[-empyre-] Introducing Eliot Bates, Horit Herman Peled, Nat Müller

[nat muller]

Dear Tim, dear Renate,

Thank you for your introduction and the opportunity to participate in  
this very timely discussion.

First of all I’d like to use this occasion to honour the memory of  
Egyptian sound and media artist Ahmed Bassiouny who was killed in  
Cairo on January 28th. He was 32 years old.

Following Larissa’s and Isak’s intros, I will briefly sketch my main  
interests/approaches to my work. However, before doing that I would  
like to pause and bring our attention back to the unfolding events in  
Egypt, and thus introduce a few topics we might discuss later on.

What is dubbed as the “facebook revolution” in Tunis and now in Egypt  
eventually gained its momentum and strength because people took to the  
streets. This indicates that physical presence is necessary to  
manifest (or in this case re-appropriate) subjectivity and to air  
dissent. One blogger commented that the freedom on the internet and  
the freedom on Tahrir square felt quite very differently, as did the  
sense of solidarity and community. Indeed, there is an accountability  
coupled to physical presence, which is not necessarily there with  
online presence. The much-heard argument goes that we can all push a  
button and join a FBpage (though that action is far from risk-free in  
some countries), but to physically put our bodies on the line, is a  
different question. Not only did the protesters in Tunis and Egypt  
cross the so-called fear barrier, they also crossed the “embodiment”  
predicament. Perhaps the movement between physical mobility and online  
mobility is something we can address in a later stage a bit more. In a  
region where physical mobility of people and goods is definitely not a  
given due to a.o. closed borders, visa restrictions, checkpoints,  
roadblocks and censorship (try sending a DVD from Palestine to Lebanon  
for example) this is something to ponder if we think about the  
distribution and dissemination of media art.

Since I shifted my focus to media arts in the Middle East, over 7  
years ago, I have been predominantly interested in examining the  
situatedness of media, the politics and aesthetics of mediation and  
how that impacts accountability and affect within an artistic context.  
I have lived and worked in Israel, Egypt and Lebanon during different  
periods of my life. I am currently working on a book commissioned for  
the series Studies in Network Cultures, edited by Geert Lovink, and  
published by the Institute of Network Cultures (forthcoming 2011). The  
project takes as its point of departure the usage and implementation  
of media. More specifically, it analyses the dynamics of mediation in  
the production and perception of media arts in Palestine, Lebanon,  
Egypt and to a lesser extent Jordan and Syria.By examining processes  
and apparatuses of mediation, the book attempts to articulate how  
mediation formats and materialises a work in terms of aesthetics and  
in terms of concept. One chapter, for example, addresses the topic of  
“framing” in the work of artists Joanna Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige,  
Wafaa Bilal and Vartan Avakian. It moves from reflecting on the  
postcard as a defining technology in relation to images of tourism  
(utopia) and war (dystopia), to issues of identity and performative  
embodiment in video games, to QR code technology in relation to  
mashrabiya architecture. Another chapter merges thing theory with  
media theory, as it considers the work of Lebanese artist Akram  
Zaatari and reads it primarily from a perspective of media  
archaeology, rather than allowing Lebanon’s history of political  
turmoil and civil strife to hijack the whole narrative a priori. It  
has been an often heard criticism from artists and curators from the  
region that the reading of socio-political context often over writes  
the reading/experience of the artwork.

What wasn’t mentioned in the short bio Tim and Renate sent along, is  
that I also lecture and teach in Europe and across the Middle East.  
This has required an interesting shift of positioning on how media art  
or new media art is labelled, or what is considered as media art. For  
example, a seminar I taught at Beirut’s Academy of Fine Art (ALBA) on  
media installation art beyond the screen translated back into me  
having to rethink my own references of spatiality and mediation. For  
how do you teach site-specific media work installed in public space,  
in a city which very much lacks public and communal space? In a  
seminar on visual culture at A.U.D. in Dubai I tried to negotiate  
issues of orientalist representation in visual culture.  One student  
remarked that perhaps I should have taught the course in Europe  
first.  I suspect she had a point there. How does do media images  
travel, or not?

Last year I taught a seminar at Amsterdam’s Rietveld Academy titled  
“Becoming Nation: Undoing Equations in Contested Zones” which drew on  
media art and visual and popular culture from Israel and Palestine. I  
was trying to see whether I could actually teach a class on this topic  
without the class becoming a seminar in political history or a lesson  
in activism only. It was tough, and meant reformulating a theoretical  
and political vocabularies. I invited Larissa and her colleague Oreet  
Ashery to participate in the symposium I organised to conclude the  
seminar.  Much of Larissa and Oreet’s collaboration in the project The  
Novel of Nonel and Vovel addressed precisely the search for a modus of  
operation. This is a question I often ask in my own work as a critic  
and curator: how do we negotiate and mediate different levels of  
representation and contextualise them?  Can some work travel, or not?  
What is the role of the artist in conflict (if at all, and who defines  
that role?).  In 2007, in collaboration with the European Cultural  
Foundation and Makan (Amman) I organised an expert meeting on this  
topic.  The report can be found here: http://www.eurocult.org/uploads/docs/795.pdf

This intro has become far very long, so I will wrap it up for now.

My writing can be found a.o. at: www.springerin.at,  
www.metropolism.com, www.bidoun.org

Looking forward to the discussions!

nat