 Good evening everyone and good evening to Lara Baladi who is connecting from Egypt. Before I start Lara, I will make a very brief introduction about myself, about you and then we can start our conversation. So I'm Manuela Mazzoni, I've assisted Francesco Bonami in creating the MiFamily project and platform. And tonight we are here with Lara Baladi who first of all I want to thank to be part of this online public program that has been launched by the MUDAM in October 2020. So now today we are here for our fifth appointment. And I think it's also very nice to mention the fact that today is March 8, the International Women's Day that we can celebrate virtually together myself and Lara and all the person who are watching us. So Lara Baladi is an Egyptian Lebanese multidisciplinary artist, archivist and educator whose practice spans photography, video, sculpture, architecture and multimedia installations. Informed by her critical investigations into historical archives and the study of popular culture iconography, her work questions the theoretical divide between fiction and reality, and the cycles inherent to history. Lara won the Grand Nile Award at the Carrier Biennial for her ephemeral construction and sound installation Tower of Hope. She received fellowships from Japan Foundation, MIT's Open Documentary Lab, and she was, among other places, an artist in residence art, Art Omi, McDowell and MIT. Since 2015 she has been a lecturer in MIT's program in art, culture and technology. In 2020 she joined the board of directors of Artist Sanctum, a cultural initiative supporting artists whose work contributes to social change. For more than 20 years, Lara has been on the board of the Arab Image Foundation in Lebanon and the townhouse gallery of contemporary art in Egypt. In 2006 Lara founded the Artist Residency Nomadic Artist in Egypt's White Desert. And during the 2011 Egyptian uprisings, she co-founded two media initiatives, very important, Radio Tahir and Tahir Cinema, which served as public platforms to build and share an archive on and for the revolution. Under the umbrella Vox Populi, Lara amassed a significant archive of data on the Egyptian and other global social movements that has been the basis for publications, media initiatives and art installations, which she exhibits in museums, shows and biennials. I'm referring here to the Transmedial Berlin in 2016 and the Kwan-Tzu Bayaniya in South Korea in 2018. Now I would like to ask you, Lara, my first question, if you can tell us more about the three archives and how it developed during the last 10 years. So good evening, Emmanuel. It's a very nice and long introduction. I'm very honored and humbled. It's really nice to be here. It's been so long we've been preparing this, so I'm really looking forward to this conversation. So just to set a kind of overall view of the work that we're going to talk about today, the Tahir Archives is really at the core of this process. It's called Tahir Archives because it started in 2011 in the very early days of the uprising in Egypt and around the world. When I saw a video that went viral online, which was titled Cairo Tiananmen Courage. And it was a video that as its title indicates looked like the Tankman event in Tiananmen in China in 1889. And this video prompted my, first of all, my participation to what followed after in Tahir and the aftermath of the uprisings. And also to start collecting footage on what was happening on the ground and unfolding events as well as historical footage from events that resonated with what we were experiencing in the square. And so from that moment, I did one of the first projects which you mentioned earlier is Tahir Cinema, which was direct open-air cinema in Tahir. And which was the kind of platform in which we had conversation directly with people participating in the revolution, but also sharing archive and collecting archive. So exchanging USBs and CDs and so on and DVDs at the time. And so that was a kind of setup for a series of works that followed throughout 10 years. So it's been 10 years now with art installations, video installations, sculpture, media events, and also essays about the photography of Tahir. Thank you, Lara. I believe this is a giant project that we could keep talking about only this project for a couple of hours, but we would like also to talk about the project you have presented in our Me Family platform. You have created a series of work. It's not only one. And the work is entitled A, B, C, A Lesson in History, which stands for the Tahir Archives. The first work is the Anatomy of a Revolution, and it's a work inspired by John Berger's essay, The Look of Things, where you gradually reveal two mirrored images, the Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tool and a photograph of Chekevara in his That Bad. The second work is The Game, and it's a large scale collage in the form of a board game that narrates the 2011 Egyptian Revolution and its aftermath. And the third work is A, B, C, A Lesson in History and Arabic A, B, C, primary inspired by the 1950s propagandist educational books also available on the platform to download as a poster for the public. So through this work, you are raising questions about the cycle of a revolution, suggesting a reading of history from a global perspective. I still remember when we had one of our first call to exchange ideas about your work and you were telling us the proposal for the show, and at that time it was still meant to be a physical show in the museum. And then there at