Documenting the Egyptian Revolution and Its Future Hopes
Initiated by: Lanfranco Aceti, Janis Jefferies and Karem Ibrahim
In collaboration with: Safaa El-lasy Haggag
Where: The Leonardo Electronic Almanac (http://leoalmanac.org/)
Supported by: The Thursday Club, Goldsmiths College; Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabanci University; KASA Gallery; Leonardo Electronic Almanac
In light of the historic events that took place in Egypt over the last few months, there is an open call to collect a variety of electronic media, including videos, montages, signs, slogans, text from tweets, SMS and other forms of text messaging, about the political upheaval and dramatic changes in Egypt.
It is also important to document the hopes for the future that have arisen as consequence of these social events.
The material will be archived on the Leonardo Electronic Almanac, an online-based archive, and also shown internationally in art galleries and venues wherever possible.
Videos and Moving Image Media
We would like to invite individuals and/or groups to submit moving image media to be published on The Leonardo Electronic Almanac http://leoalmanac.org.
We are particularly interested in collecting media from individuals and groups from Egypt itself.
The Aim of the Project
To archive some of the imagery of the Egyptian revolution and bear witness to these momentous events.
The main purpose of the gathering of those materials is to upload them onto the Leonardo Electronic Archive. The secondary purpose is to show selected videos in an international travelling exhibition, on large screens in different cities, mainly in the Middle East, Europe and North America.
Media can express their maker’s opinions, thoughts and ideas concerning the situation in Egypt before, during, and after the revolution.
The art works could also address the questions: what is your view of the situation in Egypt before the revolution and what do you think the future will bring after the revolution?
The media could also be pure documentation of the revolution that was made during the uprising itself.
Formats
Video
The videos could be shot in a variety of formats and with a variety of equipment such as video cameras, still cameras, mobile phones etc. All resolutions that can be submitted over the internet are welcomed. However, there is a possibility that the footage will be shown on large screens, so the higher the resolution of the original footage the better.
The materials submitted need to be internet-friendly for ease of uploading and handling over the net. The videos need to be fully edited and ready to screen, and whenever possible have English subtitles as they may be viewed by international audiences.
Hyperlinks to videos are welcome and desirable, during the selection phase.
Text
Tweets and text messages that were used before during and after the revolution will be used to create installations in art venues. All possible formats will be accepted if legible, including pdf, screen image, html, SMS.
Dates
Materials can be submitted from now until August 15, 2011.
All material to be submitted to info@leoalmanac.org using the subject ‘documenting the Egyptian revolution’.
Bios of Initiators:
Lanfranco Aceti works as an academic, artist and curator. He is Visiting Professor at Goldsmiths College, department of Art and Computing, London; teaches Contemporary Art and Digital Culture at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabanci University, Istanbul; and is Editor in Chief of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac (the MIT Press, Leonardo journal and ISAST). Currently he is the Artistic Director and Conference Chair for ISEA2011 Istanbul and works as gallery director at Kasa Gallery in Istanbul. He has a Ph.D. from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London. His work has been published in Leonardo, Routledge and Art Inquiry and his interdisciplinary research focuses on the intersection between digital arts, visual culture and new media technologies.
Lanfranco Aceti is specialized in contemporary art, inter-semiotic translations between classic media and new media, contemporary digital hybridization processes, Avant-garde film and new media studies and their practice-based applica¬tions in the field of fine arts.
Safaa El-laisy Haggag, a prominent Egyptian film editor, critic, writer, and activist. Born in Al-Menofia, in the Nile delta, Egypt, she graduated from the Institute of Cinema (al-Markaz al-Ali l’il-Cinema) in Egypt in 1975 since which time she has been involved in the film scene in Egypt. She has been working as a film editor and critic in addition to writing papers and contributing to research publications, she has three major publications of her own in Arabic. Safaa took part in numerous international film festivals as a jury member. Safaa has been involved in commenting and writing on the issue of the Egyptian revolution and contemporary Egyptian politics.
Karem Ibrahim, London-based artist, born in Cairo, Egypt, 1969, studied in Cairo (art academy) and at UEL and the Slade School of Art (UCL) in London. Participated in national and international art shows and events. Works in a multitude of mediums. “Central to my work are my own observations and experiences. Value, in both its theoretical and tangible meanings, is one of the most important issues that I deal with: the way things are seen and used, how fashions are followed and how things are viewed, priced, consumed and discarded. My work also touches on the relationship between the work and the viewer, engulfment, alienation and dislocation within a specific context. Just as my experience of Egypt forms the greater part of my visual and social archive, many of the ideas I am currently exploring come from my present surroundings, namely London. However, I am still stimulated by issues which are of great relevance to the Middle East, such as inclusion and exclusion, borders and crossings, authority and bureaucracy, the dynamics of unequal power, arbitrariness and co-ercion, resistance to power, uneasiness, entrapment, tightness and comfort, availability of space, see-through walls and the world of the in-between.”
Janis Jefferies is an artist, writer and curator. She is Professor of Visual Arts artistic director of the Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles, Artistic Director of Goldsmiths Digital Studios and co director of CAST, a research centre across social and creative technologies Goldsmiths, University of London. She convenes the MFA in Computational Studio Arts and the PhD programmes in Arts and Computational Technology in addition to the Thursday Club, an interdisciplinary an open forum for anyone interested in the theories and practices of cross-disciplinarity, interactivity, technologies and philosophies of the state-of-the-art in the current and future cultural landscape(s). It is supported by the Graduate School, Department of Computing, and on various occasions Cultural Studies, Music, English and Comparative Literature, Media and Communications and Design.
Posted by: Ebru Surek
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