What we believe

We are invited to embark on a pilgrimage with the people, ideas and visual imagery in Wael Shawky's video series of works collectively titled 'Telematch'. It is possible to delve in and out of this group of works in the same way that Shawky himself seems to do - sometimes he shows just one work form the series and other times different combinations. At Darat Al Funun he shared with his audience the first ever screening of 'Telematch Crusades', which on this occasion was presented in tandem with 'Telematch Sadat' and 'Telematch Shelter'. In addition two of his other video works appeared alongside, the earlier 'Al Aqsa Park' and more recent Larvae Channel II'. The lineage of the 'Telematch' series is becoming more and more clear over time as Shawky adds new works to the collection (the others in the series include 'Telematch' Suburb', 'Telematch Supermarket' and 'Telematch Upper Egypt'). So it is interesting to consider how his productions that are made under other titles, outside this series, sit alongside the expanding world that is 'Telematch'.

The term Telematch was coined by Shawky from the name of a television game-show originally broadcast in Germany in the 1970s in which teams from different towns would come together and compete in various contests. Initially two towns were involved, but later up to five communities would contend against one another. Often the people participating would be dressed up in ornate costumes and were essentially co-opted as performers of a game within a game, played out for the mesmerised television audience. These peoples' crossing from one town to another, or to a neutral space where a tournament would be battled out and the resulting effect of this transition and coming together of cultures (that first sit in contrast tand then later combine), is what interests Shawky. In a conversation with William Wells, Director of the Townhouse in Cairo Shawky said: “In most of my work I have been aiming to construct a hybridized society. A system of a society in transition, a condition that is not clear, a translation. I see my role as that of a translator- this translation is heightened the closer I come to a system of an actually existing society.” His intrigue lies in where people come from, where they belong and where will they return to once a game, be it a Telematch experience or a real movement and conflict within history, has been played out. He questions whether there is the possibility for two apparently opposing societies, which have previously viewed each other as 'the other', to become hybridized – and specifically due to the result of a game that brings them together to sparks a coalition of sorts that could remain?

The spirit of Shawky's works appears to be complicit with this notion. It is therefore easy to loose the chronological progression of his practice and instead his works nestle together in a vessel full of what he describes as 'translations'. We can pull out different pieces one by one and imagine that in fact the same thing is always being translated, but depending on the day and context, and how the world is currently functioning, Shawky's translation appears just slightly differently in each attempt he makes. Could the works themselves be a hybridisation of one expression that we are simply seeing in slightly different ways?

In each 'Telematch' video the road is usually dry and dusty, but the seductive golds and creams of the desert sand and the blues of the sky and sometimes the sea are all immersing. We fall into a magical scenery that acts as a backdrop for the series of stories that Shawky's translations make all the more compelling as he liberates each one from actual history. Within this moody-landscape first 'Telematch Sadat' plays out. It is a re-enactment of sorts of the 1981 assassination and burial of Anwar El Sadat, the third President of Egypt.. Two processions come and go, but all the players are children that Shawky has brought on board from two different towns in the Delta. These children are too young to have seen the shockingly infamous live-broadcast of Sadat's assassination on television. The capturing of this event on a direct live camera-feed is clearly related by him to the potential of the original Telematch project – a game within a game that captures every move and is being scripted by its writers not by its participants. The children here are probably also not yet aware of the significance of Sadat's assassination and its impact on their lives and certainly not, by extension, of its meaning for understanding the power of television and even more remotely the formations of video art in Egypt that would follow. In this re-enactment their participation is innocent and they perform what is requested of them without an agenda, as if the story they suddenly find themselves a part of has yet to be written.

'Larvae Channel II' zooms in to portray two family members seated in their home who ramble about their situation freely, under a veneer of animation technique. This elderly man and woman are the only speaking characters within the composition of works shown at Darat Al Funun and yet their script, while their own, is confused and again circles around topics, theories and religion.Talking about the history of the region since 1948, the tensions between religions and also the different ranks in society, theirs is a description of a fractured and dispersed society. Yet one sentence at least brings them and those around them together as the man says “our bed, the earth is still our bed and the sky our blanket.” The more precise nature of their spoken references act as pin pricks of intensity alongside the other videos, to remind the audience that within any 'game' real people's lives are at stake. Here Shawky blurs their visual impact and their identity, but their voices and words remain loud and clear.

