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Al-Ahram Weekly 16 - 22 December 1999 Issue No. 460 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 16 - 22 December 1999 Issue No. 460
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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W/Z in Cairo
By Youssef Rakha
Agatha Zobrist outside the Swiss Embassy
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Debate Focus Profile Living Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Sometimes all art sets out to do is emphasise the difference between an object and the way it is normally perceived. Subverting the old assumptions Ð about the function of the object, its size, the cognitive register in which it presents itself and its multifold relations to other objects Ð the artist reveals a latent or potential side of reality. When the object in question is a public space, moreover, the process can be both inventive and humorous.
The site-specific work of Swiss artists Theres Waeckerlin and Agatha Zobrist (W/Z) has been described as an interest in "the potentially boring, given status of rooms and situations," which the two artists attempt to transform "just as unpretentiously and inconspicuously." Working together as a team, they question commonplaces like the individual artist's subjectivity, the expressive capacity of the creative process and the fixed nature of the end-result. Their subtle, unspectacular mark, they leave on changing environments Ð bars, factories, waiting rooms, out-of-the-way galleries...or the space outside the Swiss embassy in Cairo.
In 1998 the duo spent six months on a scholarship in Shabramant, encountering "another culture with different rules and different behaviour" Ð an experience that proved to be "very interesting but also very difficult." A year later they were commissioned by Pro Helvetia to liven up the outer side of the wall of the Swiss embassy headquarters on Abdel-Khaliq Tharwat Street, as part of a programme to improve the embassy's appearance and its relation to its surroundings. An embassy can be a grim and isolated presence, evoking security checks and aloof, unsmiling, formally dressed officials behind little glass windows. W/Z submitted the space to their usual process of systematic probing, concluding that the four cubes of concrete standing opposite the wall at regular intervals Ð the security boxes Ð would ultimately be more interesting to manipulate than the wall itself. At the same time they recalled an image which had surprised them when they first arrived in Egypt Ð the innumerable cars covered in thick, colourful, painstakingly tailored cloth covers.
"We were very amused by the coincidence because it's a very Swiss idea to cover things up to keep the dust out. And we thought we'd like to do something funny because we heard that Egyptians think the Swiss have no sense of humour at all. We enjoyed little details like the pocket that car covers sometimes have for the metal star on Mercedes cars: you sometimes see them hanging empty on cars that are not Mercedes and don't have a metal star. So as you'll see one of the boxes has empty pockets all over it, they just hang there performing no function..."
With the security boxes covered in bright-coloured patterns, the embassy's appearance has changed. To judge by the "opening ceremony" held unceremoniously in the presence of the Swiss ambassador last week, nothing could be farther from the cold impersonality of customs officials and passport control. Yet the new situation exists, as always, in a changing environment. Aside from the predictable effects of wear and tear, one cannot help having the impression that these covers are exterior decorations placed outside the embassy for a temporary reason and soon to be removed.
The change is indeed positive and significant but, particularly in the context of downtown Cairo, a little too subtle to be true.
