{"id":6775,"date":"2022-01-24T09:23:43","date_gmt":"2022-01-24T07:23:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/?p=6775"},"modified":"2022-12-25T11:40:40","modified_gmt":"2022-12-25T09:40:40","slug":"mapping-an-escape-from-cairos-hyperreality-through-informal-instagram-archives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/mapping-an-escape-from-cairos-hyperreality-through-informal-instagram-archives\/","title":{"rendered":"Mapping an Escape from Cairo\u2019s Hyperreality through informal Instagram archives"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
“Firehorse Cairo,” a church, a mosque, and the firehorse billboards towering over the skyline (photo courtesy Youssef ElNahas<\/a>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/h4>\n

Yahia Dabbous<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Looking within Cairo, it\u2019s hard to escape the narrative that insists on a new Egypt. The New Republic, which resembles less of an institution-building vision and is instead presented as a silver-bullet solution to decades of stagnation in the picture of CGI\u2019d next-generation cities that flash across billboards dominating the cityscape, has been promising pristine scenes of serenity and skyscrapers.<\/p>\n

But while the New Administrative Capital begins to take shape, segments of middle-class Egyptians \u2014 for whom such projects are promoted to present a clean break from the overburdened Cairo \u2014 are skeptical about the New Republic\u2019s assurances of modernity and technological advancement, dismissing the seductive images of utopia in satellite cities as little more than choreographed mirages.<\/p>\n

\"\"
A map of the first phase of the New Administrative Capital (NAC) at the entrance of the Administrative Capital for Urban Development office in Cairo, Egypt.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The disillusionment stems from a perceived ballooning disconnect between the lived experiences of Cairo\u2019s 20 million residents and the distant image of the New Capital. While Cairenes share an average of 0.8 meters of green space per person and the city\u2019s rare leafy neighborhoods are seeing those centimeters shrink, the highways that recently pummeled through the former gardens lead to the yet uninhabited New Capital, where a park six times the size of New York\u2019s Central Park is under construction.<\/p>\n

Moreover, a recent walkout during a screening of Feathers<\/em>\u00a0at El Gouna Film Festival serves as an illustration of the uncoupling of reality and narrative. Sherif Mounir, a popular Egyptian actor, led the walkout at the grandiose annual festival to protest the negative portrayal of Egypt in the film\u2019s depiction of slums. \u201cThose slums we had are disappearing now,\u201d he stated in an interview with MBC\u2019s El Hekaya<\/em>. \u201cEven in the poor areas, people don\u2019t live that badly,\u201d he claimed, before declaring that \u201cwe are now in a New Republic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given that official state statistics indicate that the majority of Egypt\u2019s urban population live in informal settlements, this broad chasm in perception of the country\u2019s condition can be considered a hyperreality, a concept devised by French philosopher Jean Baudrillard to depict the state in which one is unable to distinguish between reality and a simulation of reality.<\/p>\n

Within this cloud of uncertainty, a flurry of Instagram accounts doubling as informal collections and archives has emerged, capturing overlooked, often unnoticed substructures, charms, and frustrations of Cairo\u2019s daily realities.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Image courtesy Instagram @spotsh3rawi<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One such account, @spotsh3rawi<\/a>, showcases the ubiquitous presence of Muhammad Metwalli al-Sha\u2019rawi, a popular late scholar whose interpretations of Islam have endured authoritatively. By simply photographing portraits, posters, and paintings of the Sheikh in arbitrary, everyday settings such as on microbuses and private vehicles, or at kiosks and storefronts alongside figures such as Oum Khalthoum or former presidents, the account exhibits the extent to which Sha\u2019rawi has been mythologized in the popular Egyptian imagination.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, @sabils_of_cairo<\/a> celebrates the networks of self-sustenance in the free water sources and fountains voluntarily placed across the city, a testament to the charitability of Egyptians; @borto2archive<\/a> documents abandoned orange and tangerine skin littered across Cairo, presenting an aesthetically pleasing picture to the unsavory sight of rotten fruit.<\/p>\n

@yetanotheraccountaboutchairs<\/a>, meanwhile, looks at the distribution of unsanctioned, DIY chairs that permanently occupy pavements, explaining to The Markaz Review that they hope to \u201cfind a correlation\u201d regarding the street chairs, looking for patterns within their arrangement and use. They are usually created by and reserved for doorkeepers, says the administrator, who also likes to think that each individual design is customized to exhibit an element of their personality through them.<\/p>\n

