Head Bopping to The Muslims

"Assured-beyond-their-years San Diego quartet the Muslims will definitely get a lot of attention for their name, but we're much more interested in the band's catchy, sorta sloppy and stark post-punk-infused rock 'n' roll." (>)

Nagi Noda

Just discovered Japanese director, designer, and apparently pop singer Nagi Noda from Lostateminor.com who posted about her recent passing, and I am really enjoying her simple fascinating work, from music videos to commercials to short films, artworks, book designs, fashion garments, and more!

Minilogue - Animals / by Kristofer Strom & Varelsen

Minilogue - Animals from ljudbilden on Vimeo.

Love it.

Spaghetti & Daftar

Designed a header for Spaghetti Mag, a really nice design portal run by Cairo-based designer/illustrator Sherief Samy. Unlike most design portals with an over-abundance in content that might not necessarily be good, Spaghetti Mag is obviously pretty selective and reports very worthy things.

And I have a coupla things posted on Daftar Tajreebi, which is the experimental webspace for Omar Al-Zo'bi, Diana Hawatmeh, Najla Al-Bassam, and myself (others welcome to join!).

Decorating Alexandrian Streets

Spent the weekend in Alexandria with the energetic folks of the up and coming "Fo2 we Ta7t" studio doing a little graffiti.

Your Voice Down The Toilet

A very very very good left-wing short Egyptian animation criticizing the Egyptian voting system.

How Public is Public Space in Cairo?

So a friend and I are walking down the street and we decide to sit at the edge of this sidewalk thing and just relax and chit-chat a bit. Sitting down... somewhere on the street, no biggy, but then we're approached by a big man with a big mustache a big stick who just stands right next to us and looks at us.

"yes?" we ask him.
"you're not allowed to sit here," he claims.
"but it's public property."
"no it's not, a very important official lives in one of those buildings."
"err, yes, he lives in an apartment in one of those buildings, hence the apartment is his property, but the street in front of the building in which he has an apartment is not his property, and neither he nor you have the right to tell people whether they can stand on the street or not."
"Look, a lot of kids come here and smoke up and someone called the police to have the situation dealt with, so it's best for you not to be in this neighborhood if you wanna stay out of trouble."

(and of course this is the part where any regular Egyptian would just walk away, either because he/she doesn't want trouble or he/she has just had it talking to the guy)

"okay listen, man, we're not smoking up or doing any sort of drugs whatsoever. We're just two people talking on the street and we're not doing anything wrong, and you have no right to tell us to leave, and we kindly ask you to walk away and leave us alone."

He leaves.

A lot of times people here will give up things that are rightfully theirs. Egyptians, they don't want to deal with things, they just want to get around things. And there's a popular Egyptian saying which I think is the seed that allows other people to somewhat control one another's lives:

"eat what you like, but wear what people like."

How jacked up is that?

Egyptian Hugs & Kisses

So I arrive at my studio this morning, and Gamal, the "bawab" (um, door man?) rushes over and hugs me so sincerely tight and kisses my cheeks left and right.

Recapping

So I arrived back in Cairo last night, and boy am I freakin' loving it. As soon as I came, I went out with my homeboy Haisam for a quick disgustingly luscious shawerma sandwhich with tahina, the way it should be done, nice and juicy. Hung out on the busy streets after midnight. I'm sweating to the point where if you touch my skin, your hand will be stuck there for a while, but I don't care, I freakin' love it.

Going through my latest picture album now, I just realized how incredibly busy my last few days in Rotterdam were. First there was Pecha Kucha, where they made me the first speaker, even though my name starts with an M, dammit! I thought for sure I'd at least get to see 3 or 4 speakers before going on there just so I could get the vibe and pace of things, but I think I did alright. People gave me thumbs up and patted on my back after I was done... which might also be out of some sort of pitty and sympathy. Hm.


Jonathan was sitting in the audience armed with my badass camera to take a couple of shots of me while going at it. The one above shows one of the pieces eps51 and I worked on together for the Cairoscape show in Berlin, which I took a train to catch and ended up bumping into all the Egyptian art homies! The show opened to a pretty big success I think, and had like a 4 page announcement and schedule/program thingy in one of Berlin's daily newspapers. The pieces eps51 and I did (titled: stereotypical graphics) are out on billboards at a couple of locations in Berlin. Will get the photos off Ben.

The view from Ben Wittner's balcony.

Converse ad in the subway.

Kickass band I came across on the Berlin subway, also had a CD for sale, which I unfortunately couldn't really afford, since I was approaching the end of my stay and all and was totally running out of money.

The band developed quite a big fan base between incoming and outgoing trains.

Pattern in the Berlin subway trains.

Berlin's main train station. Notice the hot air balloon floating above the city on the left.

And then I returned to Rotterdam.