 |
| Site design by Catherine Clover |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
|
| A BRIEF SURVEY OF MEDIA ART IN THE ARAB REGION |
|
| |
|
| FASSIH KEISO |
|
| |
|
| Middle East |
|
|
| |
What is the current international context of contemporary art by Arab artists who are exploring new media tools? And how has this developed over the first five years of the 21st century? This article investigates the current practices of media art in the Arab region and the impact of current political and social issues on art production, and its reception, in the region.[1] It includes an overview of works by three media artists from Egypt, Palestine and Bahrain.
|
Since the beginning of the 21st century and particularly following September 11, a mutual mistrust with an accompanying tendency to stereotype, has built up between the West and the Arab/Islamic worlds. This has brought the Arab region to the attention of the international community and has led to a greater understanding amongst Western nations, particularly in Europe, of the importance of the Arab region in both international politics and cultural development.
Simultaneously the Arab region started to experience significant cultural change, and the rapid development of new information technologies has allowed for extensive access to cultures around the world. With the increased availability of information technologies and the spread of the Internet, Arab artists are now following their peers in the international art community by adopting new media tools and forms of expression. Without a doubt, totalitarian governments, economic pressures, wars, the continuation of Western colonialism and the instability of societies that are still structured on strict religious and traditional lines, have all dominated media artists’ themes as well as effecting the development of arts in the Arab countries.
As a consequence of these changes the international arts community has begun to build bridges to broach the gap between these cultures and foster a better understanding of the situation in the region. [2] Recently the European Union commenced funding of a large number of cultural activities, including media arts, in the Arab region and artist residencies became available and exhibitions were exchanged between Europe and the Arab world. Arab media artists based in the region started to receive invitations to international workshops, assisted by non-profit art organisations that were established in the region and became active in supporting local media artists in the international network of contemporary art. The Al Ma’mal Foundation for contemporary Art in Palestine, Ashkal Alwan (Colours and Forms) in Lebanon, L’appartement 22 (Apartment 22) in Morocco, the Ali Mustafa Art Foundation in Syria, and the Townhouse Gallery in Egypt are all organisations that have secured access to the international art world for local artists and have attracted the attention of the international art community. [3] The works of Arab artists began to be seen in international biennales around the globe, including the Sydney Biennale in 2006.
The work of Egyptian media artist Moataz Nasr deals with issues of colonialism and the socio-political situation in the modern history of Egypt. The Water (2002) is a single video projection, where the image is projected on the wall of a dark room. The floor of the room is turned into what looks like a pond of water. In the video, portraits of Egyptians are reflected in a puddle but as soon as the image seems to stabilise, an unknown foot brutally steps into the water over the reflection of the face distorting the image. The foot is a metaphor for the insecurity and the historical disasters that have afflicted Egyptians and Arabs in general, such as wars, colonialism and internal social conflicts. |
|
 |
Moataz Nasr, The Water (2002), video projection, © Moataz Nasr. |
To exaggerate the situation, Nasr invites the audience to become part of his work. When a visitor enters the room and steps into the “water”, his/her own face and the face of the other visitors are reflected, thus repeating the same action that is shown in the video. [4]
In The Echo (2003), [5] Nasr projects two sequences, each 4:29mins, on screens facing each other, creating an echo. The first sequence is taken from film El Ard “The Earth” (1969)by Youssef Shahine, based on the 1968 novel of the same title by Abdel Rahman El Sharkawi, about the struggle of Egyptians against British occupation in 1933. The monologue in this sequence reflects Egyptian society at that time and expresses one of the main character’s frustrations at the passivity of the Egyptians. The second sequence is a video by the artist of storyteller Shirine el Ansary, adlibbing the same monologue in a Cairo coffee shop. Nasr states that the work aims to reflect the dormant socio-political situation of the last 70 years in Egypt and says, “Nothing has changed, what could be said in 1933 and 1968 remains valid in 2003.” [6] |
| |
|
Moataz Nasr, The Echo (2003), still from video, © Moataz Nasr, courtesy Galleria Continua, San Gimignano-Beijing. |
The fight for national culture means in the first place to fight for the liberation of the nation, that material keystone which makes the building of a culture possible. There is no other fight for culture which can develop apart from the popular struggle.[7] (Algerian theorist Frantz Fanon).
