| My work is of and about my city of birth, Cairo. The center stage is assumed by the citizen of the megalopolis. I rely on my research on anecdotes, interviews, personal accounts, tales, and hearsay. Overall, my interest lies in intimate, seemingly banal and overlooked sides of communal living. The city as a social and architectural structure acts as a regulator of individual behavior. When looked at from a micro level, however, each individual is, in his/her way, interrupting the collective structure with as much power as the collective is restricting him/her. The sum of individual “interruptions” sets a much more complex overall order. |  |
Hala Elkoussy
My work is of and about my city of birth, Cairo. The center stage is assumed by the citizen of the megalopolis. I rely on my research on anecdotes, interviews, personal accounts, tales, and hearsay. Overall, my interest lies in intimate, seemingly banal and overlooked sides of communal living.
The city as a social and architectural structure acts as a regulator of individual behavior. When looked at from a micro level, however, each individual is, in his/her way, interrupting the collective structure with as much power as the collective is restricting him/her. The sum of individual “interruptions” sets a much more complex overall order. From another point of view, my work could be viewed as an attempt to write a parallel history, one that counterbalances the mega narratives of the state and the media, a history fragmented in its structure, with vignette-like stories that open up possibilities for different interpretations, and further disrupt the production of a unilateral stable meaning. The world that I work within has no marked boundaries between fact and fiction. The end result offers disorientation as a means of producing knowledge without authority, where value lies between the gaps and what is omitted.
In a chapter from We’re by the Sea Now, a young man is sitting on top of a typical Cairene roof littered with satellite dishes. A modest blue sheet of paper partially blocks the background. He wears a T-shirt bearing in red the word “BRAVO,” and holds a yellow helium-filled balloon. He candidly addresses the camera, and speaks of the difficulties he encounters “down there” that push him to regularly seek refuge on the roof. The simplified world he has created for himself stands for any place he can possibly imagine. At a certain moment, he reports, pointing to the blue sheet of paper, “We’re by the sea now!” His excited voice fails to drown the noises of the bustling city. While the man’s performance is obviously unscripted, his position is a hybrid between the spontaneous and the artificial. This highlights the city as a backdrop, on which millions of different stories unfold, and the performative potential of the everyday.
What appear to be banal moments, obvious choices, and clear directions mandated by everyday necessities, unveil more central questions: How can and is the topography of a megalopolis navigated? How does one mark its permeable history? Most crucially, how does one negotiate a position within the masses, under the overbearing pressures of consumerism, social norms, and political apathy?