that phone call, you told us about your project, A, B, C, Lesson in History, and all your ideas about turning propagandist educational tools through the study of the iconography of a revolution, a very difficult project, very base and very deep. So I would like to ask you if you can please describe in detail the works and the idea that is behind A, B, C, A, Lesson in History. Okay, thank you. So the works in the exhibition are part of a bigger series and they've all come out of collecting this archive, starting in Tahrir, but then very quickly in 2014, especially when I moved to the US to start working with the archive in a different way. I arrived at the moment where Mike Brown was brutally killed by the police and so the events in the US were incredibly close to what I had just experienced in Egypt. And so my archive became much more about the global, you know, a global archetypal understanding of cycles of revolution and phases that we go through in the process of revolting. And so the many shows that I did between 2014 and 2018 were about these different phases. So the pre-revolutionary phase, the uprising phase, the immediate phase that follows the uprising and the kind of, let's say, the optimism that comes with the uprising. And then the phase that is a kind of post-revolution status quo in which many things become much more, it's a bit like if you go back to the French Revolution, it's the witch hunt. And so it's a time of assassinations, of arrests, of disappearances and of higher control even than before the uprising. And so the work in the exhibition is very much about the next phase that follows post-revolution status quo, which is the history lesson. And so how do we think about that period and not just Tahrir but 10 years of decades of protests that is in a number that is unprecedented in history, even more than in the 60s. So how do we think about history and the recalling history in that context? And so this is what these works are about. They're about looking at the timeline of the Egyptian Revolution, which is the game. So it plays on the idea of the game as a monopoly game, as a game of power. And throughout the circling around the board, you have the timeline of 2011 to 2013 using iconography of graffitis and the protests in Tahrir generally speaking. The second work is the video, which I'm very fond of because it's a work I did for the exhibition specifically. And that really establishes the idea of speaking a language throughout these projects of analyzing footage from previous revolutions and recent ones, but also from the history of art and iconography of protests. These are things that resonate throughout history much further down before the history of photography. And then the ABC itself, which is the first of two projects. So it's an ABC primer. And it really plays on a fantastic little book that I found in Egypt and many other books that I collected during my travels. Amongst other places, Kiev, Ukraine, where school books in the 50s and earlier used to be incredibly indoctrinating towards belonging to this kind of idea of patriotism and nationalism. And you know, so images from a very early age of tanks of belonging to army or of having some kind of level of morality in society was very much the language of these books. And so here I turn it on its head and I look at imagining tomorrow being in charge of history lessons and books and telling the history of these moments of revolution through learning the alphabet. And so the ABC is basically a technical pamphlet that allows for learning the alphabet through one image, one word, one letter. And so this is the beginning, let's say, of a series that I'm still working on, which I'm sure we'll talk about in a minute. Yes, absolutely. And talking about history now, I'm also thinking about the fact that now history is very much nowadays linked to social media, to the role of social media today in our society. And I would like to ask you actually what is the role of social media today as opposite to 2011 protest and how the role, if we can talk about role and impact of social media evolved in the last decade, especially linked to revolts revolutions. So in 2011, what I think was interesting was, of course, the Arab uprisings in general, which also prompted the Occupy movement and all the other following movements that we've all watched or experienced. And what was very interesting in terms of social media was really that what happened in that moment more than at any time before that is because things started earlier, like in Iran, for example, in 2009 Twitter played a huge role in the in the protest. But in 2011 this collapse between virtual and reality really happened in a way that had never really been experienced before by by the multitude. So, so suddenly our life online and our life in the street and in the physical world were very much merged and very much interconnected. Of course, in Egypt, it was a big problem to call the revolution Facebook revolution because the majority of Egyptians didn't have access to Facebook let alone to the internet. So this was very much a moment where the role of social media was suddenly used as a tool by protesters to mobilize to generate the next kind of response to the political unfolding on the ground. And so, and so of course it was an extraordinary moment in terms of this technology and this, and this, this social dynamic that we were experiencing. Of course, afterwards, the response of the state is to repress these platforms, and not just these platforms