Fanon’s theory about the struggle of Algerians against French colonialism or the struggle of Egyptians against British colonialism during the last century, is comparable at the moment to the struggle of Palestinians and Lebanese for freedom from Israeli aggression, and Iraqis from American occupation. Palestinian media artists reflect their people’s current struggle and resistance against Israeli aggression. In his seven minute video titled, Chic Point. Fashion for Israeli Checkpoints, (2003), Sharif Waked reflects the politics, power, aesthetics, and sense of bodily humiliation experienced in reaction to the enforced nudity that Israeli soldiers impose on Palestinians at checkpoints in their search for suicide bombers. The video features male models modelling one design after another, clothes designed to expose the flesh of body parts such as chests and abdomens, ironically juxtaposed with a series of stills taken from the years 2000 to 2003 displaying Palestinian men crossing the profoundly violent and ubiquitous Israeli checkpoints. In these documentary stills, one man after another lifts his shirt, takes off his jacket or pants, some kneel shirtless, others naked, with guns poised at their exposed flesh. [8] Since the Oslo agreement between Israel and Yasser Arafat, former Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) (1969–2004), the “strategy was to re-divide and subdivide the already divided Palestinian territory” [9], to control the Palestinians who are strip-searched every day when crossing the checkpoints between zones. |
| |
 |
Sharif Waked, Fashion for Israeli Checkpoints (2004), still from video, © Sharif Waked. |
In recent years, rapid economic, social and cultural change in the Gulf States has wrenched those countries into modernity. An increasing number of museums, galleries and enormous university campuses adopting English as the primary teaching language have helped Gulf artists to embrace the widely available technologies and to conduct research using Western methodologies and styles. Numerous artists residing in the Gulf States have started adopting new forms of expression. [10]
Anas Al-Shaikh, born and based in Bahrain, is one of several Arab media artists included in the Sydney Biennale in 2006. In his work he searches for a better way of using digital media as a tool for self-expression and to highlight the problems, confusion and suffering that he and others face in Gulf societies. In his interactive animation Not For Sale (2005), Al-Shaikh uses Flash and other available 2D animation software to create computer driven images that he projects onto a wall. The audience interacts with the work by clicking the mouse to wander from one scene to another and from one message to another. Not For Sale puts us face to face with several pessimistic questions relating to the concept of civilisation. Images of Al-shaikh’s fingers are layered with words such as “ fragile” and “never”. “No” signs blindfold his eyes to prevent him from seeing the truth. The work deals with issues of freedom of expression and aims to highlight the Western stereotypes of Arab frailty in the face of Western superiority, which first emerged in writings of the Orientalists more than two centuries ago. Not for Sale confronts the issue of religion in the Arab and Islamic worlds: the “misunderstanding of the message of Islam and the essence of its tolerant creed”.[11] Al-shaikh juxtaposes a written message from the holy book of Islam, with an image of himself holding the Noble Qur’an. Through his animation, the audience is faced with a number of questions about the inadequacies of imported democracy in the region. |
| |
 |
Anas Al-Shaikh, Not for Sale (2004), still from interactive computer animation, ©: Anas Al-Shaikh
. |
Not For Sale (2005) highlights the different ways in which Gulf society approaches the kind of civilisation imposed on the region, where most Arab and Muslim politicians are still “followers” of the West and some religious leaders have created a culture of “rejectors” - fundamentalists who reject what is different, particularly Western thoughts and culture. Between the power of the West emanating from outside the Arab world and the control of religion within Arab society, Arabs and Muslims have been condemned to silence, becoming voiceless citizens, which Al-Shaikh has labelled the silenced. [12] In an interview with Binder and Haupt, Al Shaikh states:
the most important thing for me as an Arab person in the Islamic world is the observation that in many fields such as politics, human rights, and democracy, we are not progressing. We don’t seem able to produce a new culture or a new art. [13]
What sort of democracy and what kind of human rights does Al-Shaikh have in mind? Is it a democracy that originates within the Arab land, or one imposed by the West on the region without consideration of its Arab history, society and heritage? The understanding and practice of democracy might be relative. As an artist, living and working between the West and the Arab region, I enjoy the western expression of democracy, but do not feel that it is exercised in practice. The Arab culture enjoyed a lot of glory throughout its history, but the dwindled throughout the twentieth century. With the beginning of the 21st century new art forms started to emerge in the Arab region, despite the hard times the region has been experiencing.
