Moataz Nasr
* 1961 Alexandria, Egypt.
Echo. 2003
Two channel video installation
On the right: Sequences from a popular Egyptian fiction movie by Youssef Chahine (1969), on the theme of the necessity of social change.
On the left, the scene is reenacted. In a café of the year 2003, a young woman speaks the same words. The viewer establishes "that nothing has improved, on the contrary, everything has got worse" (Moataz Nasr).
The artist about his work
In 1968 Abdel Rahman El Sharkawi wrote a novel entitled El Ard’, The Earth. It discussed the Egyptian struggle against the British Occupation at a time where the World was suffering from the economic depression, specifically, year 1933.
In 1969, Youssed Shahine took the novel and turned it into a movie, keeping the same title, El Ard. The main character of the movie is Abou Swelam and the role is played by Egyptian outstanding actor, Mahmoud El Meligui.
One of the most important sequences of the Movie takes place in a village house in which the male villagers are gathered. In that sequence Abou Swelem expresses his frustration at noticing the Egyptian people’s attitude, and how passive they have become.
This 4mn 29sec monologue is the center piece of the movie and until today, the impact it left in the memory of all Arabs and Egyptians is alive, it moved the populations for it very accurately reflected the state of society at that time.
In year 2003,1 took a video of Chirine El Ansary, Egyptian storyteller. She is standing in the middle of a Down Town Cairo coffee shop and is repeating the monologue as it was in the movie, but on the spur of the moment.
In The Echo, the two sequences are taken and projected in front of one another, echoing each other, thus pointing at the stagnant political and social situation of the last 70 years. Nothing has changed, what could be said in 1933 and 1968, remains valid in 2003.
As Abou Swelem says, and the storyteller in the Caireen coffee shop repeats, we are living in words nothing but words.
© Moataz Nasr. Published in the catalogue of Sharjah Biennial 7, 2005.
© Stills: Moataz Nasr
Repros: Haupt & Binder, Universes in Universe
Teil 2 der Fototour durch die Sharjah Biennale 7, 6. April - 6. Juni 2005. Präsidentin & Chef-Direktorin: Hoor Al Qasimi. Kurator: Jack Persekian; Ko-Kuratoren: Ken Lum und Tirdad Zolghadr. 70 Beteiligte.