We then step back in time to explore the scenery of 'Telematch Crusades'. Again Shawky casts children to play out the main roles, and they respond as an army of slightly bemused donkey riders arriving at a castle. On this occasion the re-enactment posed is more ambiguous, the story more circulatory. The group circumference the castle, their intentions unclear. Is Shawky's translation here one that clears the pages that have previously been written? As his neutral group of actors meander through the sand, trying to find their bearings, they do not seem to worry too much about the outcome of their endeavours. One young boy is seen in the last frame backdropped by the vivid blue of a tempting sea and as he descends from the donkey his mind could easily be focused on running and jumping into the waves to break free from the structure of the game he is no longer enjoying. Hence, any conclusion to this crusade that could speak of the far-reaching social and political impacts that the history books refer to melts into the landscape.

Another animation, Al Aqsa Park (2006), is a digital rendering of the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount on the same site as Al Aqsa mosque, seen spinning on a central axis like a ballerina ride in a fun fair. This work connects back to Telematch Crusades as it presents a site that was given over to the Augustinians during the Crusades and the Dome of the Rock as turned into a church for much of the 12^th Century. Shawky’s version of the dome is bleached of all colour and with its golden dome and famous blue Iznic tiles washed of grandeur, the mosque assumes a solitary, timeless and endearing modesty. Shawky is of course more than familiar with Al Aqsa’s importance to Muslim culture. For more than fourteen hundred years, it has been venerated throughout the Islamic world as one of the holiest sites after Mecca and Medina. A centre of pilgrimage internationally, it was to Al Aqsa (the farthest mosque) that the prophet Muhammad made his night journey from Mecca and ascended to heaven to receive the commandments, including the five daily prayers, before returning to Earth to communicate them to the faithful. The Dome of the Rock is the oldest existing building in Islam, and so Shawky uses it in his work as a symbol of what he refers to as ‘the situation of Islam now’.

As the video progresses the rendered dome gains speed, spinning faster and faster like a carousel. It gradually tilts enough to reveal blinking lights beneath its foundations, an image that is more funfair sensation than religious wonder. Shawky’s initial solid and calm homage of contemplation begins to seem out of control. Shawky prefers to maintain his original comparison to a waltzer, a fairground ride that similarly tilts as it spins, which he was always afraid of in childhood due to the participants’ surrender to its attendant and ultimately a game; a clear reference so the Telematch television project. This acceptance to let go, suggests Shawky, in a way mirrors religious belief—particularly given the lack of individual manoeuvre, or control that can be asserted in either case. The artificial novelty value that the dome assumes in 'Al Aqsa Park' works as a symbol that hybridizes different systems, one of strict religion and the other of amusement and leisure. Although there are no literal, or historical relationships that connect these two cultures, they both rely on another system – one of belief.

Finally in this exhibition is 'Telematch Shelter', just one part of the four-channel video installation 'Darb El Arbaeen (Forty Days’ Road)', 2007. The piece becomes all the more ambiguous, but also compelling, when seen alone. A train of children walk to a strange, peaked rock-formation in the desert and enter by means of a tarpaulin door. Others then leave, the procession endless and direct, but without clear cause. As if an ark, the rock admits all who come to its door and then expels them back into the desert, now without categorisation. The peak and its environs could easily have escaped from a 'Star Wars' scene or the film 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves' where the treasure lies behind a magical cave door that can only be opened with the secret word “simsim”, both infamous moments in popular culture, that are adaptions of more historically bound mythologies. The sound track of this work, as well as all the other works bar 'Larvae Channel II', is a dull rumbling, a kind of generalised white noise, or the impossibility of silence. This repeated strategy again loops together the works and if we were to close our eyes any translation is possible in our imagination. As they exit 'Telematch Shelter' to the right of the screen, perhaps these children too, just as the audience does, encounter another 'Telmatch' experience, forever caught up as part of the neutral community that drifts in a hallucinatory vortex in search of a transformed and as Shawky too seeks via his practice, hybridized society.