Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:10 When you think of a researcher, most people think of professors in universities. When you think of academic books of history, you think of books with chapters, our guests today disrupts these assumptions and does it with an urban history flair. Welcome to knowledge. And it's producers, a limited series from the Maidan produced by me and AIMSweb. And each episode we'll be talking to people who are at the forefront of knowledge production, typically away from the traditional educational power structures. But we talking to people who curate, who edit, who run research centers, who write and more, my field's Islamic studies. And we'll be talking to people who fit into the study of Islam and the Muslim majority world. But that doesn't necessarily mean that we'll be talking about Islam all the time or that everyone we talk to will be Muslim. It just means that we don't have perfect terms for describing this big intersecting world. Not yet. The goal is to get a wide variety of people talking about different ways of accessing history ideas and more to uplift the people we're interviewing and to inspire you. How many sheds is our guest today? And he's an independent historian, a curator, and he's well-known for his website, Cairo observer. We're going to be talking about his book today, out 2020 from the American university in Cairo, press Kairos since 1900.
Speaker 2 00:01:25 So I like to start with, what did you have for breakfast?
Speaker 3 00:01:29 So I'm jet lied from a recent trip to the U S which meant that sleep is very irregular, which means eating is irregular. So, so far it's been, uh, coffee and cigarettes, but to start,
Speaker 2 00:01:43 What do you
Speaker 3 00:01:44 Normally have for breakfast? Uh, so my normal breakfast, uh, my favorite let's say, uh, scrambled lips that I make myself at home with a significant amount of butter. Oh,
Speaker 2 00:01:56 That's why it's your favorite? So you're very difficult to describe to people. I feel like I don't know what to, when I'm,
Speaker 3 00:02:06 I thought you were going to say I'm very difficult to period. Maybe I'm sure a few people say that, but who knows?
Speaker 2 00:02:14 Is it because your career is so difficult to pin down?
Speaker 3 00:02:19 Um, I mean, I remember some of my, uh, some of the people that I did my PhD with that, the cohort that I was with, uh, uh, a couple of people that definitely one was voicing that there's no harm in doing what, what is he doing? It was very clear for him to understand that why have I not done something that was slightly more expected, which is to start applying for academic jobs before I even finish and, uh, and just dive right into that and probably stay somewhere in the states. Um, so I think that's a starting point to understanding why maybe it's difficult for people to pin down what I am and what I'm doing, even if my cohorts with I've seen it this way. Um, and I think, um, and another hand on the other hand, I'm also not one of those people that walks around like parading, uh, PhD degrees.
Speaker 3 00:03:10 So, uh, so, you know, like have you see people saying, just describing themselves, uh, consistently as Dr. So-and-so and it's a form of sort of gaining prestige, like you're really capitalizing on your 6, 6, 7 years of, of, you know, doing a PhD by making sure that everybody knows that I don't certainly don't do that. And I tend to be a bit, I think I'm trying to be approachable. And, uh, so I, I, you know, it's a combination between not following a very declared path and self-presentation, um, and how you choose to approach people and all of these things. I think that makes it difficult for people. So I would say I'm different people for different people.
Speaker 2 00:03:53 Okay. So what do you find yourself saying the most when you meet people, when you, when I walk up to you and I say, okay, I'm going to use this. You as well. Yeah. Most people call you shut heads. I feel like no one calls me humble, like shut head. It's very like, you know, informal, very cool. That's sort of how people refer to you as if I was to go up to you at a dinner party and say, what do you do? What's your job.
Speaker 3 00:04:15 Yeah. That's like, I definitely questioned for me. And it depends on when you ask that question. Uh, last, uh, was it last week, two weeks ago, I did this event. Um, and then there was not an MC that introduces me before I go on the stage. And he said, so how would you like me to introduce you? And I said, I'll offer this book is 1900. Um, and then he can say curator, and then he said, no, no orange, you just let her observer. I was like, okay, sure. You can, you can do that too. You know what I mean? So it depends. I, I think, uh, my, the way I would answer the question with, honestly, depending on what I'm working on most recently and that's, that would be the most relevant. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:04:55 So I mentioned to being in author and then the editor and main force behind Cairo, observer, the blog, you're also a curator.
Speaker 3 00:05:02 Yeah. Uh, it's uh, it's interesting. It's one of those things where, I mean, the, the there's a constant imposter syndrome that chases, at least I know many people who, but not everybody admits it or certainly have it, which is, uh, you know, am I really a curator? I'm really a doctor, am I really in a story? And, you know, and it depends, um, on, um, honestly, how did you do what you're doing, but also how it's being received from the other side? And so it's like, no, it's not also very easy for me to like walk around and use these titles because I feel like it's, it's th I can define myself in general as this, this or that, but it depends again on what is it that occupies me at the present. So I like to think of myself as someone who's comfortable with, uh, changing their skin the way they present themselves. And it honestly just depends on what I'm producing it.
