The fate of art in the Middle East: two comments

"One day, the war will end and I will return to my poem" 

from Kifah H. Alim

Not sure who the artist is for this one

Coming soon: Gil Hochberg, "Visual Occupations: Violence and Visibility in a Conflict Zone"

UCLA Prof Gil Hochberg's book, Visual Occupations: Violence and Visibility in a Conflict Zone, is out soon (May 2015) from Duke University Press. I blurbed it, so I've read the manuscript, and it is terrific, an essential read.

Here is Ella Shohat's blurb:

"Focusing on the politics of visuality, Visual Occupations engages the Zionist narrative in its various scopic manifestations, while also offering close readings of a wide range of contemporary artistic representations of a conflictual zone. Through such key notions as concealment, surveillance, and witnessing, the book insightfully examines the uneven access to visual rights that divides Israelis and Palestinians. Throughout, Gil Z. Hochberg sharply accentuates the tensions between visibility and invisibility within a context of ongoing war and violence. Visual Occupations makes a vital and informed contribution to the growing field of Israel/Palestine visual culture studies." 

and mine:

"Gil Z. Hochberg's brilliant and lucidly written text provides a vivid analysis of the sharp limits on visibility in Palestine/Israel. The expulsions of Palestinians in 1948 are invisible in Israel, and yet they continue to haunt its citizens and mobilize Palestinian resistance. Palestinians under occupation are hyper-visible, as victims and militants, and they seek both non-spectacular images and a measure of opacity. Through her critical readings of an array of Palestinian and Israeli artistic works, Hochberg offers other ways of looking and being seen, in this vastly unequal field of visibility."

and Duke Press' description:

"In Visual Occupations Gil Z. Hochberg shows how the Israeli Occupation of Palestine is driven by the unequal access to visual rights, or the right to control what can be seen, how, and from which position. Israel maintains this unequal balance by erasing the history and denying the existence of Palestinians, and by carefully concealing its own militarization. Israeli surveillance of Palestinians, combined with the militarized gaze of Israeli soldiers at places like roadside checkpoints, also serve as tools of dominance. Hochberg analyzes various works by Palestinian and Israeli artists, among them Elia Suleiman, Rula Halawani, Sharif Waked, Ari Folman, and Larry Abramson, whose films, art, and photography challenge the inequity of visual rights by altering, queering, and manipulating dominant modes of representing the conflict. These artists' creation of new ways of seeing—such as the refusal of Palestinian filmmakers and photographers to show Palestinian suffering, or the Israeli artists' exposure of state manipulated Israeli blindness—offers a crucial gateway, Hochberg suggests, for overcoming and undoing Israel's militarized dominance and political oppression of Palestinians."

Walls of Freedom - Street Art of the Egyptian Revolution

This looks like a terrific book.

 

According to the publisher: 

This book is a crowd-sourced and crowd-funded collaboration of 100 Photographers, 50 Artists and 20 Authors.

“Walls of Freedom” is a powerful portrayal of the first three years of the Egyptian revolution that began on January 25, 2011.The story is told through striking images of art that transformed Egypt's walls into a visual testimony of bravery and resistance. Created in close collaboration with artists on the frontlines of the battle, the book documents how they converted the streets into a dynamic newspaper of the people, providing a much needed alternative to the propaganda-fueled media. 

Go here to purchase and for a preview. The visuals really are stunning. This is one of my favorites. It dates from January 2012, when the SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) was in control, and it says "The Army Above All." In the rubble with the skulls is a poster with one of the chief slogans of the revolution: "Bread. Freedom. Social Justice." The piece was very apt at the time of production and it was also very prescient, considering the political direction that Egypt is currently headed.

 And here is a vid about the project.

Bahram Hajou's kufiya art

I know very little about Syrian-Kurdish neo-expressionist painter Bahram Hajou, but I like this painting, called "Menschen," featuring kufiyas.

 

Here's Bahram's website. And if you read German (he is based in Münster), check this out.

Kufiyas galore, courtesy The Palestine Poster Project Archives

Dan Walsh, who runs the amazing Palestine Poster Project Archive, has very helpfully put together all the kufiya posters in the collection, available for viewing online here. As of this writing here are 803(!) images, but more to come for sure, in future.

I especially liked this one, but you may fancy others.

