Blind dates

Blind dates / The Project The project Blind dates. (Monolinguism, Parallel lines and contact zones) is my response to an invitation to exhibit in a group show that will be taking place in November 2008 at the Gezira Art Gallery. My contribution to the show consists of locating a site (this site) through movements and displacements that have been made towards and within Egypt, at specific moments of time, trying to approach the subject of cultural exchanges, cultural blindness and cultural influences at a specific site. As I have never been to the site before, neither I will have the possibility to travel to Cairo before the setting up of the installation for the show, I have decided to consider this a blind date, an imaginary voyage from a distance towards a specific destination that can not be fully reached. From a multiple perspective and starting out from several, different departure points I have chosen to ‘walk on beaten tracks’, based on the travel accounts and experiences of others who ‘have already been there’, tracing and (re)drawing lines through natural and social landscapes of other times and the other places. The route can not (and does not want to) be foreseen, neither it should be conclusive or pretend to reach a final destination, but ideally it will open up new roads and places of reflection, building up a net of encounters and conversations in and across the exhibition space. Blind dates. (Monolinguism, Parallel lines and contact zones) is an installation which comes in parts. 1st part. Parelolinguism. (No contact in the contact zones?) A short introduction to the concept. The subject of the installation derives from my readings of (and on) travel narratives of western (mainly European women), their ways of approaching or keeping distance from cultural differences. Regarding the early travel accounts of women writers from the 19th century, which contributed to a different –in comparison with contemporary male travellers writings- but yet imperialistic discourse. This subject is obviously not a new one, but I think it is my emphasis on the fact that Arab women almost never appear in any of the narratives of early women travellers. While male writers and artists have developed a particular interest in representing an ‘imaginary’ Orient, stressing an exotic female representation, Egyptian, and Arab women in general, are mostly absent from the accounts of women writers of the period. I am not trying to make a judgement, rather I am interested in the possible reasons of what, to my contemporary eyes, does very much look like ‘cultural blindness’. The absence of the ‘other women’ is particularly ‘fascinating’ in a somewhat negative sense if we take in account the fact that almost all of those female western travellers where seen in their places of origin as pioneers at their best and as excentric, foolish and inadapted at their worst. In any case, they were women who, through their journeys, tried to escape from oppressive social rules and to find alternative ways of self development and freedom. Starting out with those issues, many questions have been aroused. Why did those women, while trying to overcome the repressive atmosphere in which women lived at home, on the other hand show no interest in how the ‘female other’ dealt with social circumstances abroad? Was the distance they showed towards their own gender part of the strive for liberation, in the same way as it was a development or a reproduction of male behaviour? Was their representing of the host country through its reduction to nature the result of their freeing themselves from living within any kind of social network? And, on the other hand, where and who were those ‘other’ women who are not present in the orientalising male representations? What was and what is the representation of Muslim/Arab/Egyptian women like nowadays? Finally I am interested in extending these issues to my own struggles of dealing with cultural differences. How do I work in and towards a place that I only know better from clichés and somewhat topical references? Am I free of prejudice? Do I travel without the heavy luggage of culturally conditioned ways of seeing and doing? Are non-representation, over-representation, mis-representation and induced absence something that occurs to me? The installation itself. In an attempt to answer some of the issues exposed above, I have designed a sound installation where western and Egyptian women of different times and backgrounds meet in a fictional contact zone, speaking simultaneously in such a way that their monologues interweave. The first and most intrinsically material part of the project is a sound installation, consisting of 4 boxes containing sound sources that each travel on a separate rack along the walls, crossing from time to time, so that the monologues become a sort of overlapping dialogues for a few seconds. Each source corresponds to particular voices (4 each), with a total of 16 voices participating on parallel lines, showing a fictional contact zone of cultural exchange. The voices in this multilayered ‘text’ come different past and contemporary sources: A. Many are taken from ancient and contemporary books such as from Lucie Duff Gordon (letters from Egypt, 1865), Amelia Edwards (A thousand miles upon the Nile, 1877), Florence Nightingale (Letters from Egypt,1854), Harriet Martineau (Deerbrook, 1839), Joan Rees (Writings on the Nile, 1995), Marie Louise Pratt (Imperial eyes, 1992), Ulrike Stamm (The role of nature in two women´s travel accounts, 1994), Fatema Mernissi (el Harén en Occidente, 2000); Shaarawi, Huda (Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist, 1879-1924), etc. B. Others come from Egyptian Internet sources, discussing the subject of Arab women representations and western/oriental feminism. C. Further sources come from the exchange of thoughts and information obtained through your cooperation, as shown in the description of the 2nd part below. 2nd part. Egyptian thread (Interweaving) As an extension of the sound installation, I am already involved in a work in progress which is aimed at involving other women in the exchange of thoughts and visions on this subject. In this context, I am using old postcards, printed in Egypt and sent to several destinations in Europe and other Continents. The majority of the postcards is from around 1900 and show Egyptian woman of the period. Most of the women are wearing traditional dresses, whilst some are nude and many are carrying water jugs. I suppose that they show the taste of their time (who’s taste?). I am sending these postcards, asking artists and writers to reflect upon the image, on the content or on the year they have been posted. Additionally, I will send a separate postcard containing a question, an excerpt from one of the sources I am using in the 1st part or a statement from some of my writings ….Both postcards should be returned with a response (therefore a third postcard will be provided). Any type of response provided will be welcomed (images, a text, new questions)… 3rd Part. Towards a destination. This part derives from my own struggle to approach a place, a situation, showing the many roads I am walking without being ever able to reach the final destination. This means that I need to show in the exhibition the whole process that has taken place before the exhibition, making clear that the ‘final result’ is nothing more than a provisional ending of an ongoing reflection. In this part, which is accumulative, I will show photographs, drawings and texts that have been produced in my studio and at the University over a period of six months working towards the exhibition. 4. At the site. Through other (s´) eyes. Once I am ‘physically’ at the destination, I would like to carry out a photographic shoot together with Egypt women and ask them to represent themselves, either by giving them the camera or by asking them to choose the situation (location, perspective, light, clothes, etc) themselves. Those portraits will be used together with the previous material at the next show which will be taking place in Alicante, Spain.