Speaker 2 00:05:53 So what you're producing, you mentioned some of, sort of the things that you produce, um, but what motivates you, what pushes you to do the work that you do, which is basically to showcase Cairo as a study, um, showcase the middle east is a region that produces material. I think that's how I would describe it. I don't know if that's fair. Um, just based on some of your curatorial experiences, um, what motivates you, what pushes you forward and why specifically did you choose this non-traditional path?
Speaker 3 00:06:23 That's a good question. I mean, I think motivation, um, I, I mean, it's the, it's the class of struggle, I suppose, between like, you know, meaning, and, and then that the reality of like, having to pay your bills and, uh, you know, people do love about having a family and then, so that becomes the main thing. And so, I dunno, and for me, it's, um, it's not that philosophical, I suppose, but I definitely have a meter that measures do I really want to be doing this right now? And, uh, sometimes, uh, it's more satisfying than others. Sometimes it's more rewarding than others, but I think that's really the main thing that gets me drawing is how much do I, how badly do I really want to get this project done? Uh, and, and that gets me going, and it makes me open up ideas. And because there's, I think there's nothing worse for me than to find myself in a situation where in a professional setting, I have to do something that it's not the most satisfying. Uh, the challenge with this is not every satisfying project is a well-paying project or not every satisfying project is they all have caveats. And I think it's just the challenge of trying to figure out how to come out of it, feeling rewarded or fulfilled. Somehow, I would say that's what really was driving.
Speaker 2 00:07:36 So what about audience? Does audience drive you?
Speaker 3 00:07:41 That's a, that's another interesting question because I, for the longest time, um, I was, I had a very contradictory and, um, you know, so this has me thinking afterwards and reflecting on it. I had a very controversial relationship between what I do on the issue of audience, because a lot of what I wanted to do, uh, was about engagement with a public. Um, but at the same time, um, I would shy away from, from trying to actually engage with what that means in the sense that I'm not asking people. So, you know what, I'm not, I'm, I'm not looking for gratification, uh, in that way, but at the same time, uh, I put myself out there, but it also raises a lot of insecurities that have to do with wanting to make sure that what you're doing does also not just mean something to you or to me, but it also means something to someone else.
Speaker 3 00:08:32 And so, you know, when, when years after Tara observer, I stopped being super active in 2016, I got busy with other projects and the general environment, um, Egypt didn't feel like it was the most conducive to, you know, to blogging about urban issues in a city that was transforming really quickly and also in a publishing kind of atmosphere that was in very encouraging of multiple voices. So I slowed down a lot. And despite that, uh, you know, people are still talking about it and still asking me about it, there's to send me content that they want to see posted on the, on the blog. And so that's an audience that's, other than I just haven't thought about, you know what I mean? Which is unfortunate. I think on my part of, I think it's this part of drawn back to this idea of refusing to accept sometimes that, um, you are doing something great that people are interested in, and it's not about just you, it's about an audience that's actually engaged with your content.
Speaker 3 00:09:31 Um, so yeah, the audience is a, is an interesting question as I don't have a clear approach to how I deal with this yet, but it's definitely something that I need to be thinking about more, especially as I'm doing, you know, things like publishing or whether it's a blog, things like do an exhibition, things like publish in a book or, you know, speak public speaking. These are all things that involve an audience. So it's not just, um, yeah, there's a whole room full of people listening or people at home reading the website or about people, hopefully there are, you know, buying books and, and so, um, I don't think it should be necessarily the driving force does, this is how you ended up doing sort of populist. Uh, I suppose not that that's a bad thing, but like, you know, you should, I think people should be driven by the crushes and issues that really excite them, uh, as opposed to the ones that they feel like this is what's trending, this is what people want to learn about or hear about.
Speaker 2 00:10:27 So curating, blogging, writing books like Kira since 1900, which is very much a guide book, but it's also very heavily researched. Those weren't necessarily skills you get in graduate school. To what extent are you self-taught to what acceptance were you taught by your peers? To what extent were you taught by graduate school?
Speaker 3 00:10:46 I mean, the graduate school was a very important formative experience for me, especially coming out of an undergrad degree in architecture, which, um, um, prepares you as a student to be a very specific thing. I'm an architect and with a very specific understanding of what that is. Um, and, um, you miss out on a lot of things. And I think grad school that the humanities for example, were, are not very present in architectural education, I would say, across the entire, you know, everywhere. Um, so, so graduate school was, it was, um, an opportunity for me to open up to these other important fields ideas. Um, and then there's the freedom of being a graduate school in the U S when sort of you have very, you know, not very heavy course load and then a lot of time to reflect and come up with your own projects and ideas.
