Like the endtimes, this is much belated.

But the November issue of Dazed & Confused Magazine has a feature on Gulf Futurism as encompassed, encased and embodied by Fatima Al Qadiri and I. If you missed it, HASH. 

Perhaps far more excitingly, Bruce Sterling wrote about it in his WIRED blog:

“A weird Arab-futurist ideology bursting out of the circles around “Bidoun” magazine. Huh. Well, it’s one thing to be an ultra-wealthy art collector, but when you start writing about art, you might well find yourself with an intellectual position.”

AND I even got a Wikipedia page out of it! Shukrz wikielves!

To supplement Karen Orton’s article with our own definitions, Fatima and I gathered some Examples HINA

Master Sterling was mui kind in his response to that gathering (*w*)

“I almost hate publicizing stuff like this now. It might get snapped up by Rihanna and used as a seapunk video, and that’s startin’ to get on my nerves. There needs to be an exclusive first-class purdah lounge somewhere, where people like Sophia Al-Maria and James Bridle can hang out because they’re too gifted, intelligent and interesting to be exposed to the actual Internet.”

Bust out Brundlefly’s teleportation machine because I’d form a human-spider with James Bridle anyday…

I just khope this middle-aged Syrian bonbon look I’m working gets picked up by Azealea Banks. After all, the only logical place for popstars to go these days, the final frontier as it were IS hijab. 

In addition to this flourescence of attentience: UAE blog The State posted their first Khaleej Futurist entry.

“The Qaaba and Calligraphic Space Time”

Sidenote: Is ‘Oort’ not the perfect transliteration of the sound a floating chibi presence with a monocle makes as it bumps along the cobblestones in a fantasy Miyazaki Austro-Hungarian township?

For the sake of sakes, for the bloog of blog – a record of the object called “Scout” who landed at the 2012 Gwangju Biennale last month:

SCOUT from Sophia Al-Maria on Vimeo.

There was a cameo in this ArtForum Diary …

But the real Highlight for me was Gangnam Style @ Jeju in Gwangju
Say that 5xFast!

The 1400-Year Hurdles

Sophia Al-Maria

“Come, let us have a race.” – The Prophet Mohamed (PBUH) to his wife Aisha

We begin with the figure of a woman running in the sand. Her name is Aisha, it is a Saturday in the year 624.

She is riding with her husband and his followers to a battle at the wells of Badr somewhere southwest of Medina. Suddenly, her husband Mohamed (PBUH) orders the rest of their war party to carry on ahead. He holds back the young Aisha and quite unexpectedly, he challenges her to a race. Not just any race – a sprint on foot. At this time, Aisha is lithe and fit. She dismounts her camel with a swoop and leaves the Prophet in her dust, bolting long lengths towards the horizon.

This famous anecdote told and retold by the Prophet’s companions (and alternately confirmed and refuted by scholars) is one of three historic races I will write about herein. It’s an oft-told story that is so frequently invoked as a rebuttal in debates about the status of women in Islam that I’d be hesitant to mention it at all were it not the perfect companion to the subject of this essay, this book and this exhibition: Arab women in sport.

When used individually each of these words (that is, Arab – Women and Sport) are loaded with contention. To combine these three is to invoke a polarizing triumvate of emotional, political and religious triggers that make the subject difficult to write about.

Few would argue that in the contemporary world there is no body submitted to more scrutiny, burdened with more metaphorical significance or less understood than that of ‘the Arab woman’. It’s important to note that the Arab woman when used in such debate exists more as an amalgamated concept than she does any actual unified group. This ‘body’ has become a cultural battleground wracked by the sea changes of constant debate that alternately exhalts and degrades. Within the Arab context, ‘our’ bodies are obsessed over as vessels for impossible ideals like honor and within the western context ‘our’ bodies are symbolic sites of oppression.

Neither of these positions acknowledges the agency, the spirit or the will of women as individuals, or in the case of sports, as competitors capable of incredible strength and endurance.

The success of Arab female politicians, activists or even artists is often based on their ability to separate their womanhood from their functionality in a male-dominated environment. In this way, sport and the body of the female athlete becomes the purest symbolic battleground for feminism simply because it is impossible to divorce the individual athlete from her body.

At least this seems to be the case in the following two stories.

Los Angeles, August 8, 1984 – It’s the final of the women’s 400 metre hurdles. Moroccan Nawal El Moutakawel, tents herself in a green Adidas tracksuit and stretches in the afternoon sun. Having trained on the beaches outside Casablanca, Nawal is running this race for her country, to prove the world wrong.

What happens next is of incredible symbolic importance, not only to Olympic history but to the future of Arab women in sport.

In a few minutes time she will win the first Gold Medal ever by an Arab female and the first ever for Morocco. She will lap the stadium with the red Moroccan flag streaking behind her like a flaming mane. She will go home to adoring crowds in her home. Hailed as a heroine, every female baby born on that day would be named in her honor.

