محمد المزروعي: نو، أو الوقوع في الشارع كعمل فني
من البيت متوجهاً إلى محل تصوير، لتكبير “بادج” – بالجيم المُعَطَّشة – تزييني صغير، مرصع بوحدات خرز/ تِرتِر لامعة، نزلت ومعي رواية “الهوية” لميلان كونديرا، ترجمة د. أنطون حمصي، لأعود – من بعد تكبيره ورقياً لتنفيذه حقيقة – لقراءة الرواية في المقهى.
Posts filed in:Photo/Art
لم نألف شيئًا بعد: قصائد ورسوم رولا الحسين
أمنيات مستحيلة
كلّ ما أردتُه
أسنانٌ مستقيمة
كأسنان فتيات الإعلانات
ولحظةٌ رائعةٌ أمسكها من جهتيها
اليمنى واليسرى
وأمدِّدُها
لتدوم طويلا، لتدوم أبدا.
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Cairo Concept: New Photographs by Youssef Rakha
My soul, where are you? Do you hear me? I speak, I call you – are you there? I have returned, I am here again. I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet, and I have come to you, I am with you. After long years of long wandering, I have come to you again. Should I tell you everything I have seen, experienced, and drunk in? Or do you not want to hear about all the noise of life and the world? But one thing you must know: the one thing I have learned is that one must live this life. Do you still know me? How long the separation lasted! Everything has become so different. And how did I find you? How strange my journey was! What words should I use to tell you on what twisted paths a good star has guided me to you? Give me your hand, my almost forgotten soul. How warm the joy at seeing you again, you long disavowed soul. Life has led me back to you. Let us thank the life I have lived for all the happy and all the sad hours, for every joy, for every sadness. My soul, my journey should continue with you. I will wander with you and ascend to my solitude.
عبد الرزاق نصر: مقهى حسن عجمي
تاریخ افتتاح المقھى إلى عام ١٩١٧، وبالتحدید بعد أشھر من شق شارع الرشید عام ١٩١٦ وترتیب أحواله، وكان یسمى أیضاً كھوخانة حسن عجمي.
من یرتاده الیوم لیس في باله إلا أن یجلس على مقاعده، یحتسي الشاي أو یدخن الناركیلة وینظر إلى العابرین في شارع الرشید ومن ثم یمضي، لكن تاریخ ھذا المقھى الجمیل ینزّ صبراً، لأنه احتمل الكثير.
لم یعد الذھاب إلى مقھى حسن عجمي مھماً، كأن الحاجة إلیه استنفدت، حیث لا طقوس ھناك ولا أدباء ولا متعة، ولا حضور إلا للمتقاعدین الذین یجھدون أنفسھم في تزجیة الوقت من دون أن یشاھدوا وجوھھم في مرایا المقھى العتیقة ومن دون أن یسمعوا صوت سلیمة مراد أو سواھا من مطربات تصدح أصواتھن في المكان.
Youssef Rakha: The Bad Lens Files
The way the world looks through my broken phone camera:
Antoine d’Agata says, “Photographers have to accept they can just convey fragments of illusory realities and relate their own intimate experience of the world. In this process of fictionalising an unreachable truth, it’s up to them to impose their doubts about any photographic truth, or accept being impotent pawns in the mediatic game.”
I’m interested in imposing my doubts about photographic truth. These photos are small fictions that draw on and use reality. They are documents in the equivocal sense of artefacts that can evoke responses.
Shayma Aziz: To Bestialize Her
Luciana Erregue: The Ballad of the Spectator-Curator
Youssef Rakha, The Louvre Abu Dhabi, 2020
They are everywhere now. Satellite museums and universities: Guggehnheim Bilbao, Louvre Abu Dhabi, Disneyland Paris, Disneyland Tokyo, NYU Abu Dhabi, Temple University, Tokyo, Saint Louis University, Madrid. They aspire to assert themselves as leaders in the relatively new global business of improving a country’s image and reputation or otherwise giving it the edge.
