///Dramatic episodes about Locomotion/// ongoing project by Mohamed Abdelkarim

Is a performance/essay-based project, considers narrative as an essential tool, using narration from its theatrical
foundation. The project probes the narrative patterns of myth, history and ideology, by employing a variety of aesthetic
forms: from cinematic and documentary strategies to Audiovisual; from oral storytelling to religious rhetoric. Personal
anecdotes are interwoven with historical events, where real and imagined protagonists, crystallising collective desires
into fictitious personae. What emerges is a speculative historiography that relies as much on conspiracy theories, play
and drama component convention, as on fact; where historical truth unfolds as an encounter between an event and
its manifold mediation.
Since 2013 I started a long-term project engages various subjects found within the locomotion and travel literature
as a foundation for serendipity inspection through several currencies of the mobility action as exile, forced migration,
exclusion, diaspora, ostracism, and mercenary tourism, etc.
Conceptually the project in a position of re-reading and re-examining the dilemma of [historical materialism Vs clash
of civilisations] through different social phenomena such as religion, gender and nationalism, and how these relate to
issues such as reconstructing identity, utilise stories from the medieval era as a paradigm to understand contemporary
issues.
What are the renegades in our contemporary issues? How can we define the poetic gesture in the Apocalyptic era?
How can we live the permanent crises? The questions are inspired by an urgency created in a world entangled in power,
politics and crisis.
In the aspect of form, the project depends on several notions as chaos, awkward order and disproportion rhythm,
appropriates several mediums and forms as performance and moving an image, as well as the format brought to the
fore by documentary theatre, essay, laboratory display and opera/hip-hop.

Episodes #1 #2
[Christopher Columbus Meets Diego Diaz] and [Ahmeds
Revenge]
The projects stem from the notion of the terms [alienation and
immigration] in geographical and historical context through
North Africa [Morocco] and South of Europa [Spain] that
established on Voltaire quote [Africa begins at the Pyrenees]
that lead me to several questions about the political and cultural
boundaries! Through the research, Im dealing with narrative as
a source of information, from the literature and history and the
storytelling.
Recently several questions imposed on the dilemma of the
identity, culture and its relation to the Western counterpart, at the
same time there is new contemporary theses dealing with
dismantling Culture, and the death of National treatises, that
drives me to search geographically on two places that can reflect
certain phases of historical and geographical relation, one of
those place is Republic of Sal: a short-lived state, founded by
Moriscos, were subject to mass deportation during the Spanish
Inquisition. The Republic's main commercial activities were the
piracy during its brief existence in the 17th century.
Christopher Columbus Meets Diego Diaz, 2014, Lecture-performance, Barproject and
ngels barcelona, image of a pseudo map.

The starting point of the research is Voltaires quote [Africa

begins at the Pyrenees] courage me to reexamine the Spanish
works of literature that contains African and Arab gesture such
as Juan Guitsolo and Frederic Garsia Lorca.

Two actors playing Christopher Columbus Meets Diego Diaz and

Ahmed's revenge, 2015, play-performance, Sharjah Gallery,
AUC, Cairo.

Ahmed's Revenge and other untold

stories, installation view of the
performance Christopher Columbus
Meets Diego Diaz and Ahmed's revenge.
2015, Sharjah Gallery, AUC, Cairo.

Various objects of the Performance/Play "Christopher Columbus Meets Diego Diaz

and Ahmed's revenge", Sharjah Gallery, AUC, Cairo, 2015.

Episode #3
[The Journey of the Meteor to Meet his Beloved]
Is a text-based performance inspired from two stories, first one
is a book wrote in 1611 by Al-Hajar, who has fled Spain for
Morocco in 1599, following the persecutions of the Moriscos.
The story plays a role in the context of mixture historical culture
Im trying to find the blended culture of the Aljamiado manuscript
[texts are manuscripts that use the Arabic script for transcribing
European languages].
The second possible real story is about the Somali artist Haroun
Kanshour and how he developed his performance through a
tense relationship with public and institutions.

Telling the journey of the meteor in a public tea room in Sierre,

2015, Switzerland.

Tools and equepments from the performance The Journey of the

Meteor, in a public tea room in Sierre, 2015, Switzerland.

