Songs of the Revolution
“A 442 Hz” is a digital single screen installation by Egyptian media artist Sameh Al Tawil
Musicians holding different instruments emerge in front of the steadily focused camera from beyond the screen of the film (hors-champ) [2] and into the limelight of public attention. A small orchestra of Egyptian musicians begins to take a seat, pitch the sound of their instruments and allegedly prepares for a performance in front of the spectator.
The image is plunged in a death-blue cast that enhances its sculptural form. Three minutes into the digital film it seems this is no rehearsal session but an abruptly beginning performance in its own right, intentionally missing out on the organic test sound of A 442 Hz [3] whilst plunging into an array of sound deliberations. Since the 2011 Egyptian revolution the interrelation of art in public, primarily in virtual spaces, and politics has created a new paradigm of digitally enhanced artistic agencies.
Media technologies, mobile media in particular and virtual counterspace, for one, have not only paved the way for a rhizomatically perceived political movement and structure of the upheavals across the Arab world since 2011, but they have also mirrored and finally enacted the political demands and actions of the people in real-time. This rhizomatically ‘medial’ form and perception of the insurgency in an art context is conceptualized in virtual passages of new media art and the decisive role digital technologies and social networks have played during the revolutionary processes. Al Tawil’s film installation eventually epitomizes the contrapuntal sound of disparate individual ‘players’ in rhizomatic structures of political performers and their digital impact in the visibility of events. The intentionality of gestures of incoherence and dysfunctionality culminates in indulgent, self-satisfied facial expressions of the musicians at the end of their performance. The one minute time span of testing sound, pitching instruments for an orchestra is transformed to lived time, the duration on tension and lasting inconsummerability. Al Tawil conceptualizes the disruption of political events, civil structures, and global repercussions through sound as a medium of sensual allurement and intuition. His digital film work critically reflects on the history of performance in video art and the politics of new media art in post-revolutionary Egypt.
written by Rania Gaafar, Germany 2013 (B.A., M.A., Research fellow at the HFG Karlsruhe / media arts.)