This article by Sophie J. Williamson originally appeared Art Monthly Issue 364 (March 2013). It is reproduced here with permission of the author.
On 6 June 2010, Khaled Mohamed
Saeed, a young Egyptian, died at
the hands of police officers after
a brutal beating in a suburb of
Alexandria. Subsequently the image
of his disfigured corpse, released by his family, spliced
alongside his passport photograph, was vigorously
redistributed by online networks throughout Egypt,
inciting widespread rage against endemic police
brutality. It was this single striking image that
inspired the first Egyptian protests, in both Alexandria
and Cairo, and marked the rapid countdown to
the revolution.
In his seminal text The Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord writes that ‘the spectacle is not a
collection of images; rather it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by image’.
Debord was writing in the context of the May 1968 protests in Paris, where distributed posters
depicting simple yet striking iconography played a major role in uniting workers. Throughout the socalled
Arab Spring the use of iconic posters has continued to play a part, with an abundance of artists
turning their hand to producing them; and new networks have emerged, such as the poster blog The
Syrian People Know Their Way, which uses digital networks more effectively to collate, produce and
disseminate imagery. Moreover, the image is at the heart of political dynamics in the Middle East.
Spectacle is employed by all sides – the state, oppositional groups and ordinary people are all utilising
the image to exert political influence. Images such as that of Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street
vendor who set himself on fire, or Hamza Ali Al-Kateeb, the 13-year-old Syrian boy who died while in
government custody, are familiar worldwide. As Lina Khatib has recently outlined in Image Politics
in the Middle East, the construction of social and political reality throughout the political struggle has
been an inherently visually productive process, with an endless process of competing images battling,
reversing, erasing and replacing one another.
The Egyptian revolution is often misleadingly referred to as the ‘Facebook Revolution’. It is
important to recognise the wider media context of independent online news channels and online
activist forums that, coupled with the infrastructure of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, were integral
to providing material and information to Al Jazeera and other international media. Importantly,
however, the redistribution of the image does not only exist online; images, and their associated commentary, also spread materially and in person through mosques, cafes,
squares and other public meeting places. Throughout the revolution and the
continuing political struggles, images have circulated cyclically from online to
the streets, then back to mass media and online media. A Google search for
Khaled Mohamed Saeed will produce numerous rehashings of the original
image, from YouTube montages to photographs of graffiti, from Twitter meme
to documentary footage of protesters’ placards.
'The image is at the heart of political dynamics in the Middle East.'
At least since the elections of 2005, when protesters, attacked by thugs and
the riot police, responded by photographing incidents of state brutality and later
integrating the imagery into their demonstration banners, the camera has been a
potent weapon of resistance to political oppression. The photograph is commonly
seen to evidence history visually; however, as Susan Sontag reminds us, ‘to
photograph [is] to compose’. In Egypt, in an atmosphere of
acute visual awareness, no single image, however amateur
in its production, can be seen to represent an objective truth.
The decision by Saeed’s family to capture and circulate the
image was a highly politicised act; what has become clear is
that reality and consciousness are not only reflected but also
produced by images and screens. What is so poignant about
the image of Saeed is not the initial intention in its creation
but how the image was received by its audience. As Roland
Barthes has written, ‘the language of the image is not merely
the totality of utterances emitted … It is also the totality of
utterances received.’
While the redistributed image of Saeed remained
largely unchanged, the supporting story that circulated
with it varied considerably. Seized from an internet
cafe, some accounts say that he was left dead in the
street after a brutal beating in a doorway, while others
claim that he was bundled into a police van only for his
corpse to be dumped minutes later. Official police reports
say that, as a regular drug user arrested for theft and
weapons possession, he choked to death while trying to
swallow hashish. His family, however, claims that he was
uploading video material that implicated members of the
Egyptian police in a drug deal. The photo itself was taken
after an autopsy, which sparked disputes about whether
some of the injuries seen in the image were delivered
before his death or were the outcome of postmortem
examinations. Saeed’s neighbour, Amro Ali, has since
published an in-depth critique of the events, Saeeds of
Revolution: De-Mythologizing Khaled Saeed, which gives
an insight into Saeed’s somewhat dubious past. However,
the discrepancies in these details were not important to
the thousands of Egyptians who redistributed the image
through their Facebook and Twitter accounts. The image
quickly became independent of any objective retelling
of its story; it stood for itself as telling of a seemingly
objective reality of police brutality and the loss of
individual dignity prevalent across the country. As it
reached epidemic circulation, the image reflected a desire
for political action within the population, creating new social and political
dynamics in its path. A Facebook group, We are all Khaled Said, set up by
Google executive and internet activist Wael Ghonim, attracted hundreds of
thousands of followers within weeks, creating in turn a human rights outcry
across the globe. Within weeks Saeed was elevated to become a national
rallying point within Egypt itself. It was through this Facebook group that
the first calls to protest were announced. Whether he was an online activist
uploading incriminating footage or just another of Eygpt’s disaffected youths,
Saeed became the revolutionary poster child who inspired the masses.
In Hito Steyerl’s insightful essay ‘In Defense of the
Poor Image’, she describes the life of the online image as
one of acceleration and deterioration; ‘a copy in motion’.
The ‘poor image’ is one which has been ‘thrust into
digital uncertainty’ – somersaulted through successions
of uploading, downloading, reformatting, re-editing and
redistribution; quality is transformed into accessibility. In
turn, image-value is defined not by resolution and content
but by velocity, intensity and spread. This is not only true
of the physical quality of the image, as Steyerl speaks about
it, but also of the depth of meaning, understanding and
context of the image.