Exactly eight years later, the second event takes place in Barcelona, August 8, 1992 – This time the women’s 1500 meter run. Hassiba Boulmerka from Algeria steps lightly to the starting line and bows in wait for the gun. She has had to train away from home after a storm of death threats from Islamists who took issue with her bare legs at the previous year’s World Championship in Tokyo.

Since then, she must be escorted to and from practice and the race that day by armed guards. She is running this race for herself, to prove her country wrong.

When she pulls into the lead, a final 200 m dash, she doesn’t fall across the finish line, she leaps into it. Like El Moutakawel before her, Boulmerka has just won the first gold medal for Algeria.

She looks stern as she pumps her fist in the air.
Later she’d describe this gesture as, “a symbol of defiance. It was to say: ‘I did it! I won! And now, if you kill me, it’ll be too late. I’ve made history!’”

As she runs her victory lap she lovingly hugs her country’s flag to her heart. It is a closed, protective gesture and a sharp contrast to El Moutakawel’s open victory lap.

These two very different, wordless gestures of victory illustrate how volatile the place of Arab women athletes is within a national context.

One athlete had the infrastructural and psychological support of her country and her family while the other didn’t. The Olympics in particular, being a deeply politicized event where nationalism can be most fervent and boundaries can be most pushed, gives an essential public push to those governments and societies who do not offer the support to female athletes that are required to nurture athletic talent.

Despite these pioneering women in sport, the environment is still hostile, perhaps more so than ever before in the current post-revolt turmoil. The women in this exhibition will each have to run bravely to their own battles both external and internal during their sporting careers.

Although Nawal and Hassiba both won Gold, in the end, Aisha didn’t win her race. Some years after the victory at Badr, when Aisha had put on weight from motherhood and lost her ease at flight, Mohamed prodded her to race again. This time as they bolted across the sand he beat her easily. When she brought up the rear, gasping for breath he said, “This is in payment for last time.” Now, as you are introduced to the athletes in this exhibition, try to strip away the politics, the religion and even the gender of these courageous people and I think you will find all that remains is the sacred question of a human’s sovereignty over its own body and beneath that, the flickering flame of unbreakable will.

Maybe it’s my general suspicion of all all-in-one products or the dirty feel of polyester on sweaty neck or the fact they closely resemble sham pillow cases…

but more likely it’s due to traumatic early  memories of  an evil babysitter called Areej. The fact that she reported mother to the mosque for teaching me witchcraft out of this book is secondary, the real problem is that she used to wear these things!

Just imagine this peering into your crib with bared teeth every morning:

Now. 5 out of 6 packages opened did not contain headwear resembling the advertised product.

A big part of me feels bad for the little Amirah who expects pink lace trimmings like in the photos but gets a grey flap of fabric violently stamped ‘Made in P.R.C.!’ instead.

Opening these hijabs reminded me of the crappy stickers you get with your Malibu Barbie convertable –  so! disappointing.

Meanwhile, without further comment I give you a selection of the better ad inserts sourced from Doha, Cairo and a $ store in Auckland:

The Chinless Wonder

Al Matrix

True Moslems Love to Sharpie Articles

Baby it is so cold outside

Brand New Day (Never Gonna Come Down)

Bonus LoL!

Snuggie tar7a onsie!

]]> http://sophiaalmaria.wordpress.com/2012/07/17/1200-count-head-shams-from-syria-and-china/feed/ 0 Sophia Scans-2 sophiaalmaria Sophia Scans-2 Sophia Scans-4 Sophia Scans Sophia Scans-3 Sophia Scans-5 Sophia Scans-1 62_531458730285_6910_n http://sophiaalmaria.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/the-rape-gaze/ http://sophiaalmaria.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/the-rape-gaze/#comments Wed, 25 Apr 2012 03:26:46 +0000 S A-M http://sophiaalmaria.wordpress.com/?p=1739 Read more]]>

Rape – 1989

This week you might have found yourself sucked into the snarling call and response around Mona El Tahawy’s Foreign Policy article “Why Do They Hate Us?” and Samia Errazouki’s “You Do Not Represent Us”.  These columns are triggers in a seemingly eternal shootout around the subject of the misogyny that is endemic and often institutionalized in the Arab world (and indeed all over the world come to think of it).

So as a sidebar conversation for any curious parties wanting to investigate the subject via ze movies, I’ve culled together a topical gallery of Egyptian cinema posters that display signs of what I’ll just refer to as ‘the rape gaze’.

Think Laura Mulvey’s ‘male gaze‘ hopped up on a Steroid/Viagra cocktail. 

The posters range from exploitation typical of world cinema in the 70s to some decidedly snuffy looking fare in the 80s. Of course I’m not making an argument that this pattern is in any way unique. Quite the opposite, its evidence that Egypt’s film industry was running in parallel (if slightly behind) the sexploitation and rape-revenge explosion in western cinema and the birth of “Pinky Violence” in Japan.

1970s - Although some of the subject matter is dubious, there is an inherant sympathy towards the woman throughout the below titles. That is, until we get to 1977 and Virgin…But in which the woman’s …honor is cast into doubt.

