Workshop Project 03: Performance
Posted on Feb 05, 2008 in workshop | Permalink
With time limited and the prospect of making public performances somewhat intimidating, on the last day we agreed to end the workshop with a collaborative performance in Alexandria. We decided to make a march, in single file, through the city from the Chatby neighborhood to Kom El Dika. Our seemingly mundane action elicited quite a response from the people that we passed ranging from the amused to the bewildered. Walking in Alexandria is often a frantic business which requires a great measure of agility to navigate the aggressive cars, torn-up streets and sidewalks, and throngs of other pedestrians. So, on the one hand, our group march made a definitive visual statement within the context of the city. The students noted their discomfort with this visibility and the potentially controversial political implications of our act: unified group activities in public in Egypt can be construed as subversive by the authorities and highly suspect, even illegal. But the rigid structure of our walk and movement through the city also, I think, changed our perception of the space and affected our thinking and conversations: our performance, our formation established a link with other types of collective actions and those histories. Our lines—the path we followed and the form we assumed—connected with a larger pattern of lines within Alexandria.
Group March to Kom El Dika
More:
Workshop Introduction
Workshop Project 01: Collection
Workshop Project 02: Intervention