Speaker 3 00:11:45 And I thought that this was a very comfortable space for me. I think actually I am who I am, partly because I never wanted to leave grad school. I mean, I think maybe I'm sort of letting in an extended summer break, um, in between, uh, I don't know, dread school years right now. This is what it kind of feels like. Um, and I think that's not a bad thing if you make it work for you. And, um, some of the skills that I, I suppose, so I would say grad school gave me the tools. Um, and then the skills had to come from experience from wanting to do things like engage with the public, like write a blog. When I wrote a blog, it wasn't meant I never thought of it as something that has an audience. For example, I thought of it as a venting sphere.
Speaker 3 00:12:30 Um, so I had just prompted Tyro. I'm very excited. I were working on the city, um, for my PhD dissertation. I'm still trying to pin down exactly what I'm going to do. The revolution breaks out. And before that, I arrived in like late 2010, and then in January, everything changed. And, um, in those few months before I had constant observations about just small details that really like we take for granted when we live in cities that are well run. And then when you imagine what a city can be for you, as someone who uses the city, uh, Trevor doesn't necessarily get frustrated sometimes with these things, you know, like Brooklyn sidewalks. So you ended up finding half, half the pedestrians walking on the asphalt, alongside the cars. So I thought, you know, these are such small minor observations, but there were doors there were happening literally all day long just by being alive in the city.
Speaker 3 00:13:27 And so I thought maybe I like blogged about it. Maybe this is too dark. Maybe people already know this and they just don't care. You know, you asked yourself these questions and then when the revolution broke out, um, and obviously had a very important urban dimension, um, w you know, public space and the way the streets were used. Um, and I just thought, okay, fine, let me start blogging. And this was more as a, as a venue for me to express some of these ideas that have accumulated over the previous months, they have to do with just like very immediate reactions to the place, um, without sort of, um, like talking down to anyone, you know, it was just, you know, it's okay to, to, to say things that might seem obvious, uh, and put them out there because then maybe it's not so obvious for someone else.
Speaker 3 00:14:16 And then this is probably why the car was over, gained a readership. And it sometime to accept that like, oh, people are reading. So maybe I should like, you know, animate English a little bit better, or like, phrase my, my, my, my statements in a specific way. And, um, yeah, so, so this is how that started, but that's not something that they teach you in grad school. Um, and it also then with time with consistency, it adds a whole dimension to who you can be. And, you know, as a practitioner in the field, uh, as the, the, one of the troubling things for me was that Egypt seemed like a place where a lot of graduate students come to take information and leave, and very little of that ever makes it back here or circulates within the public sphere here. And, um, I don't know, there's something also very colonial about this. It's a form of extraction, you know, let's come and absorb as much as possible for our own purpose and then get a tenure position somewhere in Ohio. Great. But I felt like really, there's something more that could be done. Um, and I think partly because coming here, wasn't only as a grad student, but it was also as a sort of homecoming after having not lived in Egypt. Full-time for about 15 years
Speaker 2 00:15:36 From Alexandria, right?
Speaker 3 00:15:37 Unfortunately, yes.
Speaker 2 00:15:41 So was this your first time living in Kira full time?
Speaker 3 00:15:43 It was the first time living in Egypt, full-time as an adults, uh, on your own, on my own without my family and not in Alexandria. Um, Alexandra is a very troubled place for me. And so Kira was not only is it more convenient, but, uh, uh, it was more exciting.
Speaker 2 00:16:03 I completely sympathize play. You say sort of what the colonial ask experience of being here. I think the blog was definitely a great way of putting material into the public sphere, because you did that in Arabic and English, right.
Speaker 3 00:16:14 Uh, you know, because of my background and the fact that I spent so much time away from Egypt and that basically all of my formative education, well, some of my formative education was here. Um, but then, you know, high school onwards was in the states. So Arabic wasn't, although I was, it was always used at home and I maintained it. Um, throughout this time I didn't write in it. So it was very insecure to do this. It took me some time. And when I did, it was in may, I was actually found to be a more comforting way of expressing myself in Arabic without trying to jump hoops and, or relearn my own language. Um, it just felt like, you know, why not, why not embrace our mayor as a form of communication when it comes to issues like, you know, architecture, urban ism. Um, and so that's, that's, that's when the Arabic came in, but more and more people were, I encouraged people to send content for the blog that's in Arabic. So it, yes, it was in both.
Speaker 2 00:17:13 So I, it's hard to, from listening to you to characterize your relationship with Kairos a city, because there seems to be pain and frustration from one perspective, but also I think there's a part of you and you can tell me if I'm wrong, that's in love with the city. Yeah. So what is your relationship with the city? Am I right? Am I wrong? What level and degree do these emotions factor into your day to day?
