Caramblogage

When Heba told me she had the prints, my first instinct was to burn them. It had been a week since our first call concerning a series of golden silkscreen prints. She,  Don and the manager of the gallery representing Heba had discovered them by accident at the Berlin Art Fair. The prints are rather unremarkable- a series of nine, subdued silkscreens of pictures taken off the internet, printed with a shimmering, golden hue. They reminded me of my grandmothers' furniture in Cairo. What they depicted, however, was very familiar to us- we had made it, and these were blatant copies of our documentation of the work on the Homeland set. Set picture: Bottom left, next to the flag: This series does not represent the view of the artists. What they had come across was a series by David Krippendorff entitled “This Show does not Represent the View of the Artist”, a tiny play on one of the slogans we used. I was somewhat flattered, at first, at this attempt at an...

There are two definitions implied here: the industry of creatives, which occasionally results in things that may be termed art (even if it is cleaning the floor), the act of producing something creative. A second reading might be a capitalist mode of production, in which creative people produce exponential amounts of content that is, or is not, creative, to retain their relevance and the attention of audiences.  The question attached to that is: once "creatives"understand their work mainly as a form of labour, through which they earn money, and themselves as a factory, are they still producing "art", or is it design? This leads us to the difference between art and design, but that's a discussion for another day. 

If we live in the age of outrage, it is incumbent upon us to somehow embody that outrage symbolically. Following an anti-hate strawberry, and a long acquaintance with Watermelons, serendipity and some friendship led me to… Aubergines. So, I introduce the slow evolution of one Outrage!, the Aubergine. Top to bottom: So, we're on the shelf now… | Yeah, but sunlight…| Look! I think that's a cobweb! | EEK Outrage, the Aubergine, it lives in a tiny washing machine… It was too hot…  So he got some ice cream… (TBC) A comment on the #metwo hashtag. It's all in the label?

I have a new favourite pen: Chalk Markers. The guy at Overkill gave me a dirty look when asked whether they had something so… impermanent. in stock. I got comments from friends and family that I was at last cleaning my windows (window, please. I'm too lazy to clean around the windows to reach them, write on them, then clean them). Anyway: I spent a week writing short & spontaneous ditties about weekdays on my window. This is how it went down: First fora Saturday 1 Sunday(with Green) Reverse Friday: Monday Tuesday (for the lazy Wednesday. The middle of the week Thorsday! (Don't tell Disney) The Second Saturday, and introduction of the Green!

Life had become much easier: Carefully conditioned over generations, people no longer made the active effort to ignore what disturbed them. Years of medial overload allowed them to look directly at something and pick out only the details that pleased them, or conformed to their worldview. 

As time passed, the outrage faded. In stead of incredulous, angry, or disparaging comments on bombings, violations of human rights, wars, corruption, lies and/or blatant exploitation, years of conditioning led audiences (defined as: people who consume content, mostly on screens) to react to the output of content creators (independent of genre) exclusively with "Thank you for your Content".  Everyone stopped caring after a while and all production shifted to Let's Plays of Skyrim, now playable on Sneaker Screens™®. Everyone was content, and content.  And yes, they do share the same root, which makes a strange kind of sense: https://www.etymonline.com/word/content

:  You, basically. Also: me. Possibly, but not preferably: us. Term designed to dehumanise people and reduce their value to their utility as raw material to be broken down, packaged and sold under a different brand name. Yummy when green.

Note: MeMus was written from 2012-2015. Things have (again) changed since then. But I maintain that it is mainly an "export industry". The current Egyptian street art scene is an export industry. Due to legal restrictions on the use of public space as a forum for expression which are vigorously enforced and a general atmosphere of hegemonic domination in the country, many of the artists who can, by choice or necessity, remain in the country, choose to work outside their local contents. Though this allows for a higher degree of experimentation stylistically, it also removes the street from the art, thus removing the unmediated interaction by a public in a sphere. Though currently limited, the extensive use and cultural acceptance of street art as an art form opens a new horizon for the use and application of the practice to more mainstream artistic means. So far, it has not been used, except in erasing, in attempts at directly representing the government and remains exclu...

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Impunity is a case of the 3rd law of Newtonian motion being suspended, therefore, not only a feeling of personal imperviousness to the consequences of actions, but also freedom from the above-mentioned laws of physics, which, considering the egos usually involved, is not entirely impossible. While this may work in a subjective reality, one has to wonder whether it's really worth all the effort and energy of imposing this reality on everyone else. Of course, everyone else does not enjoy the same impunity and is punishable for questioning the established narrative. Activate quantum flux polarity generators. Go! Also: Is impunity in any way related to puny? https://www.etymonline.com/word/impunity https://www.etymonline.com/word/puny

At the supermarket, paying for shopping. The cashier feels the need to convey how exhausted she is. The bank: "We're sorry it took so long. Our people are dealing with a really heavy workload" Talking to friends: "My body feels so tired… my mind is having a hard time keeping up." On the street, a random person feels the need to inform me how exhausted they are. I reciprocate. It's the new hello, and we do have it in common. Chronic fatigue is an indicator for depression. tire (v.1) "to weary," also "to become weary," Old English   teorian   (Kentish   tiorian ) "to fail, cease; become weary; make weary, exhaust," of uncertain origin; according to Watkins possibly from Proto-Germanic   *teuzon , from a suffixed form of PIE root   *deu-   (1) "to lack, be wanting." Related:   Tired ;   tiring . From: https://www.etymonline.com/word/tire?ref=etymonline_crossreference 

From: Kairo Koshary We’re excited to announce #operationkoshary, a collaboration that brings together Koshary, culture and social entrepreneurship!  Kairo Koshary,  tak Theater Aufbau Kreuzberg  and Mafish Studio have joined forces to bring you exclusive cultural content you can take home while supporting independent organisations in the Middle East and the EU.  #operationkoshary begins on May 26th at the Kulturbrauerei with Kairo Koshary. We will be offering a limited series of 100 posters of Taheyya Kariokka, based on “In Taheyya we Trust/ ثقتنا في تحية”, a door painting on Wiener Str, by  Caram Kapp of Mafish Studio . The posters also be available at tak  Theater Aufbau Kreuzberg  as of the beginning of June in the framework of a pop-up exhibition at the Performing Arts Festival, further Kairo Koshary events, and online.  Our first goal is to raise cash contributions for CILAS, an independent education institution in...

For some reason, I've fallen in love with this word again recently. Learning that it basically means that a person thus addressed is basically a head(-less), Viking chicken does not lessen my love for it in any way, shape or form. It covers all the areas that mundane idiocy does not. I can see it becoming the word of the year 2018, if we survive. https://www.etymonline.com/word/gormless

The following is what feels like a timely excerpt from Memetic Murals, 2016.  The internet phenomenon 1  of spreading street art directs attention not only to the topic, or cause, but also towards the person responsible for expressing it. International attention recreates the creative actor in the form of a constructed sym bolic gure, required to represent a majority they sometimes do not even agree with, or belong to. Many of the chosen representatives are masters in their respective arts and in expressing their personal observations on larger societal developments. No matter if their perspective conforms with the current opinions or not, artists are considered open minded observers, eloquent representatives of their societies. What is often underestimated is that artists mostly represent a cultured, liberal elite in their country, no matter how much they identify with the causes within. This reterritorialization of the Israeli Separation Barrier as an internatio...