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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 28 Sep. - 4 Oct. 2000 Issue No. 501 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 28 Sep. - 4 Oct. 2000 Issue No. 501
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Elections Region International Economy Opinion Culture Special Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters What dreams may come
By Reham El-AdawiA small crowd of mostly middle-aged men in grey suits lined the seats of the Cairo Opera House hall on 13 September to speculate over the future of arts and culture in the Arab world.
The programme, in part inspired by the late Taha Hussein's work The Future of Culture in Egypt (1938), was organised by Mohamed Salim, supervisor of cultural activities at the Opera House. The age-old topic was upgraded, though, when some of the participants introduced modern technology as a cause for concern.
"The Future of Arts and Culture", as the seminar was portentously titled, focused largely on the impact of technology on arts and culture, and revolved around contributions by Gaber Asfour, secretary- general of the Supreme Council for Culture, Youssef Francis, cinema page editor of Al-Ahram, Ahmed Nawar, head of the Ministry of Culture's Fine Art Sector and the poet Ahmed Abdel-Mo'ti Hegazi.
Asfour was keen to stress that Arab culture has been for a long time trapped in the past: the mountain of books inspired by the glories of the past are, he argued, a testament that a phenomenon that emphasised traditions and fundamentalisms at the expense of looking forward.
In terms of the written word, Asfour found some solace in the drastic decrease in the levels of book sales during the electronic age, suggesting that "it is pretty easy for knowledge seekers across the world to read the books of late and contemporary authors and even to scan the parts they need most, the old obstacle of time and distance having almost vanished." It is a position in complete opposition to that expressed by Günter Grass, who shuns computers and the Internet and believes books will prove to be a potent, subversive force in the next millennium. In accepting the Prince of Asturia's Award for Letters at Oviedo in Spain, Grass gave an eloquent precis of his beliefs: "Pushed aside, the book will once again become subversive. And readers will be found for whom books are a means of survival. I imagine children, fed up with television and bored by computer games, becoming completely absorbed in a book and abandoning themselves to the attraction of the narrated story, who imagine over a hundred pages and read something very different to what is on the printed page."
Hegazi took issue with Asfour's emphasis on Arab culture's indulgence of the past, and argued that the manipulation of state-of-the-art technology-- satellites and computers -- in Egypt varies entirely from Japan and the US, necessarily so in a culture that still has a 50 per cent illiteracy rate, and where even those who are educated have a limited grasp of classical Arabic and English.
On the level of the plastic arts, Nawar insisted that the restrictions placed on freedom of expression must first be tackled before envisaging the future of art. He criticised publishing houses for their failure to translate valuable books on the plastic arts, and expressed surprise that Egyptian cinema had yet to produce a film focusing on the life of any of the great pioneers.
As for cinema Francis -- fresh from the Venice Film Festival -- outlined recent cinematic developments and the return to more classic techniques, in stark contrast to Hollywood's mad scramble for ever more sophisticated special effects. The latest Japanese-manufactured camera, palm-size and highly sensitive, may yet revolutionise the film industry even further by allowing directors to carry their "equipment" anywhere and anytime, under any weather conditions, he said.