but but all kinds of other communication platforms like Skype and think of another one but Skype is a big one for example here. And in 2013 here in Egypt, the, the, the incrementation of surveillance technologies was, you know, multiplied by a lot and it's possibly the place in the region where now we have maybe the highest surveillance system. In, in, in a global context, social media today is very different than 10 years ago we are in a society of control it's not new but today the society of control is even stronger. And we're also in a surveillance capitalism society so so surveillance is not just to survey us but to control us and to manipulate our behavior, but also to manipulate the behavior of our politicians, as well as manipulate our politics. And so, in countries which have autocratic regimes. The social media platforms are double, double edged swords. At the same time they are almost the only place today where you can really have a kind of political conversation, but at the same time and because of that it's also the place where it's incredibly risky to have such conversations and where most people get kind of, you know pinpointed and arrested, eventually. And so, at large, on the other hand, what's happened to is that those social media platforms have also increased in numbers and in types. And so you have also many more decentralized platforms, peer to peer, which means that there are many more places where conversations are happening. But again, the danger is that the conversation is polarized and that it ends up being, you know, that you end up speaking in a closed circle. The big tech companies have, of course, a lot of power today much more than they had in 2011. And so the challenge today is to continue to diversify our ways of communicating and of ways of mobilizing. Thank you, Lara. I think that what you said is very much linked to my third fourth question. I don't remember how many more what number we are at the moment, but I think that all your explanation about the social media is absolutely linked to what I'm going to ask you now in relation to the art world because we know that today the evolution of the internet, the technological innovation, the immense production of devices of all kinds that we are all using every day in our daily life from my pads, iPhones, laptops, watches, vocal assistants. These are all part of a society that is completely dominated by new media and the artists as well are using these tools to analyze the impact that these artificial transformation have had on our daily lives. And they're also using these tools in order to produce their projects. And now I'm thinking also about the fact that you, of course, are using internet and using online sources, digital tools, social media as Facebook, just to name one for your Vox Populi archive. So what kind of impact do you think the digitalization of our world have in the art world? So just trying to be more focused on the art world, now we talked about society in general, and I think that the art world will be very much impacted by this. And also thinking about our platform, we completely changed the idea of our physical show in order to create a project that could be experienced virtually by the public. So what is your opinion about the meaning of art in relation to this globalized society today and this world dominated by internet and by social media? So I think the question of technology in general and the digital technology in particular is really a kind of push and pull situation where artists will play with new technologies and be attracted by new technologies to kind of be challenged and see where these technologies can take us projects you can make with these new technologies, but at the same time, making, you know, working with new technologies allows also to improve these technologies. And so art kind of feeds into technology kind of evolving and progressing while at the same time technologies changing and shifting are forcing art and artists to naturally kind of shift the language in which they're making their art. So, you know, the new gen, I teach at MIT, so it's, so you know, I see every day students working with VR, with AR, with, even with just with videos or digital, yes, digital tools that we are familiar with for, you know, more familiar ways to say, to be more specific. But what I'm always fascinated by is how the new generation is so at ease with the digital world and how much that language is their language. You know, if I ask a student to learn to use Photoshop, they come back two days later and they maneuver really easily on a new software that they've just discovered. They use the educational tools online much more easily. So I think that has really influenced and shaped also the kinds of approaches of artists making art. And of course, recently, the situation of the pandemic has really forced every one of us in that context of the art world to, to really challenge our ways of sharing artworks or reflecting and producing art so that we can eventually disseminate it. So what we've seen is many things. I've been fascinated recently by, especially in the context of film festivals that have created platform and of course the exhibition we're talking about because that was a very big challenge to create that very platform where you go in with your avatar and you walk around and you almost like mimic the idea of being in the museum but yet you're on the screen. And you're also with other people visiting the show and so on. But in film festivals there is