Video workshop: image, (self)reflection & representation
Workshop Days
Opening Event: Monday, 6 November 2017, 19:00 (Public)
Workshop days 11:00-17:00: 8.11., 10.11., 13.11., 15.11., 17.11.
Closing Event: Saturday, 18 November 2017, 19:00 (Public)
This workshop requires registration. Please write an email to kunsthalle@kh-berlin.de with a short bio and a short statement on why you want to take part in the workshop.
Deadline for applications: Friday, 27 November 2017
This workshop aims at exploring power dynamics and systems of privileges in the artist-subject relationship. Through a number of screenings, readings and round table discussions we will try to reflect and problematize the concepts we take for granted as politically committed artists, leading us to often oversee our own privileges within the economic inequalities in capitalism. As an introduction to this process, three films from different stages of Salma El Tarzi's work will be used as examples. The workshop will engage with questions of agency, power, intersectionality, sensationalism and romanticism, the relationship between activism and art, political correctness, and cultural appropriation, as well as the difference between art and propaganda.
In the second half of the workshop participants will produce collaborative works in the formats of their choice reflecting on the outcomes of the earlier mentioned discussions. These works will be presented in a public event on the last day of the workshop.
Rajaa Shamam is a Black African queer-feminist activist, researcher and beginner film-maker based in Berlin. She's hosting El Tarzi at Weißensee Kunsthochschule art school where she works on post-post-colonialism. She invited Salma to collaborate in a workshop on power relations between artists and their subjects. The Egyptian filmmaker's experiences will serve as case studies.
Salma El Tarzi is an award winning Egyptian documentary filmmaker, visual artist and political activist based in Cairo. Her short documentary “Do You Know Why?” won the 2004 Silver Award in Rotterdam Arab Film festival in 2004, while her latest feature documentary “Underground/On The Surface” won the 2013 Best Directing Award in Dubai International film festival. She is a member of the feminist group OPANTISH-Operation Anti Sexual Harassment as well as Mosireen Video Collective. She is currently working on a documentary about the concept of grief and Womanhood, as well as a research video essay on the role of Egyptian mainstream cinema in normalizing rape culture.
Film Screening: Underground / On the Surface
Monday, 6 November 2017, 19:00
In 2007 a new genre of urban music emerged from the marginalized neighborhoods on the outskirts of Cairo. Mahraganat music (Often translated Electro Sha’abi or Sha’abi rave, sha’abi meaning “of the people”) evolved from the old tradition of wedding performances in working class and non formal economics neighborhoods into a strange mixture of Western electronic music, Hip Hop, and Egyptian folk, that soon managed to cross the geographical/class barrier and create great controversy in Egyptian Society. Official media presented this genre as a great threat to the righteous values of the middle class, often referring to it as “slum music”, that would pollute youth, destroy culture, and spread crime. On the other hand, with the rise of the Egyptian Revolution in 2011, young revolutionaries and left wing activists and intellectuals (often coming from middle class backgrounds themselves) embraced this genre as the “Music of the people” and a token of cultural resistance.
Salma El Tarzi’s Underground/ On the surface is a feature documentary following one of the main Mahraganat groups of the time; Wezza, Okka, and Ortega, AKA “The 8%” from 2011 until 2013, a period where mainstream producers could no longer ignore the phenomena and realized the need to suck Mahraganat music into the system and capitalize on it’s popularity.
In this screening/presentation followed by a discussion with the filmmaker, we will examine Egypt’s post revolution music scene the relationship between art an politics within the Egyptian revolution, in order to reflect on the concept of underground music in the Egyptian context, as well as cultural appropriation, political correctness and representation of marginalized communities within the complex system of privileges and power dynamics controlling the relationship between the filmmaker and her subject from the perspective of class and gender.
Salma El Tarzi is an award winning Egyptian documentary filmmaker, visual artist and political activist based in Cairo. Her short documentary “Do You Know Why?” won the 2004 Silver Award in Rotterdam Arab Film festival in 2004, while her latest feature documentary “Underground/On The Surface” won the 2013 Best Directing Award in Dubai International film festival. She is a member of the feminist group OPANTISH-Operation Anti Sexual Harassment as well as Mosireen Video Collective. She is currently working on a documentary about the concept of grief and Womanhood, as well as a research video essay on the role of Egyptian mainstream cinema in normalizing rape culture.
