Caramblogage

This article was originally written in 2013 for the now-defunct platform "Preformance", developed with Noon Enterprises, the Goethe Institute and EPS51 . I have removed links where no longer available.  Bilingual Flyer for an event On the contextual promotion and staging of performances in another culture. The context of a production, and the reception of it, change depending on where it is performed. While this is true of any form of art, there are some considerations to be made when promoting and staging your performative production to an audience with a passing knowledge of the culture it sprang from. In the following, you will find a general outline to making a performance accessible to an international audience and to theatres outside the Arabic- speaking world. The more specific the play is to a certain location, time and society, the more it becomes a code that needs to be deciphered by the recipient, sometimes even explained to them. A play ...

Note: this post was begun on 03.July 2013, just before Morsi was ousted from power.  A long while after the last post, and a second Egyptian uprising against the rule of Mohammad Mursi and the Muslim Brotherhood happening as I write, a seemingly unrelated post on a Spring Lessons event that will be taking place tomorrow: Musiksehen Schwarzweiss, or Black & White. The idea was born at the exhibition "Right to Left" curated by EP51 and Uqbar. The exhibition was titled "Arabic and Iranian Visual cultures" and collected works of graphic design by artists from the aforementioned backgrounds. Included, by chance or design, in the exhibition, was a book by Iranian graphic designer Peyman Pourhosein of Studio Khargah . This book revealed to me a visual history of Iranian film in form of posters, vinyl covers, and film stills. Knowing that many films produced before 1979 are banned from screening in the country and connecting the narrative of the Iranian revol...

Later on someone will tell me "Stop trying to make sense of it, just write about what little you see" In that spirit: For what feels like the first time in months, I am in a blue sky with the sun above my head.  Berlin Solidarity demonstration against harassment in Egypt, 25.02.2013  A wish everyone in Berlin is currently expressing is an escape from what has been said to be the grayest winter since winters began being recorded and documented. Having suffered that greyness long enough, and business leading me to Cairo, I am glad to report that the sky remains blue and wide above the cover of clouds. The sun is still hanging in the sky, the clouds, so grey form below, turn into an endless white carpet covering and hiding Germany, until it disappears from sight. This carpet seems to be covering all of Europe- a mountain peak here, a lake there, a hole in the clouds that looks like a floating island… We don't see any land until we're over Africa, and an e...