Steyerl reflects on this development in relation to Juan
García Espinosa’s manifesto for the Imperfect Cinema,
written in Cuba in the late 1960s, in which he claims
that perfect cinema while ‘technically and artistically
masterful is almost always reactionary cinema’. According
to Espinosa, imperfect cinema, by insisting on its own
imperfection, strives to overcome social division and – as
in the economy of the poor image – merges art with life,
blurring the distinction between consumer and producer,
audience and author.
Espinosa predicted that, as video technology developed, the
elitist position of traditional filmmakers would be undermined,
enabling some sort of mass film production to emerge:
an art of the people. The outcome has been much more
widespread and affective than even Espinosa had anticipated.
The economy of poor images, with its immediate possibility of
worldwide distribution within a structure that facilitates almost
instantaneous appropriation, enables the participation of a
much larger group of producers than ever before. Users become
the editors, critics, translators and (co-)authors within a constant
frenzy of imagery production and re-production.
'In an atmosphere where the image plays such a powerful role in translating political sentiment, there is little doubt that established and highly visible artists, collectives and cultural organisations will be easy targets.'
For Steyerl this is a transition from ‘contemplation into
distraction’. From an art perspective, we regularly see artists
appropriating this kind of imagery in order to present a
coherent argument for contemplative consumption. In
the context of the explosion of citizen journalism over
recent years, we need only to think of artists such as
Thomas Hirschhorn or Rabih Mroué to have flashbacks
of shocking imagery imprinted onto our memory. There
have also been numerous cultural groups, born out of the
Arab Spring, that have attempted to navigate the sea of
imagery proliferating through the internet. From Egypt,
two prominent examples come to mind: the Mosireen
Collective’s video blog, representing perspectives not
covered by the mainstream Egyptian press, is the country’s
most-watched non-profit YouTube channel, and the group
holds workshops on video editing from its Cairo-based
media centre; and Wael Abbas’s Misr Digital blog collects
stories that the press would not otherwise be able to report
on directly but is able to sidestep censorship by reporting
instead on his coverage of events.
The Voice of Egyptian Women - Doaa Eladl
While these practices are extremely effective – both
Mosireen and Misr Digital have been avidly followed by
an international audience and their stories re-reported
by worldwide media – their organisation nevertheless
places them in a precarious position. State-sponsored
art played little or no part in the revolutions of the Arab
Spring, the artists being fearful that involvement could
affect their standing, future funding and livelihoods.
Among the more daring independent organisations there
have already been casualties; the non-profit art space
Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum closed in January
due to ‘heightened political and social transitions’ and
prominent cartoonist Doaa Eladl, supposedly ‘freed from
the censorship of the past’, is currently being sued by the
secretary-general of the National Centre for Defence for her
allegedly blasphemous depictions in the daily newspaper
Al-Masry Al-Youm.
In an atmosphere where the image plays such a
powerful role in translating political sentiment, there
is little doubt that established and highly visible artists,
collectives and cultural organisations will be easy targets.
The vague language of President Mohamed Morsi’s
new constitution, especially with regard to freedom of
expression, inevitably reinforces concerns over the growing
tyranny of the permanent state of emergency declared
since the revolution. Using Giorgio Agamben’s definition
of sovereign power as the ability to decide on the state of
exception, to define what is permitted – who is included
and who is not – Morsi effectively places himself outside
the law. Agamben argues that sovereignty is therefore
based on the ability to impose exclusion and is ‘the hidden
foundation on which the entire political system rested’.
While for Morsi, and Hosni Mubarak before him, this is
possible with established figures and organisations, it is
much harder, arguably impossible, to censor in its entirety
online activity which is spearheaded not by an individual but
by the masses; as Deleuze and Guattari argue, ‘sovereignty only rules over what it is capable of
interiorising’. Within a networked
society, the power of the political
institution is undermined, giving way
to the power of instrumental fl ows and
cultural codes that are embedded in
networks. As Franco Bifo has argued,
the internet can no longer be viewed
as purely an instrumental tool, but as
a sphere or an environment where the
‘anthropological mutation produced by
digital media and by the acceleration
of the Infosphere is the most relevant
effect from the point of view of social
and political effects’. Furthermore,
cultural memory is increasingly taking
on a more visual form, as Sontag has
outlined: ‘in an era of information
overload the photograph provides a
quick way of apprehending something
and a compact form for memorising it.’
Citizens are therefore able to reclaim a
national memory independent from
the authoritarian state. The image of Saeed exemplifies the state’s powerlessness
to have full biopolitical control over its people. The viral image is outside the
scope of the law so it facilitates the construction of anonymous global networks
and a shared history that political institutions are incapable of regulating. As the
image travels it builds alliances, provoking translation or new readings, and in
doing so creates new publics and debates. Each individual that cared enough to
redistribute the image – whether digitally, in printed form or by word of mouth
– became an active player in the growing catalytic potential of this single image
to realise the ideology it represents.
There is no doubt that the proliferation of iconic imagery in the public
realm has acted to enhance, consolidate and articulate public opinion across
the Arab world. The image of Saeed proves that the digital image is not
as ephemeral as we might commonly think; as Steyerl argues: ‘just as a
photograph is lodged in paper, the digital image is lodged in a circulatory
system of desire and exchange.’ With this transient form, the viral image
comes to encapsulate moments where politics and representation have
collided and subsequently affected one another. Bifo has claimed that ‘history
has been replaced by the endless flowing recombination of fragmentary
images. Political awareness and political strategy have been replaced by
the random recombination of frantic precarious activity.’ However, as the
image of Saeed exemplifies, it is precisely because of this ‘frantic precarious
activity’, without any curatorial control, that the viral image has the potential
to become a powerful and democratic political catalyst.
SOPHIE J WILLIAMSON is a curator based in London.