I live far away from such big cities, and universities. You could say I am not included amongst the experienced customers these satellites target. I have never visited such destinations. I inhabit a no man’s land in the Canadian prairies and, as an art historian, I work roaming the floors of my local gallery, which shall remain unnamed, for obvious ethical reasons. In my private life I am also your average museum visitor. A Doctor Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde persona split does exist in my digital life, though. I post these images alongside presumably witty captions on my Facebook and Instagram feed. As a dutiful digital citizen, I sporadically write on my blog SpectatorCurator (also my Instagram and Twitter handle). I have branded myself, and I have an edge over the Louvre Abu Djabi or the Guggenheim Bilbao – I exist everywhere and nowhere. We know by now we are virtual brands in open competition with the brands and artists of yore, redefining them, submitting them to our capricious gaze. If the Mona Lisa was an example of the quintessential open text, now the whole museum is the viewer’s canvas. It is both an exciting and an uncomfortable instance of negotiation between the self and former colonial models of appropriation. Because our selfies are an extension of our bodies.
A Flaming Chair Surrounded by Mirrors: Anna Iltnere quizzes Tom de Freston and Kiran Millwood Hargrave
I received the following in emails sent to me from Australia and Hawaii. The British artist Tom de Freston and writer Kiran Millwood Hargrave, who live in Oxford, are a talented couple who have been together for over a decade. They were married two years ago in Goa, but spent their honeymoon in the Seychelles. By the time this interview appears online, they will be back in Oxford, having also been in New York. They always have their plate full with beautiful projects – books, and journeys. And sometimes, as in this case, they are not physically together while they happen.
Anna Iltnere: Sea Library
Childhood drawing by Anna Iltnere. A house by the river with blooming water lilies.
Before going to sleep I walk down to the river for a swim. With my nostrils slightly above water, I watch the ducks moving among the water lilies. The lips of invisible fish blow circles into the surface on the other side. Cut grass and cold dew stick to my bare feet as I walk back. I wash them away, kiss my boys goodnight and climb into bed to read and to dream.
If I wake up before the others, I push my bike out of the garage and cycle to the morning sea, three miles away. It’s a gulf, to be honest, but we still call it the sea, the Baltic Sea, a tiny inner pocket of the Atlantic Ocean — where it hides what’s dearest, I imagine. There’s almost no salt in the Baltic Sea, they say, but my tongue still tastes it on my lips and my skin when I leave gravity behind with my clothes on the shore and surrender my body to the waves. When I’m dressed again, I explore the white sand with my fingertips and put a couple of stranded splinters, tiny dark brown pieces of driftwood, in my pocket, stamp souvenirs from my own little journeys traversing same paths every day. I am a sea librarian now.
Excerpts from an Artist’s Notebook: Finn Lafcadio O’Hanlon’s Lebanon
Lebanon is a chaotic and at times absurd place, where power can run for only a few hours, rubbish is ignored and traffic doesn’t move. But a new generation of Lebanese is emerging, reshaping their cities and country despite their past conflicts and incompetent politicians. The uncertain future is almost more exciting than its ancient past.
Diary pages with Immigration form. The people at the border couldn’t of been nicer.
This collection of photos and diary pages traces the country from Tripoli in the north to Tyre in the south.
كارول صنصور: بيت نينا
في أواخر الثمانينيات وأوائل التسعينيات، بينما كان الفلسطينيون يعيشون الانتفاضة الأولى ثم تشكل السلطة الفلسطينية، كانت الناس أخلاقها عالية.
في مدينتي الصغيرة بيت جالا، تمكنت امرأة تدعى نينا من أن تجد نفسها شخصًا غير مرغوب فيه على الرغم من قوتها وعلاقاتها المتينة بالمدينة وشيوخها والعديد من كبار المسؤولين الفلسطينيين والإسرائيليين.
