Facilitated by artist Batool El Hennawy, this workshop explores narrative and the reluctance to build narrative or contribute to an existing one. What do the different proximities to a subject matter do to an auto-narrative? Looking into conceptions of livelihood, we will be moving between different historical accounts and theoretical critiques of Abdel Nasser’s Egyptian Agrarian Reform law up to Sadat’s Open Door “Infitah” policy, and considering the labour migration resulted from it.
As we navigate two contexts, Jordan and Egypt, we will move between public policy designed by the state and/or ruling class and studies of local economic functions as a way of understanding urban expansion and its direct effects on spaces of practice and self-sustainability, instead of the more common conversation on progress and awaiting an economic boom as a mirage extending working hours for a national goal. In reference to being in Amman, a city built to be urban and mostly through visiting labour, we will talk to a landscape designer and to a technician involved in construction projects that mainly rely on agrarian knowledge and visiting laborers.
The workshop follows an indirect research methodology of historicity, jumping between different moments on a long timeline of a prevailing paradigm shift in music, cinema, and labour, wondering: what did untimely collaboration offer within strong tides of political humidity over 100 years? In addition to readings on images, songs, and policies, we will be following a film by Hashem Al Nahhas (1970s, Egypt) and a song by Saleh Abd El Hay (1920s, Egypt). As we listen to Saleh Abd El Hay’s announcer, before 1932 and the disappearance of the Taqtuqa, we find an alternative that departed confrontation for a chance to repeat an important line. Even if a conclusion is not reached, an opportunity for it remains present in choices made by practitioners across various work conditions.
The luck of life is for the spirit because luck is not tangible but responsive, additionally because it’s a dedication and a connection. If we are left without a pressure to compare destiny, with free choice, or on the other hand not made too aware of a discontinuity between them, so much is left for the non-comparative moment, as the common denominator.
This workshop is part of the second phase of our 2019 program at The Lab, bringing together artists and cultural practitioners from various backgrounds to look at the postcolonial context we inhabit through the metaphor of arrival and departure. Long shaped by forced diasporas and migratory flows, Amman will be approached as a living archive offering fertile ground for a conceptual and poetic archaeology of place.
Batool Elhennawy recently completed her studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Helwan University. She co-founded the Cairo Institute for Liberal Arts and Sciences in Alexandria in 2018. Previously she had been working with the Cairo Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences since 2015, as well as doing research with other institutions and academic projects. She participated in Spring Sessions residency in 2017. Her practice revolves around working with theory to find a common agreement or starting points for projects that might take on other forms.
*photo by Mona Lisa Ali