8 - 14 March 2001
Issue No.524
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 8 - 14 March 2001 Issue No.524 |
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In search of the sole
A heap of silver sandal soles piled high in the back of a fire-engine red Suzuki van passes, and it could, one feels instinctively, be nowhere else but Cairo. Almost certainly this is the wrong instinct, since it could be almost anywhere else, anywhere, at least, where people wear silver-soled sandals in any quantity. Yet still one feels one knows, which is almost as good as knowing. The soles themselves appear to have sharp points of diamante embedded at irregular intervals in the rim. This last detail, though, this rhinestone icing of the cake, could be a simple trick of the light.
No such poetic tricks in a scene that takes place in Bab El-Louk, for neon offers few glints, certainly no kindly chiaroscuro. It is a cruel killer of any of those passions that better thrive in a more subdued half light.
These particular neon lights illuminate acid yellow walls, freshly painted -- something there to note, such acid yellows an uncommon colour here -- while on the ground lies the fresh, flayed carcass of a water buffalo. It is soft, creamy, the colour of vanilla custard, and (too obvious, this, by far) the carcass lies in a pool of blood. A few yards away stands a second buffalo, immobile, gazing moon-faced from behind eye lashes ridiculously long, and indifferent to the glances of the occasional pedestrian.
It is the neon that forces this latter scene into hyper-reality, that and the colour of the walls. It is too garish by far, a flash lit snapshot taken by someone who forgot to press the red-eye correction button on their instamatic camera. I am reminded of Edward Hopper, except that in a Hopper painting it would be a middle-aged American couple caught amid the debris of their lives in this unrelenting glare and not a couple of cows.
But there it is, urban theatricality, plot lines unravelling in every direction, impossible to pull together in any coherent narrative. They weave knots so tangled as to reduce the freshest-faced, the most optimistic boy scout in the world, to tears.
And it is true, one might prefer to miss the neon-lit scenes; night -- despite it having been said a thousand times before -- is kind to Cairo, lending whole areas of the city a Christmas tree glamour that, for all its demands we half close our eyes, still manages to turn the Nile into a silent ribbon of glassy obsidian, smearing lights across its surface in startling, glittering perpendiculars. It is just that some nights the vignettes are too brash to be swept into the shadows.
In just over a week's time this same, promiscuously unravelling place, with its open backed trucks carrying any number of outlandish items piled high, is to become the site of several happenings. There will be the Downtown festival, the organisation of which is outlined in detail in the interview on the opposite page. And there is the Cairo Biennale, an event that appears to be developing an ever-higher profile and an admirable ambition to attract bigger and bigger names. At the same time comes the showcasing, in an exhibition called London Nomad, of new wave British art, produced by a generation of artists who have been singled out for an unprecedented level of media coverage, at least in their own country.
Nitaq, the Downtown festival, its organisers reveal, is going to be weighted heavily towards installation, news that, if it comes as no surprise, comes equally devoid of any great rush of excitement. The confines of the gallery space, in most great cities, is antiseptic not by accident but by design, and necessarily so. For it not to be sanitised, for it to be contingent with the world beyond the walls, is to court with danger, is to play with the possibilty that no one will notice that it is art that is happening within.
Perhaps -- a conceit, I know, but appealing nonetheless -- the red Suzuki truck with its mountain of silvery soles is really no more than a bit of pre-publicity, traversing the streets of central Cairo as subliminal advertising for the future events, crying out for some critic to untangle its punning symbolism. And the creamy carcass, too, with its contrived lighting, the alley-like entrance to the acid yellow set opening a little too suspiciously proscenium-like onto the pavement, could be a piece of action art, unfortunately timed to take place during Eid Al-Adha and thus becoming merely one slaughter among many rather than a slaughter with singular portent.
In all events, whatever happenings are scheduled for the next couple of weeks are unlikely to slot anything but seamlessly into the life of the city that is hosting them. And it is this that makes the city such an alluring place to live, that lends it a very real glamour even without the spurious benefit of its night time fairy lights, its spectacular illuminations. None of which is intended to belittle the organisers' efforts, or do down the ambitions of those who will be participating in the various festivals. It is just that they have a great deal with which to compete, from the remaining bill-board painters (sadly, if the past few years are anything to go by, a trade in decline) to the construction workers who envelop their buildings in billowing skeins of green cloth, to the most humble shop assistants whose wrapping of goods in cones perfectly constructed from sheets of old newspaper is nothing short of a paper-folding miracle.
Make no mistake, for whatever the hype, choose to blink, turn quickly the pages of whatever newspaper you read, skipping the all too easily skipped cultural commentary, and the forthcoming focus on contemporary art may well never have happened after all. And be sure, too, that life will continue, much as before, and that Downtown will remain a marvelous place even without the roaming street musicians, without the installations and the paintings in shop windows, and there will be silver-soled sandals, with or without rhinestones, enough for everyone, and more to spare.
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