Caramblogage

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote this post, titled Dystopia , containing a dark version of the future, a look at the negative outcomes that might crawl out of the COVID-19 crisis. It has, by now been described as "9/11 in slow motion". Someone else broke a golden editorial rule to describe it as "2008  on crack". Media outlets, including Youtube, have warned of the long-term effects of this, on civil rights, labour and employment, surveillance and press freedom. And some, most notably Mr Orban of Hungary, have used this excellent opportunity to pass new, restrictive legislation that concentrates power in their hands. There have been calls for the elusive COVID cure not to be patented. And yet… And yet… It's easy to lose yourself in a media bubble, following the news and media 24/7, following, queuing in line to get into expensive shops, just walking into discount stores and the constant desire for many drinks (preferably with 10 friends or more, in a park...

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 ...

“You should have winked at her,” Aida said dismissively, as if such a possibility had been imaginable for someone as timid as I was. Tahia Carioca was the most stunning and long-lived of the Arab world’s Eastern dancers (belly-dancers, as they are called today). Edward Said, Farewell to Taheyya My story with Taheyya begins in the summer of 2016, at Bulbuls Café in Görlitzer Str. in Berlin.  It ends two blocks down on Wiener Str 17.  Bulbuls is a café and art space around my corner that I have grown to like to sit in and drink smoothies (1). He had commissiond us- a crew of Syrian and Egyptian artists, as well as myself, to paint the walls inside the café. El Tenneen (the Dragon) is the one who ended up drawing Sheikh Imam, with the help of Salam Alhassan (known as Salahef/ Turtles) and Sulafa Hijazis (whom we call El Hayya/The Snake’s) beamers’ illumination. The Sheikh sits happily in the place to this day and Crew El-Zoo was born. Tenneen ha...

An NPC is a character in a computer game who is not the PC- the latter being represents you in a computer game, the former are almost everyone else who populates the game world. This term usually refers to characters who constantly inhabit game worlds with digitally created personalities (AI packages) and fulfill a role therein. They occasionally contribute to the narrative development of the game, or player character development - in many cases not through peaceful means, and mostly serve as extras in the game world. The main difference between a Non-Player Character and the Player Character is that their agency and role within the world they inhabit is limited to following scripted behaviour while the player is not- in theory.*  When it comes to gaming, there are two parallel theories at work in my mind: One is the thought that we might be living in a computer simulation in our main shared reality*, the second is that there exist an infinite number of parallel and di...

We have arrived in January, in Egypt, in 2011. Let's jump forwards to 2015 and move backwards from there. Keep in mind that this is mostly a view from outside the country that does not aim to provide a full overview, but rather a brief, personal summary of events. It has become very depressing to write about the country. After the initial elation and momentum behind the uprising, the energy and resistance to the power of the day, the hope seems to have been punched out of an entire people. Several reports describe the country as having slipped back into an authoritarian regime that is even more repressive that what the uprising throve to overthrow. The new regime, which many see as a recycled, refurbished version of the old one with a new coat of makeup, has not only developed miracle cures for AIDS and many other ills, it has also invented a time- machine intent on sending the country back into an age more reminiscent of feudal times than of the so-called democracies of the 21s...