To see it full-sized, and with more details on the artist, etc., go here.

Even more Ahmed Basiony (Bassiouny)

Ahmed Bassiouny, Tahrir Square, Feb. 28

Here is a fabulous website dedicated to Ahmed Basiony (Bassiouny), an incredible teacher, visual artist and sound artist. Lots of photos of his art and of his teaching and sound art workshops. Examples of his music. Articles about him. I recommend exploring in depth. I need to explore more myself. The more I learn about him, the more I am saddened, and the more I am impressed. One of 800+ martyrs of the Egyptian revolution, he fell to sniper bullets on February 28th, at Tahrir Square. May his spirit endure in Egypt's future.

Egyptian Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2011, dedicated to the martyr Ahmed Basiony

==Thirty Days of Running in Place, 2010 (interactive multimedia project)==

Featured in the exhibition Why Not, Palace of Arts, Cairo, January 2010

Presented in a specially constructed room outside the Palace of Arts in the garden of the Cairo Opera House. © Photo: Ahmed Basiony's family

Here's the announcement about the pavilion, from the Universes in Universe website. (I've posted about Ahmed Basiony previously, see here.)

The Egyptian Pavilion is honored to present a project in the name of our friend and brother, Ahmed Basiony (1978 - 2011).

On January 28th, 2011 - artist, musician and professor, Ahmed Basiony was killed with several gunshot wounds inflicted by snipers on the Friday of Wrath in Tahrir Square (The 2011 Egyptian Revolution). Ending at 32 years of age, the same period that witnessed the remaining year of Anwar Sadat's presidency, followed by his assassination, and resulting with an Egypt held under the Mubarak Regime, Basiony was what one would consider an emblem of hope to millions of Egyptians, who were determined to live their life for change from a nationally repressed command.

A man who lived and died for his country; an artist honored for his courage and loving mystique amongst his friends, colleagues, and students who were proud to learn from his life, and more-so from the cause behind how it all ended, Basiony's words on his facebook status, on his last Wednesday and Thursday evenings, showed his full determination to continue the revolts in peace though beaten down with police batons:

"Please, O Father, O Mother, O Youth, O Student, O Citizen, O Senior, and O more. You know this is our last chance for our dignity, the last change to change the regime that has lasted the past 30 years. Go down to the streets, and revolt, bring your food, your clothes, your water, masks and tissues, and a vinegar bottle, and believe me, there is but one very small step left… If they want war, we want peace, and I will practice proper restraint until the end, to regain my nation's dignity."

The works on view, will be a two-fold production of works done by the artist, however, it is intentionally designed to reflect a random display of incidents.

A year prior to the uprisings, Basiony had worked on a project titled 30 Days of Running in the Space. Exhibited outside the Palace of the Arts (located across the Nile from Tahrir Square, on the Opera House Grounds*) was a square structure enclosed in transparent plastic sheets. The space was made for a digital and performance-based concept, whereby the artist was to wear a sensor-fused plastic suit he had designed, that would calculate levels of sweat produced and number of steps taken while jogging everyday in the space for an hour - for 30 days (a period reflecting the number of exhibition days). From the quantitative measurements explored while jogging, the data was then wirelessly transferred on a large screen displaying a grid of colors that evolved with the changes explored from the function of everyday energy and consumption.

30 Days of Running in the Space will then be juxtaposed up against another set of screens - this time, an unedited documentation of an unplanned chase for change: Showing raw footage of the revolts on the streets of Cairo, since the start of the risings on January 25th up to the 27th. Basiony, amongst his colleagues, filmed the motions around him, and upon returning every evening home, he downloaded all footage on his laptop - however, the footage on the night of his disappearance on the 28th, was never found.

30 Days of Running in the Space is homage to the raw footage that survived Basiony's sudden exit. A reflection to Basiony's life as a well-respected Egyptian artist, son, husband, father, and friend; a chased consumption who desired change for the betterment of his country - all events for this exhibition were documented on film, and will occupy 5 screens in the exhibition hall, showing randomly side by side.

Aida Eltorie, Curator
Shady El Noshokaty, Executive Curator
Magdi Mostafa, Multimedia Engineering

*Why Not? Exhibition curated by Mohamed Talaat, 7 February - 11 March 2010, Palace of the Arts, Cairo, Egypt. More about, Nafas Art Magazine, Febr. 2010

For more about Basiony, please go here.