I Am Not A Wanton Woman – 1971

Female and the Wolves – 1973

I Want a Solution! – 1974

Missing Women – 1975

Virgin…But – 1977

1980s - No more sympathy pains here. By this time it’s everyone for themselves, right down to the spade-called-’spade’ Proclamation Against Women in 1986.

Stranger in My House – 1981

Rape – 1989

The Prey – 1985

Proclamation Against The Woman – 1986

The Rapists – 1989

I am of the opinion that somewhere, somehow, somewhy there was a tipping point in the late 70s in Egypt and perhaps the greater region when the cinematic violence done to women seems to reach a higher pitch, no longer muffled by sensitivity toward’s the audience.

What do you think internets? Do these posters illustrate that attitudes and audiences changed? Is my pattern recognition all scrambled? How does this fit into the larger picture of gender politics in Egypt at the time?

Can we speak about this separately to the PTA-member-style debates about violence in video games?

Or is this just an obvious mass media arch that happened all over the world? LMK.

Bonus: Stay tuned for my next Egyptian poster collection: Girls with Guns.

Next week Global Art Forum _ 6 begins @ Mathaf Modern in Doha and moves on to Art Dubai … in Dubai.  I’ll be in attendance…via the holodeck presenting my short dictionary of Gulfisms while an allstar crew of some of my favorite humans including Yasmine El Rashidi, Michael C Vazquez, Alexander Provan, Sukdev Sandhu, Anna Lena Vaney and Douglas Coupland (all organized by the supreme Shumon Basar) will be present, in-the-meat.

You can peruse the entire lineup behind these words.

Parlour is screening Qatari-American artist Sophia Al-Maria‘s video work, Scifi Wahabi, at Snake Pit this Wednesday 7th March. Come join us at 6.30pm for a 7 o’clock start at Snake Pit, 33 High St. Auckland

PARLOURGROUP is followable behind the blue letters. SNAKEPIT behind these.

Romain Gavras’ new video for MIA’s “Bad Girls” really ‘steams up my windowscreen’.

I mean it is hot.

‘Hot’ used here in the ‘let’s go do some crimes‘ … sense.

I’ma come off like a real trite asshole dear internets, especially with the real revolutions raging all around us… but I just need to get something off my chest.

As @yousefkaid eloquently pointed out to me on the Twitter:

“Dude, they stole yo shit wholesale. I was really pissed. Da revolution will be ?commercialized”

I blame Gavras not MIA for rolling up to my little raw materials mine and taking his Bagger 288 to my claim. I have no qualms with an other brown girl tipping her hoodie to this stuff from her neon-vehicle or radifying riding sidesaddle or winking from behind her dirty-khaleej mirrorshade aviators. I’ve made videos featuring these things before in evidence here, here and here.

Take these screengrabs rubbed bumper-to-bumper. Frankly, I think you’ll all agree – she wore it better.

Click to view slideshow.

The dude who directed this has done it before. Namely with his video for MIA’s “Born Free” in which he shot-for-shots Peter Watkins’ “Punishment Park” .

The diff is that Watkins was a real filmmaker, over here in the Gulfie desert of the unreal I’m still in the sandbox writing my bad-girls-in-drag-drag-race script.

Whether it was intentional, psychic or  if any of them saw my stuff at all – it doesn’t matter so much. It’s a free internet after all.One thing’s sure, I still L-U-V MIA more than I could ever <3 MDNA. If nothing else – for her trajectory.

And it’s some bitter consolation they got the gutras wrong and didn’t have the chunks to shoot it in the Gulf.

I’ve still got a sleeper cell full of visual weaponry – AKs and Abayas that Gavras isn’t wild enough to dream of.

Lemme make a vid for you Arulpragasam. I’ll do it right. Badgirlwise.

In the lyrics of the ladytiger

XXXO

At least ya’ll can’t take my Maalaya.

Even though She Lives, Türkan Şoray is a kind of picture-ghost. She endures in the memory banks of the internet, ripened to a bright 480×360 pixels. Here fans who have spent 30 years lovelorn over the “Sultan” of Turksih pop Sinema now post videos in dedication to her.  The faces of Turkan’s lovers are often rubbed out in a spray of Gaussian blur, making Soray untouched, pure, the eternal and the original beloved.

Imagine if you will, Isabel Sarli...except with less moany cleavage and more…feeling.

Şoray manages to heave with a tragic longing we mere mortals only ever feel a quiver of. And so, I wanted to share her with you.

Now, just look into my LINK and tell me you don’t love her!

Pitchfork, Fader and a truck of others featured it and it was Tumbled to its high water mark closing in at around 14,000 views on the Youtube since then.

Some info on the track & the vid:

Fatima Al Qadiri’s ‘How Can I Resist U’ is a love letter to London in general and Dubstep (before it wobbled) in particular.
“Lenden” as it’s known has become a historic site of pilgrimage for wealthy Arabs seeking the forbidden fruits of sex, drugs, gambling and alcohol.
Interspersed with Youtube footage of Ma’alaya dances specific to Gulf countries like UAE and Oman–the super cars, dancing girls and brutal council estates

How Can I Resist U? is viewable behind these blue letters.