Each Instagram account serves as a brushstroke of a niche Cairene hallmark, contributing to an evocative, resonant portrait of the city, one which helps resists the embellished mirages of its hyperreal narratives.<\/p>\n

Stickers and plastic epitomize disposability, but some accounts make them a little more permanent. From the perspective of the passenger seat, @stuckincairo<\/a> is a collection of bumper stickers seen on the road that doubles as a spectacle of common sexism, aggression, and God-fearing declarations, as well as a snippet of absurdity. Meanwhile, @mannequinofegypt<\/a> allows us not only to be bewildered by a Santa Claus mannequin in fiery lingerie showcased across a store display window, but in its more routine images it can gradually sketch unpretentious and unusual wardrobe trends of the day.<\/p>\n

These accounts, of which there are dozens \u2014 documenting everything from heart symbols<\/a> to the calligraphic variety of \u2018forbidden\u2019 signs<\/a>, messy murals<\/a> of Mohamed Salah and sound<\/a> \u2014 range in their self-descriptions from archives to collections and diaries, and usually they appear to simply be for fun, not dissimilar from meme pages. But in a country where official archives are shielded from public view, too sensitive to be accessed even by researchers, the accounts operate not only in an archival vacuum, but in an environment in which the collective capacity to simply make sense of Cairo has been fractured by design.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Image courtesy Instragram @yetanotheraccountaboutchairs<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nour El Safoury, an editor and film critic who leads classes on mapping informal circulation of media at the Cairo Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences<\/a> (CILAS), says the spatial class-based divisions within Cairo result in wildly disparate perceptions of the city\u2019s essence, and that this phenomenon of informal digital archives are a way \u201cto navigate the urban space to create your own commentary from your position and from your experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking with The Markaz Review, El Safoury notes that while the quality and information of documents in traditional archives vary dramatically from those found in informal ones, the ways in which these pages function resembles practices found in standard archives and collections. \u201cIn documenting, you\u2019re interested in how a particular moment in time or in reality is preserved,\u201d she says. \u201cWith archiving, it is about how to make those artefacts come together to allow someone in the future to make sense of a moment in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

She explains that archiving requires telling a story, and that the narrator\u2019s authority is stronger when it is a pluralistic narrative featuring different viewpoints. For institutional archives, donations are crucial to this, while Cairo\u2019s informal Instagram archives are typically operated by an anonymous administrator who encourages submissions to broaden the collective perception of a certain artefact that symbolizes Cairo\u2019s vernacular. But can follower submissions uphold the function of plurality?<\/p>\n

El Safoury says that standard archives often lack a diversity of voices in their storytelling, generally relying significantly on a small pool of donors and contributors for the majority of their material, which raises the question of who gets to document a moment. Additionally, the circulation and study of archival records is predominantly limited to researchers, while public consumption and access has been sporadic.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Image courtesy Instagram @cairo_mamnu3<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If we are to consider these accounts as representative, informal archives preserving a memory of an everyday Cairo threatened with erasure from official narratives of and by the New Republic, then we must heed that they too are flawed as a record of this moment. Broadly, accounts often post in the English language, photos are frequently geo-located to more affluent districts within Cairo, or lack date and location details entirely. Additionally, accounts often cease their effort entirely and without explanation, or deviate from their initial artefactual focus, perhaps inevitable given their informal, uncompensated work.<\/p>\n

@firehorsecairo<\/a> is an illustration of this: initially marveling at the pervasive omnipresence of a stock photo of a horse on fire that advertises advertising space on Color Studio\u2019s wealth of billboards, the account has broadly substituted its content to varying forms of light-hearted horse memes. Still, its earlier documenting of the firehorse<\/em> artefact was invaluable in helping us simply perceive a visual feature so prevalent that the everyday gaze stopped noticing it, in the same way we don\u2019t notice our own nose.<\/p>\n

This phenomenon may not be exempt from myth-making in its artefactual storytelling, as its agents too can be unreliable narrators.<\/p>\n

Yet these administrators operate within a dramatically fragmented social consciousness, resulting from the wild disparity in accounts of the city\u2019s reality. What they do achieve is to bring observers closer to a more resonant, accurate model of Cairo. By collecting images of artefacts excluded from hyperreal narratives, they attest to their actuality, and by defending the sovereign distinction between real and simulation, these collections may not only inform future comprehension of everyday life in contemporary Cairo, but can help today\u2019s Cairenes escape the dizzying narrative of a New Republic that, for so many, is simply out of sight.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even as the despotic rulers of post-revolution Egypt attempt to remake greater Cairo, hoping to gloss over the regime’s dismal human rights record, one writer sees through the smoke and 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