Episode #4
[Isabel searches for Monad]
Starting from Isabelle Eberhardt history: was writer and traveller
in 1898 she dressed like a man and left Europe to North Africa
"Sahara" and called herself Si Mahmoud Saadi before she died
Isabelle was the leader of the Qadiriyya Sufi order.
Through the reaches of Isabelle biopolitics matter, which is has
to do with several notions as "Queer Diasporas to understand
the concept of diaspora The performance appropriate a poetry
and musical gesture.

Still images of the performance |The Journey of the Meteor", in

Usego Space in Sierre, 2016, Switzerland.

"Isabelle Search for Monad" Image of the Artist/Poet Phumlani

Ntuli reciting fraqment of Isabelle Ebrhadre's novels. Maxxx
space, 2016, Switzerland

The previous projects

His Highness' History

Practising domination means subjugating one person to another
so that each of them has his view of history, based on a different
human perspective. At the same time, each of them narrates
history using the same tools and criteria, which water down
reality and obscure clear vision. In such case, we try to ignore
both those historical perspectives and create a new, more
absurd one.
The film is inspired by Franz Kafkas short story: Jackal and

HD Video 05:35', 7 digital print, dimenstion variable, 2014

Comparison of Appearance
Video, Booklet, Objects
Comparison of Appearance that circles the controversial Egyptian ideologist, author, and intellectual Sayyid Qutb and his trip to the
United States from 1948 to 1949, which changed his political convictions fundamentally. Qutb, best known today as the thinker who
conceived jihadism, was also a writer and critic of capitalism in the age of the Cold War and the last phase of colonialism. To this day,
his writings shape the discourse in Egypt (and elsewhere) on dealing with the West. Abdelkarims interest is not in Qutb himself, but in
the historical forces and patterns that congealed in his influence:
Qutbs experiences with colonialism, connected with enormous changes in Egyptian society as a result of the foreign rule, reflect the
experiences of many in his generation. In my artistic work, I am not so much interested in the details of Qutbs personality but rather
in Qutb as a sociological phenomenon that can be understood from various viewpoints.

2013, HD video, 17 min, 2 sec

Pseudo-documentary about a real author called Sayyid Qutb.
Qutbs experiences with colonialism, connected with enormous
changes in the Egyptian society as a result of the foreign rule,
reflect the experiences of many in his generation.

2013, Engraved copper plates in display boxes, 25

cm x 31 cm x 25 cm
Reproduction of diaries for Sayyid Qutb, Egyptian
author, called The America I Have Seen chapter of
the funeral of the birds in Egypt.

2013, Digital drawing print on fine art paper

21 cm x 29.7 cm
Reproduction of diaries for Sayyid Qutb, Egyptian
author, encompassing his radically anti-Capitalist and
anti-imperialism, called [the American view of death]

Conspiracy Exceeds Consumption

2012, HD video, 4 min, 58 sec B5 size Book, 50 pages, 500
copies

Several narratives described somewhat evocatively as

personal and public life inspires conspiracies. Somehow the
narrative, an alleged plot by the Artist, creates a framework
that uncritically reflects and represents personal experiences
of representation, economic capital and different social
currencies. The conspiracies, narrated through film and text,
are the object of observation inducting the observer into the
plot.

2012, HD video, 4 min, 58 sec B5 size Book, 50 pages, 500 copies

External Rotation
2012, HD video, 2 channels, 20 min Loop
The work derived from the legend of "The People of the Cave,"
known in the Biblical tradition as The Seven Sleepers. The
symbolism of this archaic story is projected and integrated into
the personal events, particularly that dealing with the political
and social dimension.

The Third Thing

2011, HD video, 7 min 40 sec.
The Video seeks to redefine the notion of violence and explore
alternative ways of thinking towards a 'philosophy of violence'.
Violence may never disappear, and as such its practices may
require a re-reading on both the material and the moral level,
which one deals with violence as an action and acknowledges
it as one type of discourse among others.

Untitled
Digital C-prints,Dimensions variable, 2012
A number of images and texts, based on a classical Arabic
language, with a sacred and a religious dimension, touching
what could be called "religious capitalism" with clich images
which look like those praising God by showing nature as a shred
of evidence to his existence and power.
It is less clear what come the first: the text or the image. Neither
text nor image provides mutual illumination. Instead, they
function around implication and likeness. The cherry-picker
machine used to complete the construction of ritzy-looking
Christmas decoration in Beirut strikes the eye equally as an
industrial coal conveyor paradoxically spewing gold, as through
value were already artificial, with no remaining link to its material
source. Text by: Mia Jankowicz