During the last five years, media artists who use new technologies have started to appear and dominate art events in the Arab world, such as the Sharjah International Biennial in the United Arab Emirates, the Alexandria and Cairo Biennials in Egypt, Home Works in Lebanon and the International Photography Gathering in Syria.
In my experience as an artist who produces cross-disciplinary arts and who presented six events in 2005 in Syria and Lebanon, I found that the majority of audiences in the region believe that contemporary arts that utilise new media or hybrid practice are accidental artforms imported from the West. Audiences in the Arab world see media arts practice as a Western artform that developed in the 1950’s as a consequence of technological, economical and political factors. This viewpoint and these audience responses can be seen as a result of Western institutions having, until recently, neglected to include the culture of the Arab region in the international circulation of art. This has resulted in an art community restricted to producing traditional artforms for a local audience and forced to live in a region under cultural siege. Thus, educating the local audience has become more difficult for local contemporary Arab artists, in particular for those who use new media tools. To aggravate the situation, the history of military and political offensive, and the resultant exclusion of the Arabic culture by the West in relation to the region, have played an important part in audience perspectives toward new media artforms and other new forms.
Aside from the artists that I have discussed in this article,.most Arab artists who participate in international arts events and receive attention from the international community live or work outside the Arab region. I think it is time for the international art community to keep its eyes on the Arab region and its culture. As André Gide claimed: art is nothing but a political and social commitment. The work of the three media artists mentioned here highlights the socio-politics and reflects the cultural life in the Arab region.
|
| |
Biography
Fassih Keiso was born in Alhasakha/Syria, lived and studied in Beirut and is now a Melbourne-based interdisciplinary artist, writer and researcher whose work has been shown widely nationally at Artspace, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Northern Territory Centre for Contemporary Art and Contemporary Art Services in Tasmania. His work has been shown internationally at P.S.1, The Museum of Modern Art, Pelham Art Centre and at the International Center of Photograph in New York and most recently at five venues in Damascus and Beirut. Fassih obtained a PhD in Visual Arts from Sydney University and MFA from Melbourne University.
Ranging across various media forms including installation, film, video, photography and performance the artwork deals with the convergence and divergence of the East and the West, with a specific focus on themes relating to identity, difference, war and technology. Fassih has written two papers on the subject of cultural difference and visual art production.
|
|
References
[1] The countries that make up the Arab region are: Palestine, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Sudan, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Kuwait, Mauritania, Oman, Qatar, Saudi, Somalia and United Arab Emirates.
[2] See Hans-Georg Knopp and Johannes Odenthal, DisORIENTation, Contemporary Arab Artists from the Middle East, The House of World Culture, Berlin, 2003, p.5.
[3] http://universes-in-universe.org/eng/ accessed 12/07/2006
[4] See Simon Njami, Moatez Nasr, ‘of the Evidence of Things Not Seen’, in Fault Lines: Contemporary African Art and Shifting Landscapes, Gilane Tawdros and Sarah Campbell (eds.), the institute of International Visual Art, London, 2003, pp.244-249.
[5] This video was part of the show ‘Ghosts of self and state’ at Monash University Museum of Art early 2006, www.monash.edu.au/muma
[6] From Moataz Nasr’s portfolio, Disorientation exhibition at the House of World Cultures, Berlin, Germany, 2003. Sent by Nasr via email in 23/07/06.
[7] Frantz Fanon, ‘On National Culture’, The watched of the earth, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1990, 3rd edition, pp.187-88
[8] Sharif Waked, text by the artist, in Contemporary Art from the Islamic World, online Magazine Http://universes-in-universe.org/eng/islamic_world/articles/2005/waked, accessed 12/07/2006
[9] Edwars W.Said, ‘Palestinians under siege’, in Roane Carey (ed.), The New Intifada: Resisting Israel’s Apartheid, Verso, London and New York, 2001, p.33.
[10] Karin Adrian von Roques, ‘The situation of contemporary Arab art’, Art & Thought, No.82, April 2006, p. 65
[11] Anas Al-Shaikh, text by the artist, sent by him via email on 15/08/06 and 29/08/06
[12] Ibid
[13] Pat Binder and Gerhard Haupt, www.universes-in-universe.org accessed 26/07/2006
|
| |
|
|
