The graffiti of Mohamed Mahmoud and the politics of transition in Egypt: The transformation of space, sociality and identities (original) (raw)
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Reading Revolution on the Walls: Cairo Graffiti as an Emerging Public Sphere
Revolutionary and post revolutionary period in Egypt created emerging and vivid public spheres that became communication milieus for various strata of society. Therein new ideas and concept were confronting old and established perceptions. Hereby, genre of political graffiti in Cairo was formed, and with the lapse of time it became an integral part of revolution itself. Shortly graffiti started to be seen with glorified and romanticised connotations, graffiti artists were perceived as resistance fighters: primarily against regime, thereafter against security forces and lastly against Muslim Brotherhood. Their works were seen as tributes to revolution and its illustration. Although approaching graffiti as dominated’s resistance against dominator indeed explains wide realm of this societal conduct, nevertheless it regards graffiti only as a pro or counter statement. Thus, often significant side-meanings and social perceptions on various issues are omitted. This paper explores Cairo graffiti not only as revolutionary narrative, but also as prevailing public sphere where debate takes place. Analysing the “side-messages” that are drawn on the walls it looks social attitudes and public opinions on variety revolutionary and non-revolutionary issues. It employs various social sciences approaches and looks how Cairo graffiti scene follows patterns of the notion defined as ‘public sphere’.
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This article explores the recent urban transformations of downtown Cairo, in particular around the area of Mohammed Mahmud Street and Tahrir Square, after a year and a half of violent confrontations between the protesters and the military junta. The article first looks at how these confrontations led to the segregation of the city through the use of buffer-concrete walls, army tanks, check-points and barbed-wire barricades that made life for its inhabitants impossible. The squeezing of Tahrir and its surroundings created mostly a delineated and restricted war zone. This was undertaken after a series of killings and massacres took place. The article reflects upon the explosion of sardonic graffiti and epic murals that followed these events as a vibrant expression of dissenting street art, as well as the creation of a memorial space.
This article contemplates symbols and values inscribed on Cairo’s landscape during the 2011 revolution and the period since, focusing on Tahrir Square and the role of the Egyptian flag in street discourses there. I start by briefly pondering how intertwined popular narratives readied the square and flag as emblems of dissent. Next I examine how these appropriations shaped protests in the square, and how military authorities who retook control in 2013 re-coopted the square and flag, with the reabsorption of each critical to that of the other and executed in the same place: Tahrir. Pro-military factions have created the pretense that they were for the revolution by altering the square and structures around it. Furthermore, the square has remained open to the public, but ceased to be inviting. This relates to post-revolutionary alterations that psychologically repel entry. I consider these changes in light of affordance theory, value sensitive design research and especially the defensible space model, arguing that Tahrir Square has been symbolically cordoned and closed.
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This article examines the grassroots artistic initiative al-Fann Midan (Art is a City Square) in Cairo and a contrasting approach to street art organizing in Alexandria to demonstrate how each enacted a different relationship to 'the political' in a revolutionary moment. Extending sociologist Asef Bayat's concept 'quiet encroachment', it analyzes these contrasting approaches through the sonic metaphor of 'loud' and 'quiet' politics. As a spectrum, this framework highlights how the everyday, the gestural, and the affective on the one hand can exist simultaneously, and at times in tension with, larger, more representational political expressions on the other. It thus avoids fetishizing creative 'resistance' or 'dissent', while nonetheless analyzing art in a revolutionary moment, by grounding creative expression more historically and with analytical attention to how it reanimates long-standing debates among Arab intellectuals regarding the role of the 'artist'.
Negotiating Space. The Evolution of the Egyptian Street, 2000-2011
The American University in Cairo Press, 2014
The objective of this study is an analysis of the development of street protests in Egypt between 2000-2011. As such, it analyzes the negotiation of the status quo, that is, the relationship between resistance (protesting actors) and authority (the regime and the security forces that represent it) and their interactions in protest events. Seeking to make sense of the emergence of the January 25 uprising, I will show how the ‘Egyptian street’ evolved, served as a space of discontent, and hence was the main arena for negotiating power relations between resistance and authority that ultimately led to Mubarak’s ousting. In short, I want to find out how the Egyptian street, which had been proclaimed “apathetic” and “dead” by observers for so long, developed into a liberated protest space that forced an authoritarian ruler out of office. .