Idlers' Logic
mini-DV, 24 minutes, 2003
Prizewinner Daka'Art Biennale 2004
Since
September 11, 2001 I have been continuously collecting and using
stock images of social and political nature in my mixed media
works; images of riots, confrontations, masses in fury, images
of combat, war, personal pictures of “terrorists”
and those of “simple” people of North African and
Middle Eastern features, features that would alone be enough to
make their owners suspects of terrorism and make them enemies
of modernity and of the free world.
The “label” of North African, Arab or Middle Eastern
describes me as well as other Arab-Middle Eastern artists, politicians,
scientists, lay-people and idlers scattered all over the world.
I wrote Idlers’ Logic between August and December 2002.
The 24-minute film, shortly followed by the 5-minute experimental
video Obsessive Compulsive Neurosis, depicts three idlers of North
African / Middle Eastern features locked up in a space. We discover
throughout the scenes that, though idlers, they are not without
talent.
The lead character turns out to be a trained singer, another character
is obsessed by Hollywood action movies, and the third creates
and plays indigenous musical instruments (the aboriginal didgeridoo).
Through equivocal Arabic (Egyptian) songs, some of them created
during the politically effervescent years of the sixties of the
twentieth century, and through excerpts from slang phrases and
stock images of tele-news and commercial Egyptian films, the viewer
gets a reflection of what flows in the minds of our three protagonists;
we are able to navigate in a process of “socio-political
revisionism” of the last four decades of regional history,
tackling along the way the three Oriental Taboos: sex, politics
and religion.
Selected infamous déjà vu scenes of kisses from
commercial movies of the post 1967 era*, _an era when mainstream
Egyptian cinema carried a trend of trash that led to a total state
of film industry apocalypse in the seventies _ are inserted within
scenes to accentuate the idler’s state of mind and its relation
to the current global consumer goods culture.
Insert phrases on the screen like elly yetgawez ommi a’olloh
ya ammi: ”whoever marries my mother I call uncle”
first appeared in a stage performance of the same era of socio-political
disappointments. Currently such a phrase implies a continuous
change in allies and flexibility of ethics and values, for anyone
can be an ally/uncle at any given moment.
El amaleya fel namleya wel kezaza fel bazzaza: “the operation
is in the kitchen cupboard and the bottle is in the baby’s
bottle”, a phrase used sometimes in slang humor to signify
simple jargon, first appeared in a black comedy of late sixties
after the 1967 military setback/defeat. The phrase was a cynical/sarcastic
acid critique of the jargon of the inexperienced political and
military leadership of the time.
A similar jargon comes out today from leaders of Hegemony and
superpowers who frame smaller nations with labels like weapons
of mass destruction and threat to the free world, etc.
Several phrases of satire nature appear on the screen throughout
the 24 minutes and help the viewer smile his way through the intense
history of four decades.
The Hollywood-obsessed character plays and handles handguns and
pistols throughout the film without uttering a single word. Through
his North African / Arab features and his toying with guns, he
delivers a virtual message that defies all labels: "I am
Egyptian, I am African, I am Middle Eastern, I am Arab, I like
guns that I did not invent, I get all my ideas and inspiration
from your movies, and I do not care if you terrorist-label me
or not".
The scene of gun-toying solely creates the short film Obsessive
Compulsive Neurosis, where two protagonists, the singer and the
Hollywood-obsessed, exist and interact without words in a cadre
or frame, repeated several times just to create a suspense atmosphere
of confusion and lack of confidence, as if role-playing for a
serious imaginary act to come. We get the evidence that the whole
scene is a big lie, an act, just like the notorious movie wag
the dog.
The didgeridoo player looks totally absorbed in his rhythm and
percussions, delivering another message of carelessness: "though
I have Middle East features, I do not follow your CNN or other
satellite news bulletins, so you cannot Wag-The-Dog me too".
The singer of the three takes the viewer through a chain of equivocative-double-meaning
songs that covers nudity, sexual preference, religious trash,
sexism and other taboos.
Khaled Hafez
Cairo
November 2003