Addendum, April 23. For those who read Arabic, this is an account of Egypt's 2011 Biennale Pavilion from al-Shuruq, April 1. (My friends who read the Egyptian press regularly say this is Egypt's best newspaper.)

Yes we have more kufiyas

Ayad Alkadhi is an Iraqi artist, one of many, many Arab and Muslim artists who have used Arabic calligraphy in their work, who has done some interesting pieces using calligraphy and kufiyas. These are from his "I am Baghdad" series. He says about the series: "I view the portraits as interviews, wherein Baghdad citizens express their feelings about post-occupation Iraq." What do you think this citizen is saying?

Is the kufiya here a mask? A blinder? A restraint?

And what about this one?!

In the middle of the skull are the words, عودة ذاكرة الكفاح or, "Return of the memory of the struggle," circled in red. Thoughts?

Kufiya kitsch.

Thanks to Arang Keshavarzian for these photos of kufiya bracelets, on sale right now at the Chelsea Art Museum in New York City. Chelsea! Someone please buy one and send it to me. I'll pay you back!



What the Chelsea lacks, unfortunately, are green kufiya bracelets, for wear at rallies in support of the Iranian democracy movement. Hopefully, someone will fill the gap.

Kufiya out of plastic handcuffs.

This item from Yves Gonzalex-Quijano, author of the invaluable blog, Culture et polititique arabes. (He also publishes a blog in English that translates some of the original French material.) It's a photo of an installation (?) by Rana Bishara, called Kuffiyah for Prisoners, made of out plastic handcuffs that are used for prisoners. It's part of a great exhibit of contemporary Palestinian art, currently at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris. Check out the other work too, by Kamal Boulatta and Emily Jacir, among others. I particularly like the stunning still from Sherif Waked's video, "Chic Point: Fashion for Israeli Checkpoints."

Sorry, it's a bit hard to make out the kufiya image in the Bishara piece. But you get the idea. Go here for another view.

Kofia

This is the name of a leftwing Swedish prog/folk band that released an album of Swedish folk-rock/Palestinian music in 1976, called Palestina mitt land (فلسطين بلدي) or "Palestine is my land." You can download it here. Give it a listen. I am fairly familiar with Swedish roots music and with Palestinian "folk" music, and I'm not really convinced that the mix works all that well. I like the Swedish folk instrumental bits the best. A little to earnest sounding at times.

I've not been able to find out much about Kofia, except that it was from Göteberg, and that it released 4 albums. Palestine solidarity was very big on the Swedish left, and the European left in general, during the sixties and seventies. And Palestine solidarity is of course still strong in Sweden. I was told that for Swedes, the word kofia simply and unambiguously means Palestinian scarf.

Bajah + The Dry Eye Crew: Hip-Hop from Sierra Leone

Kufiyas aren't just about hipness and/or Palestine solidarity in the US and Europe and Jamaica, it seems that they are also big in Sierra Leone. At least that's what I conclude from these photos I ran across on The Afrobeat Blog. Bajah + The Dry Eye Crew are hip-hop artists from Sierra Leone. Did they get the idea of the kufiyas from US hipsters? From Palestinian freedom fighters? From US hip-hop artists? From the Jamaican scene? All of the above?

Please check out their mixtape. And read about them here and here.

Bajah has an album reportedly coming out soon in the US, including kufiya-spotted guest ?uestlove. And Talib Kweli, who must have put one on at some point, right?

Ramallah Syndrome, Ahdaf Soueif on Palestinian Art

Check out the blog Ramallah Syndrome, and its very informative discussions of Ramallah, Palestine's de facto 'capital.'

From Jamil:

Once you are outside Ramallah you immediately face Israeli checkpoints, so you have to see it through this system of controlled urbanization where the Palestinian Authority has some sort of symbols of sovereignty, but in fact it's all very deceptive. There is not much power, this is it. If you go to the restaurants and if you go to the fashion shops you can maybe choose fashion from Italy and maybe suits from France whatever, you think that you have entered this bubble - but it is a bubble, it can be punctured. Like what happened in 2002 when the Israelis invaded Ramallah. Which within one hour the Israelis took complete control, Arafat was besieged in one room, with smelly toilets and it was difficult to get him food. It shows you the real power - still with the occupation, when they want to use it they use it.

