Egypt - Resistance - Colonialism - Memory - Power - Palestine
Before I start my residency at ARD Art Institution, I travel through Egypt and visit touristic places like Luxor where I go on a hot air balloon ride. I take out my camera and document the process of our ride. Afterwards, Iooking back at my photos, I notice certain power dynamics that reveal the system behind it. It's the starting point for a red trypitch that I create during my residence.
''Die Katze im Sack. Der Teufel als Pack, Der Fisch im Frack, Die Farbe im Lack.''
''Beauty, my friend, is not valid for endings. Death resembles the world, Sudden and ugly. Believe me, I, too, collect flowers and befriend seagulls. And I dream to kill time. But it is the apple my friend, This apple, resembles a bomb, and there is a terrible....terrible conspiracy inside.'' (Aqusu ayami, 23)
''To the world a soldier, to us all the world, dearly loved by wife and daughters.'' (Inscription at a graveyard at Commonwealth war Graves in Cairo, Egypt)
''Gipfel stürmen, jagen, Tiger und Elefanten, tanzende Bären, nach fernen Sternen streben, den Mars erreichen. Und alles so wild, so unendlich, so frei. Und wenn du gewandert, gewandert, gewandert, das Allerschönste - befriedigt, erschöpft und beglückt - ziehst du heimwärts und wanderst du zu mir.'' (Quote found in a book while traveling to touristic places in Egypt)
Eight Army Soldier - His Prayer
Stay with me, God. The night is dark,
The night is cold my little spark
Of courage dies. The night is long;
Be with me, God, and make me strong.
I love a game, I love a fight,
I hate the dark; I love the light.
I love my child; I love my wife.
I am no coward; I love life.
Life with its change of mood and shade.
I want to live. I am not afraid.
But me and mine are hard to part;
Oh, unknown God, lift up my heart.
You stilled the waters at Dunkirk
And saved your servants. All your work is
wonderful, dear God...You strode
Before me down that dreadful road.
''If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies and eaten alive.'' (Audre Lorde)
''You didn't hear me when I said that the women in white is a ghost, or she might be the angel of death, and that Cinderella was in fact limping, that is why her shoe fell, and it is not true what they said about marriage from a prince at the end. It was only a severe gangrene from a polluted injury, that endet with an amputated leg.'' (Aqusu ayami; 22-23)
,,Now, we are all sitting, me Bewilderment, The fighter, Divinity, Reconciliation, Crying, Pain, in this forgotten space of the world, starring at each other comfortably, with inner desires of winning, we drink to our foolishness, because God, in this very moment, is betting on our loss.'' (Targamat, 24-25)
''Very far from the scene, watching us from there, sometimes tells us very short stories, That might help in fits of crying or sleeplessness.'' (Targamat, 91)
''How did God start creation unless he didn't suffer from an acute desire to speak up, or boredom and recurring loneliness or didn't need a mirror to reflect his wholeness?'' (Targamat, 76)
''Who would believe the truth of the letter after repeated clashes with the idea, The soul, the chest, the vocal cords? How would they believe the worn out word after that? How could they link themselves to an illusion of a bigger illusion? How do they reach a stage of certainty into which they pour their hearts and then watch them melting away slowly and euphorically.'' (Targamat, 116)
Field trip - El Alamein
During my residency in Egypt, I visit the war memorial in El Alamain in order to conduct field research. In my sketchbook, I capture what I experienced and saw. I coincidentally ran into the annual commemoration ceremony...the guiding question was ''What if memory culture is still colonizing the land?''
