CONCEPT of landscape
I am a smoker. I am also a father. I do not have any outdoor space in my apartment, so I end up smoking by the front window. Admittedly, this does not fully stop smoke from getting inside the flat. But it does make me feel less guilty. We are in lockdown. Not the best time to quit smoking. We are at Week 5. At the peak, the experts say. And, at this point in the story, kids are supposed to be spreading the virus like wildfire. The window looks over a street in Brussels. In the rhythm of my addiction, I start to see these five minute breaks as short contemporary art performances. Will someone pass by? How will they be dressed? Will they have a funny walk? How drunk will they be? Are they aware that an audience is watching?
Back to reality. Most of the passers-by are homeless or refugees. Everyone else has a safe place to hide at the moment. The lockdown has made inequalities even more visible. Humans who did not manage to jump on the fast boat of capitalism have ended up stranded in the deserted city, while others managed to reach their second property on time. It’s Week 6. Suddenly priorities appear clearer than ever. For the passers-by in front of my window, it is survival: finding food, a bed, and an alternative way to create resources. Whatever that may mean. It is most certainly a performance in itself.
It is a sunny weekend. It is Week 7. Helicopters are flying over the neighborhood. Police killed another youngster. Protests erupted and I see young guys running down the street, most certainly trying to escape cops. Other audience members have joined, watching from different buildings and angles. The killing was not filmed. So protests will not spread around the world, yet. But the ground is boiling here also. The world will begin changing fast. Cursors will shift and radical ideas will be talked about as possible futures. Hopefully.
The post office at the end of the street has reopened. Clients have to wait outside in a line, respecting a 1.5 meter physical distance. This means the line stretches to my window. Suddenly the performance has become an ensemble piece. What attitude do you adopt in the line? How long will this last? Are we at Week 8 or more? Slow movement has replaced the previous catwalk-like rhythm. Soon, regular speed will return and there will be too many things happening at the same moment to be able to spot the meaningful details.
One could define the word “concept” as an abstract idea. From Week 9, I chose to look at the future as a concept and the view from my window as a landscape. Wikipedia informs me that “the character of a landscape helps define the self-image of the people who inhabit it and a sense of place that differentiates one region from other regions. It is the dynamic backdrop to people’s lives.” The backdrop is in place. The performers will arrive. Together we return to the art of living. And we will do our best to pretend we have not been transformed.
Photo courtesy of the author.
“Anyone who wants to see the sunlight clearly needs to wipe his eyes first,” said the 3rd century Coptic Christian bishop Saint Athanasius from Alexandria. A few years ago, his message found a new form, encrypted in a mural in Cairo’s Manshiyat Naser, painted across 50 separate buildings by a group of graffiti artists led by the Tunisian artist eL Seed. Manshiyat Naser, also known as the Garbage City, is a district in Cairo at the foot of the Mokattam Mountain. It is inhabited by some 30,000 Zabbaleen people, a Coptic Christian community who had come to the city in the beginning of the 20th century and developed a unique informal form of economics – one of the most effective garbage collection and recycling systems in the world which is still operating today. They sort (in 16 categories!) and recycle more than 80% of the garbage created by the city of 20 million; the average ratio in the West is 25%. Although, thanks to the Zabbaleens, Cairo is an unusually clean city for the number of its dwellers, it’s a highly stigmatised group in the Egyptian social system. Mokattam is considered an isolated, marginal, and dirty place – also because Zabbaleens, who are Christians, farm pigs, which are an indispensable part of the recycling process. eL Seed’s mural, entitled Perception, is dedicated to the Zabbaleen people and their work and critiques the condemnation and distorted views that stem from the larger population’s ignorance of otherness.
The only official institution aware of eL Seed’s intention to paint the mural was the local Mokattam church and its head, Father Samaan. Under El Sisi, where every inch of the city is controlled by the army, censorship spreads like a plague, and the possibility of any form of creative expression in the public space – especially graffiti, which was an extremely important medium during the revolution – is close to nil. And so the appearance of a work of street art on such a gigantic scale is phenomenal. It was made possible because the Zabbaleens themselves kept quiet about it. What is also phenomenal is the graffiti itself: the fifty fragments, which are each painted on a separate wall, and resemble a stain of paint seeping down from a roof or a creative incident by a sloppy construction worker, come together in a unified and extremely precise image if one looks at it from the top of the Mokattam mountain.
On my way to the top of the mountain, I pass through a village. The narrow streets are flooded with overloaded carts and little trucks.The streets are also filled with heaps of garbage attended by women (the division of labor here is strict: men are gatherers and recyclers; women and children are sorters) and various animals. In between it all I see small stores, recycling workshops, tearooms. Dozens of colorful teddy bears rescued from rubbish dry on someone’s balcony. From a pile of organic waste a woman carefully picks out a bright yellow lemon peel left over from the production of the lemonade beverage so popular in Cairo. The smell in the 35 degree heat is intense; brown and grey colours dominate the scene, mixed with shades of dirt and desert sand. I am fascinated by the order which rules over this chaos and the sorting ladies who are wearing bright and colorful dresses as they sit on top of heaps of unidentified waste and smile at me warmly. They resemble the first flowers of spring that have burgeoned from the moist and dark earth. Now, thanks to eL Seed, one more flower has opened over the heads of Cairo’s cleaners – and this one is the most beautiful of all.