تقول القصة إن نينا كانت تدير بيتا للدعارة في قلب المدينة (حرفيًا بجوار البلدية والبنك الإسرائيلي الوحيد لؤمي، والكنيستين الأورثوذكسية واللاتينية، ومكتب البريد ومطعم الدجاج الشهير قعبر ومدرستي).
عندما كنتُ طفلة كنت أسمع دائما النساء والرجال يذكرونها بتكتم ويلعنون اسمها وحضورها في المدينة: “إنها مصدر للعار والقذارة”. وكنت كثيرا ما أسرق النظرات عندما أمر من أمام بيتها متمنية رؤيتها على الشرفة في طريقي إلى المدرسة.
Alienation: A New Chapbook by Mahmoud Almunirawi
Click the image to access the PDF
Sometimes I think about praying
Maybe in congregation with other Muslims
Afterwards, I would call my mum and tell her:
People liked my voice when I recited the Qur’an
This happens again and again
But I haven’t done it a single time since I left home
I did not even call and ask her how she is…
Mahmoud Almunirawi defines this PDF as an album of overexposed images of architecture and poems “written during my 5 years in Sweden. Together,” he writes, “they form an abstract biography of life events.” тнє ѕυℓтαη’ѕ ѕєαℓ, which posted some of these poems in the original Arabic, was not involved in editing the English text, which was translated from Arabic by Slimen Zougari.
Mahmoud Almunirawi: Nine Images from an Ongoing Project
So. Avelaval. My leaves have drifted from me. All. But one clings still. I’ll bear it on me. To remind me of. Lff! So soft this morning, ours. Yes. Carry me along, taddy, like you done through the toy fair! If I seen him bearing down on me now under whitespread wings like he’d come from Arkangels, I sink I’d die down over his feet, humbly dumbly, only to washup. Yes, tid. There’s where. First. We pass through grass behush the bush to. Whish! A gull. Gulls. Far calls. Coming, far! End here. Us then. Finn, again! Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thousendsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the—riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
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- The Palestinian Musical Scale
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- Date
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- Existential Question
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- Sisyphus
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- Creative Encounter
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- The Walk
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- From One to Another
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- Don’t Cut Your Coat According to Your Cloth
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- Fishing for Words
Text from Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
Youssef Rakha: Office Diptych
Silver Box, Girl in Office
I work on the ninth floor of a cramped office tower in downtown Cairo, where like everyone else I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time in the elevators. Waiting and watching.
Saudamini Deo: My Heart Doesn’t Want
Rajasthan in four cities
1909 Imperial Gazetteer of India map of Rajputana. Source: Wikipedia
1-JODHPUR
My great-grandfather, a feudal landowner in West Bengal, had a troubled marriage with my great-grandmother, who finally left him in 1927 and came to live with her mother in Jaisalmer. Her mother, my great-great-grandmother was one of the few female doctors in the country at the time and was employed with the royal family of Jaisalmer. My grandfather grew up in the royal household but left home one unsettled morning. He left just a note: my heart doesn’t want.
He wanted to be a classical musician. Failure meant that my mother and uncle grew up in dire poverty in the dirty back alleys of the blue city. No one knows what happened to my great-grandfather or the house or the land. I have never seen a photograph, only an image narrated to me by a distant relative: a man on horseback with leather boots and the eyes of a snake.