also like a lot of, we see and not just in film festivals but like in conferences and all kinds of gatherings. We see many more types of platforms being created specifically to welcome an event. And I think what's really interesting is that the future is multilayered. The future is multilayered and it's also deeper in a sense that there's going to be many more levels in the virtual world as in on internet but also in the real world with augmented reality new technologies that will create many more layers in our experience of the world. And in that context, art will have to adapt and I think the very even more upcoming generation will embrace these technologies but also will embrace this understanding of reality in a very different way than we do. And will navigate these places and these platforms and augmented reality and so on in ways that will shape the kind of art that will emerge in that with that generation so I think it's very exciting and in lots of ways. And also of course it means that a lot of things will possibly disappear, maybe museums will have to rethink and they will have to rethink their outreach programs, they will have to rethink what kinds of exhibitions and how they can invite people to be interested to come to a space, and at the same time to to think about open source and about sharing information archives, you know, treasures. And so and so all of these things are going to be very much, I think the challenge and of the of the next coming years. And speaking about the future the way museum probably needs to change the way to invite audience, the approach, the approach they have to offer. I would like to ask you if you want to anticipate to us a little bit about your upcoming projects and new ideas and new works that you are working on or you have in mind to produce in the coming months and years. Yeah, so I mean what's what's been really amazing is to is to work with you on on this project because you know the work was very different, the way we were thinking about it for the museum. It was almost a very intentionally analog exhibition, and suddenly it had to become digital so so it kind of forced me to do this video and so I'm really happy I have this new piece because it turned out to be much more layered and complex than what I had originally thought about. And it also is the starting point for the project I'm working on the main project I'm working on right now which has been an ongoing process which started at the same time as the ABC primer. Which is an outcome of the primer because of course I'm very bulimic with images I like excess and so. And so my archive is growing constantly and as I was doing the ABC primer I started to realize it was limited space so it was a little bit like a test. So now what I've been working on for the past year and a half is building a website, which is basically an artwork, a web based artwork, which will be somewhere between a publication, a schoolbook, an artwork, and a diary, which will look at the archetype, the patterns, the phases, the cycles and revolutions, but through an adversary. So from A to Z in the Arabic alphabet, I will create a kind of narrative that flows from the beginning to the end of the alphabet and that is somewhere between a narrative about iconography of protest in relationship to art, like the example of Ramrant and the death of the Che. But also about history of photography, iconic images, it's very layered and it goes in lots of tangents so it's a little bit of a ballad that I'm proposing to engage with. And at the same time it will be a place where you can find data on specific events and related material to each word in the adversary so it's actually a repository of my archive, and hopefully that will close this chapter. This is a decade of intense searching and bathing into protests and hopefully give me a kind of open door to new. And I think that your explanation about new projects, just inviting us to discover more about your work in general. I mean, we could talk a lot about social media future as you said, multi layered platform about the important of history today and about globalization about art at this point, because unfortunately we are already running a little bit out of time, what I can say is that I would like to invite the public to spend more time in discovering and analyzing carefully your work on our platform as well as your Voxpop will actually timeline and when your new website will be complete I don't know if you already have a deadline if you know already when will be launched in May and August. Oh, pretty soon so we have to remember that over the summer we could probably experience your new project, virtual project, and, and I think that was what is important for all of us as a as a public who is exploring your work is to try to find a way of considering how important is also our opinion, our intervention, our figure as an active participant and not only as a passive spectator and this is what I think you were trying to do with your work. It was supposed to be shown in the physical museum and that you try to switch to the virtual one so I think this is the message we can also leave to them audience today and trying to be a real active spectator of art in general and your work. More specifically so I thank you Lara for this wonderful talk and I really hope to follow your new website in few months. Of course I will let you know of course one it's online. Thank you so much for having me a manuela. Thank you and goodbye everyone. Thank you Lara. Bye bye. Bye bye.