I wish I could have attended the Ramallah Syndrome Sound System Performance on June 6, put on by Aswatt (Basel Abbas) of Ramallah Underground and Ruanne Aburahme at the Venice Bienniale.

Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif published an informative piece on the Palestinian artists exhibiting at Venice, Palestine c/o Venice, as well as on the Palestinian festival of literature, held earlier in the West Bank.

I'd particularly like to see this, especially after meeting the Palestinian hip-hop group G-Town in the Shu'fat camp last summer. (See my photos of G-Town and Shu'afat here.)

Jawad al-Malhi's House No 197 concentrates on the "project" where he grew up, Shufhat refugee camp in Jerusalem, where buildings - although built in concrete - are "never conceived as a whole from foundation to rooftop, but rather are built in piecemeal fashion for temporary use as their occupants wait to leave". The work, which also examines community and its durability under stress, is eerie in its crowdedness, emptiness, the occasional splash of colour.

Arabesque in DC (warning: kufiya content)

Earlier this month I met one of the producers of PBS' The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and as a result of that meeting, I decided to give the show a second chance. For a long time I've been in agreement with what Alex Cockburn said about the show years ago, that it was the Snooze Hour, whose purpose was to present the news in so boring and stultifying a fashion that it would convince listeners that politics was both uninteresting and to be left to the oh-so-dull-and-serious pundits.

Tonight, I'm really glad I did give The News Hour a second shot. In particular, I was delighted to see Jeffrey Brown's long segment (the third of the week) on the Kennedy Center's Arabesque Festival. Tonight Brown featured three women artists, all of whom I found quite interesting, but I was particularly taken by the work of photographer and installation artist Lara Baladi. And I thought it was great that she chose to wear a blue kufiya around her neck for the interview, and at the same time, insist that she didn't like the way in which the position of artists in the Middle East gets so politicized. So, on the one hand, she refuses the notion that an artist should be a politician, and on the other, she expresses solidarity with the Palestinians by wearing the kufiya. Watch the segment--the most interesting thing about it in my opinion is the kaleidoscope installation which you can see at the Arabesque Festival. Wish I could make it!

The segment that aired tonight was originally scheduled for Wednesday; Thursday was to be a report on Marcel Khalife (who says, don't call me Bob Dylan) and Friday on Fathy Salama. Both are terrific musicians, so I hope they both get an airing tomorrow. Or maybe next week? Tune in to find out.

Until then, check out Marcel Khalife performing this gorgeous tribute to the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. (I found it courtesy of Jeffrey Brown's blog. Big up to Jeffrey.)

Misc: Facebook Politics in Egypt; Taqwacores; Art in Palestine; The Nasty: Gaza?

1. Facebook Egypt: The New York Times Sunday Magazine yesterday had a very interesting article about Facebook politics in Egypt, focusing on the April 6 Youth Movement in support of striking Egyptian textile workers. (Among other things, this line from Egypt's beloved Nubian singer, Mohammed Mounir: “I didn’t need to repent; loving Egypt is not a sin.”) And it tells us that the US government is deeply interested:

James Glassman, the outgoing under secretary of state for public diplomacy, told me he followed the group closely. “It’s not easy in Egypt, and in other countries in the Middle East, to form robust civil-society organizations,” he said. “And in a way that’s what these groups are doing, although they’re certainly unconventional.”

Other State Department officials told me they believe that social-networking software like Facebook’s has the potential to become a powerful pro-democracy tool. They pointed to recent developments in Saudi Arabia, where in November a Facebook group helped organize a national hunger strike against the kingdom’s imprisonment of political opponents, and in Colombia, where activists last February used Facebook to organize one of the largest protests ever held in that country, a nationwide series of demonstrations against the FARC insurgency. Not long ago, the State Department created its own group on Facebook called “Alliance of Youth Movements,” a coalition of groups from a dozen countries who use Facebook for political organizing. Last month, they brought an international collection of young online political activists, including one from the April 6 group, as well as Facebook executives and representatives from Google and MTV, to New York for a three-day conference.