Mustajab VII: The Countryside Photography of Khaled Al Shoura
Blessed is he who lays a flower on a tomb or a palace or a breast, is he who is born in the seventh month or the twelfth, is the throat become gorge, is he who slaughters his only horse out of kindness. Blessed is he who sinks to his knees pleading forgiveness or overcome with lust, is he who bears a cross upon his back, is he who boils a porridge of cement to hoodwink his children’s hunger, is the sniffer become snout, is the time when a wife could gather together the pieces of her helpmeet’s corpse and he would live, are the truths cowering in the crevices of falsehood, is the nation that feeds on the chatter of the worthless, is the nation that feeds on the prattling of the powerful, is the gulp become gullet. Blessed is he who fashions an ear from clay and an ear from dough until his head is severed, is a sun that still rises in the East, is a star that shines through on a cloudy day. Blessed be this tale, which would not have be told of Mustajab VII were it not for that incident, revealed to the world by a wordsmith whose father laboured as a screenwriter, wherein Mustajab VII secretly murdered Mustajab VI, sold his body to students studying dissection and with the proceeds erected a sumptious pavilion replete with dazzling lights and microphones that resounded with proverbial wisdom, to outfox foes and keep in remembrance the glorious exploits of Clan Mustajab, ancient and modern, then stood at its entrance to receive the sincerest of condolences. This is a slander against the man, which lays the very heart of truth to waste and strikes at the crux of our tale, the point at which it joins with what took place thereafter, for which reason we set over this incident an upturned water jar, and kept it hid.
Dhaka Dust: A Portfolio by Saqif Hossain
.Can’t occupy the same space at the same time
unless, of course, you land in Dhaka, rickshaws
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five or six abreast. They are all here:
studded metal backboards ablaze with red flowers,
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Jason Hermens: The Edge of the West
As a Finn, to visit the Russian border on the eve of the Trump-Putin meeting in Helsinki – only slide film can save you there!
No sooner did I start than I had to stop, blown away by the welded drain covers, the seagulls in place of people long gone. The city was in lockdown and police lingered at every corner, weighed down by the pounding sun.
Nourhan Tewfik: Of/On Berlin
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A cloudy haze slowly subsides, making way for less blurry vision. Everything is opaque white. The 35m2 studio, the walls that make up its confines, even the ceramic wall tiles that adorn the open kitchen. The white-painted wooden desk neighbors the open kitchen. It looks onto a mini-balcony with a view of a small patch of greenery. It occurs to me that the yellow-turquoise color combination gentrifying the façades of nearby buildings is a grave mismatch, especially with the oliveness that commands the space. I push my sluggish body out of the side bed and onto the parquet floor whose hue is a confused mix of hazel and grey. My feet brushing against the ground is a daily exercise in groundedness. In my mind it is so intertwined with the whiff of floral spice that always follows minutes later. Tchibo’s African Blue brewed in a French press. I make my way to the grey couch, ceramic mug in one hand, a slice of Spinat-Knoblauch Quiche in the other. I don’t have much time this morning. It’s a busy Monday and I have two classes to attend at Freie Universität. I like being in Berlin, getting up early to read snippets from Ibn Khaldun’s Muqadimmah, discuss theories in Arabic Studies, and study patterns of city making in the “Muslim” world. I am struggling with my Deutschkurs. I don’t like the academicness dictating second-language teaching. I despise the words Hausarbeit, Test and even the kleine Pause, together they enshrine language-acquisition in a chronic anxiety. To me, acquiring a language is a deeply personal endeavor. It is the danke, tschüss and bitte that despite being inundated with the “wrong” accent grant me a temporary, maybe fake, sense of integration. Luckily, Berlin knows better than to single anyone out on account of ignorance of German, or so I think. I give way to cowardice and make temporary peace with my verbal ineptitude.
Youssef Rakha: Revolution’s Residue
I had my camera when I went out to demonstrate on Friday, January 28, the climax of the Egyptian revolution (January 25-February 11, 2011). I was on the streets for over twelve hours but I took only two pictures; they were to sit for years on my hard drive, unedited and undisplayed: my only trophies from the revolution. Unlike the majority of “Arab Spring revolutionaries”, from the moment Tahrir Square was occupied in the small hours of Saturday, January 29 and until the long-time president Hosni Mubarak stepped down, I felt that I couldn’t photograph and protest at the same time, that to be photographing would render my presence in the protests insincere and that the protests were about more important things than photography.
At the same time the figures and the faces that I saw daily in and around the protests, and which belonged to both “revolutionaries” and “counterrevolutionaries”, imprinted themselves on my mind more forcefully than ever before: sullen and despairing men, slim women in high heels and children everywhere.
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