Good evening
Today is not
the first time I sit at my computer and this is not the first draft I attempt
to write.
I realize how
challenging it is for me every time to start.
I realize the
difficulty to reflect on events before the passage of time, that aids the
memory to undergo the natural process of selection.
I think this
relationship between reflection and time was one of the key issues I am currently
dealing with.
Reflection is
often suggested as the main milestone of an artistic process, in a breathless
time.
Again and again
everyone repeats the question of the political in the arts n general and
performance arts in particular. Valuable or not, I might try to think of our
own work out loud in those terms.
Lately someone
puzzled me with the question if my work contains a message or a question. This
turned out to be a challenge, as not everyone agrees on what is a question and
what is a statement. And what one audience member reads as a statement another
can easily read as a question.
I recognized
that it is important to find out, under which circumstances we can consider an
artistic expression as a statement or to read it as a question and be aware of
the reasons and the difference of contexts.
Can’t a question
in itself under certain circumstances support a fascistic ruling system more
than a statement?
Can’t a
statement provoke more questions than questions themselves in a context that is
weary and of the language of questions?
In being
confronted with some people's definition about good art, activist art and even
political activism, I realized my own inability to discuss coldly, seeing how
it is still part of my everyday existence in such a time of urgent uncertainty
in Egypt, where everything is a question.
I also think
this is a time and a chance to redefine activism in its broad sense worldwide, especially
with the bankruptcy of most existing political ideologies, if not all of them.
I always believe
in the constant flux of thoughts, but also especially at such turbulent times,
in my context at least.
Having said
that, I will now put down the questions that am currently thinking of:
Why is it that
I do what I do?
Why do I still
find the present moment important even if I know that it is impossible to
capture?
How can an
artist stay true to his process at times of urgencies without imagining that he
cannot separate his intellect from his physical experience before the passage
of time?
Is the importance
of depth of thought not an illusion if it impedes the process of making?
Why do I still hold on to
trying to separate the fictions from the real within such a time of constructs?
What is the documentary? (The lines between fiction and reality were
clarified to be blurry in any form of representation.)
Why does my inner censor
not embrace the challenges of representation? “If one claims not to represent one
has to question why.”
What is art today? Is it art when it is contextualised
as art by the artist himself within an institutional frame?
And how do the
contextualisation and the frame affect each other?
Who is absent? And what is
his/her/its power?
(This question becomes
critical at a time when almost all is present and accessible in the different
medias.)
Is the present
tense the trap of performance? (However, I think all agree that the present
moment is impossible to capture.)
And I guess my
list of questions could be endless, so I will end here and embrace a new day as
an ant amongst other ants on the streets of Cairo.
January 2013
