5 monitors and a hammer
A video installation (September 1999, Gezira Art Center, Cairo, Egypt)
Five monitors are installed in a row next to each other on the opposite side of the space a hammer is suspended. On the monitors encounters with five people in Cairo are represented. Each encounter is related to the theme of heroism. A man watching lions at the zoo, a soldier at the October war panorama, two veiled girls shopping and looking at mannequins, a teenager going to the cinema and a man working out at the gym. The encounters are juxtaposed to images of a glass being broken with the hammer, and shots of bridges, fountains and high-rises in Cairo intercut with words lifted from newspapers – “progress” “peace process” “wealth” etc…
The audio is composed of repetitive loops built out of edits from the interviews held with the subjects and found sound from the locations.
This installation was conceived as an attempt to explore notions of heroism as they express themselves in the urban environment. Five encounters with citizens involved in a moment where the ideology of heroism is being expounded are used to explore this notion. These personal moments are put in relation to the wider official discourse sponsored by the system. Public discourse and its relation to the the subjects who consume it is explored.
The choice of the thematic of heroism, is an inspection of a perspective, a gaze that constructs an identity. The public discourse of the government (as represented in urban architecture and words from newspapers) is juxtaposed to the encounter with the subjects of this discourse, the citizens of the state. The suspended hammer is a tool, a strategy that textualizes the video monitors by placing them within a context. The gallery space is thus transformed from a space from which to assume an anonymity while watching an idolized image into a space where the audience’s body is physically present- the environment offers itself rather than attempt to hide.