2. Taqwacores: A post on this is long overdue. The LA Times on a teenage Muslim punk/taqwacore in Sugarland, Texas. "Muhammad was a punk rocker, he tore everything down. Muhammad was a punk rocker and he rocked that town."

PS: The Kominas, oldschool taqwacores, will be playing at South by Southwest this March. More on this later.

3. Palestine Art: I just learned about this book, Palestine, rien ne nous manque ici (Palestine, We Lack Nothing Here), ed. Adila Laidi-Hanieh. It is described as follows: "Ce livre est le premier à penser une Palestine contemporaine de manière introspective, multidisciplinaire et critique, telle que vécue et perçue par des artistes et intellectuels Palestiniens et non Palestiniens internationalement confirmés et émergents, a travers des textes en majorité inédits - dont trois nouveaux textes de Mahmoud Darwich."

The editor, who has taught at Birzeit University and is now working on a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies at George Mason University, will speak on "The Palestinian Paradox: Post Modern Globalized Cultural Practices under Colonialism," on February 6, at
7:00 PM, at Cabinet Magazine’s Open Event & Exhibition Space, 300 Nevins St, Brooklyn, NY. Sponsored by Arteast.

4. Cincinnati: The Arts section of yesterday's NYT reminds us that Cincinnati was a major, but forgotten player in the development of rock and soul and R&B in the US. And that the scene, developed by King Records beginning in the 1940s, was as cross-racial as that in the much better known hothouse of Memphis. I was cheered to learn that it was Bootsy Collins who has played a major role in preserving, and reviving, the memory of King Records, run by the irrascible genius Syd Nathan. Didn't know that Wynonie Harris' "Bloodshot Eyes" was originally a country song, or that The Stanley Brothers recorded Hank Ballard's "Finger Poppin' Time."

5. Forget Gaza?: Robert Fisk reminds us why we had a right to expect Obama to talk about Gaza, Israel and Palestine at his inauguration address:

Did Obama's young speech-writer not realise that talking about black rights – why a black man's father might not have been served in a restaurant 60 years ago – would concentrate Arab minds on the fate of a people who gained the vote only three years ago but were then punished because they voted for the wrong people? It wasn't a question of the elephant in the china shop. It was the sheer amount of corpses heaped up on the floor of the china shop.

Santa's Ghetto: Murals and Grafitti against the Wall

I found this article (which appeared in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazettte on December 16) about the latest activity of Banksy and other artists around the Separation Barrier/Apartheid Wall to be quite interesting. The new project involves both the usual graffiti/art by foreign artists on the wall, as well as a "temporary gallery set up in a shuttered storefront on Manger Square, across from the Church of the Nativity where tradition says Christ was born." Items in the gallery are on sale, and proceeds go to benefit youth and children's programs in the West Bank. And, "One bidder in Santa’s Ghetto already has offered $ 125,000 for one of Banksy’s trademark rats with a slingshot that’s painted on a bent metal grate."

Here's the interesting bit:

"Banksy’s initiative has sparked an interesting debate about artwork on the wall.

While some see the art as a form of political protest, others see it as a misguided attempt to transform the wall into something beautiful.

'I don’t think they should do work on the wall,' said celebrated Palestinian artist Suleiman Mansour. 'In some way, artists become attached to their work and won’t want the wall to come down.' Still, Mansour has contributed to the Santa’s Ghetto gallery — a new version of his famous painting showing an elderly farmer carrying the Old City of Jerusalem on his back. The original was purchased in 1973 by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and was destroyed when U. S. jet fighters bombed Tripoli in 1986 in retaliation for the bombing of a German disco that killed an American soldier."

I recently participated in a panel at the American Anthropological Association, serving as a discussant, and one of the papers, by Amahl Bishara, dealt precisely with this issue. She argued that whereas artists and delegations visiting Palestine to express their opposition to the wall have gained a lot of publicity for the graffiti/art they've put on it, Palestinians tend to have a very different relation to the wall, which is not often heard. In general, they'd rather that the wall NOT be decorated, or artistically "defigured," but torn down. (I'm simplifying a rather more nuanced argument, but that was one of Bishara's important points.) Finally, this position has now received some publicity. (And in my local newspaper.)

Here's an article about Banksy's latest intervention from the BBC, and one from The Guardian. Photos of Banksy's earlier Wall grafitti here.