus the people themselves are in deep shit. There’s a lot of pent up frustration and women, perceivably, are the weakest link in society. What amazes me is that this shit doesn’t happen everyday, [this spontaneous mob scene, sexual harassments of downtown], or that it hasn’t happened before. We can look forward to more of this spontaneous venting.

Its being hungry in many, many ways. Let’s face it, life is really hard and you’re in the situation where the people in power have no idea how hard it is. Somebody like me, or somebody like you doesn’t have any idea how hard it is, you have more insight obviously, but even the people living in the worst conditions in Downtown Cairo are a thousand times better off than anyone living 2kms away in any direction, be it imbaba, shubra… the shanty town situation is horrendous. People are walking through garbage that comes up to their ankles. I mean life is dehumanizing for so many people, that its amazing to me that it still holds together this well. I think people should be congratulated on a daily basis for everyday they get through without killing either somebody else or themselves.

Another thing about the assaults, and the general deterioration of society, is the role of the Emergency Law which has been in place since Sadat died. This means that kids today 20 year olds, grew up in the absence of any basic human rights, in the absence of due process, [someone that’s suspected is innocent until proven guilty. and has to be tried in a normal court of law, not a military court of law]. Today you can be swept-off the street at anytime for any reason, the state reserves the right to do that. ‘No reason‘, that’s the biggest reason why people get arrested here, that’s the most popular one. The police too have been dehumanized, they’re as much a victim in this situation as anyone else, and they’re just victimizing others. It’s like an abused children sort of situation. So what you have with this emergency law situation is that people are much less likely to help each other when there is an incident because they don’t want to have to go to a police station. When you deny people their basic rights, they become alienated from the system, that is to say they wanna stay as far away as possible from the system, that provides nothing but pain, as they can. When that happens in society you get the feeling that society is not worth protecting, and certainly not respecting. So you have this loss of self respect, you have this loss of willingness of people to help one another. It [Emergency Law] has caused a gradual erosion of this normal impulse that people would have to help one another, to keep things more or less straight, because they no longer feel like they belong to anything. The only thing they belong to is the system, that exploits them and has nothing but contempt for them.

Sadat and Nasser were always seen as having an intimate relationship with the people, and maybe Sadat took it too far when he started to feel he was Egypt; saying things like ‘my people, my airplanes, my this, my that..’ , and shortly after he made that speech he got shot, so he went too far. But there was never this sensation with this administration, you never felt that there was any ‘love’ for the people. It’s as simple as that. It’s why this regime is selling the land to foreigners. You see this modern development in Cairo while people are living in shit. There’s no love. There’s no higher value in government that says “we’re here to serve the people.”

There’s no love lost either way, but you have this gradual deterioration within the community of all the qualities that make the community able to somehow function. This is the biggest tragedy, I think- seeing people change to this, because they have to change, they have to survive.

You need leadership, and that’s a very tough one, because leadership or individuality, has not been encouraged in this country for… perhaps ever!  Those who have a natural ability to lead, have to keep their heads down or else get into trouble, unless they want to lead in some religious movement where their energies will be exploited that way. You need enlightened leadership, you need to look at the priorities, and you need love. You need leadership that will have understood what people have gone through or are going through. Leadership that was genuinely interested in lifting their suffering, and prosecuting corruption. This would just be a start, then you’d need national projects where people could get involved, that people would feel were worthwhile to give their life to, be it the educational system, be it cleaning the place the fuck up, or environmental projects. Egypt should be leading an international effort to preserve the waters of the Nile. This could be a project young people could get behind. Then they can contribute to make sure that their children are able to drink water not so far down the line. These are the real pressing environmental concerns that don’t even enter the rhetoric yet. In a desert country, with a small amount of land, and determined amount of water, these are the most pressing limits to growth yet nobody’s paying attention to them. But that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon, unless I am elected president.

………..

The book is non-fiction, Cairo: City of Sand. I was fortunate to have a London publisher who allowed me to approach in any way I wished. I decided to do it in a third person way. I knew that ‘I’ would be very present in it without making it a first person book. I wanted to put into this book everything that had amazed, troubled, thrilled, mystified me really, in the years I’d lived in Cairo. It was a chance for me to download what I felt was so remarkable about the city, not just positive things, but obviously also remarkably awful things too. This book was a chance to pay tribute to the city.