Speaker 3 00:17:37 I mean, I, I would say most relationships, if not all relationships have this sort of, uh, frustration, love, uh, you know, affection, but then I stand you right now, you know, and it's a, it's a back and forth. It's an association. And then what people end up seeing of most relationships is what's presented to the outside world, but they don't see what's on the inside. So I'd like to think of my relationship with the city in that kind of way, um, where you have to negotiate, or I have to negotiate how I communicate my feelings about the city, but to take it beyond feelings and to root it in something factual, uh, put it in a historical context, but also say something that's relevant about the now, as opposed to constantly speak about, let's say the way people romanticize a certain age, everybody has something in Egypt.
Speaker 3 00:18:29 People love to romanticize stuff in this place. It's probably people love to do in a lot of places, but Egypt is, is, you know, people don't slow down romanticization and nothing else. You know, you were mentioned as the golden age of the cinema, you can remind the size, the other liberal era, you can romanticize the Nanda. You can remind them, you know, and everybody sort of has their obsession, which I think as a side effect always takes them out of the context that they're working in. And I think what I tried to do is to enter myself in some of this historical interest, but also try to be relevant in the way I think about the city in the now, and also be proactive in trying to imagine collectively as part of proactive, what the future of this place is. Even if it looks pretty grim. I think it's important to talk about that because maybe, or maybe not, we will be able to change that grim future, but I mean, it's important to actually engage on that level.
Speaker 2 00:19:24 So you have a new Bookout Cairo since 1900, it'll be out in spring 2020, I think, um, by the time this is probably already aired. What I enjoy about it when I was slipping through it was that the book, you know, it has all the classics, these great buildings that you admire when you're downtown, the little hidden gems in neighborhoods like around me, then the Gish, like you had, I think the second candy palace in there, um,
Speaker 3 00:19:53 I didn't go civic union because it was actually built before 1900. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:19:57 I thought it was not the
Speaker 3 00:19:58 1930s, no city gains like 1890 something, 98.
Speaker 2 00:20:03 It gets written on the building itself. And I just, I don't convict for the hitch V date.
Speaker 3 00:20:06 It's just before 1900 and I want it to stick very clear. Do you want to,
Speaker 2 00:20:11 Yeah, but, but don't wait to finish telling me you want to stick to afternoon. I can under,
Speaker 3 00:20:15 Well, not to just stick to after 1900 with the book, because I thought, uh, one of the fraud issues with architecture, uh, history is, uh, we, uh, let's say there are European American Western in general, uh, for the lack of a better word, art historical approaches to talking about architecture, which, um, are really coming out of a very specific type of historical experience of how architecture came to be and modern architecture in particular. So for example, you know, using the industrial revolution as a starting point is almost consistent and then presenting architecture with an artist or art historical lens. That looks really as a, that looks really at, at consecutive a series of styles, um, that, you know, reflect different evolutions in technology and materials and so on, but it's always kind of about the sequential, um, series of status. So it's, it's one of the problems I think, is to avoid using that very specific, you know, that approach that comes from a very specific historical experience, but it's not necessarily universal, although it has always claimed to be a universal type of experience and looking at another site that has had its own, uh, very different trajectory.
Speaker 3 00:21:32 And so I didn't want to make a book about modern Cairo as a sequence of styles, uh, and adopt that kind of approach because the city defines this. Um, it has very different conditions from a lot of the places where those artists were full approaches were developed. Um, it was always, um, quite porous. It had, uh, a lot of networks that looked beyond Europe, uh, regional networks that influenced the way architecture was shaped. And it was never really about a status to purity. Uh, there's a certain kind of not to use a cliche kind of idea, but you know, the plasma Politan ism of Egyptian society and the seas in it, like Tyro is a different kind of cosmopolitanism that then maybe it would have been counted for the different historical contexts or geography. And so therefore, how do you account for the kind of architecture that was produced by this type of society? So, um, so I thought, okay, the temporal frame is it's kind of benign. Um, so you know, 1900. So it's just, it's a clean you catch. Yeah. You just patch what happens after a benchmark, even though the benchmark itself has to have meaning meaningless, it would have been Kyros since 1899, it doesn't honestly matter. Uh, but it's just the practical trend of starting point.
Speaker 2 00:22:58 Well, what I really enjoyed about the book is that it has, as someone who's lived in the city on and off for the last couple of years, I have the sites that I enjoy. So, you know, I have a lot of memories of waiting for a friend outside of the OPA downtown and seeing that in the book, I didn't realize that it was built after 1900. And thinking about that building and the context of what was going on of different styles that were taking place at the same time, it is sort of, it's very Neil Luke, is that sort of the design that, that building proposal?
Speaker 3 00:23:35 Yeah, it has elements of that, but interestingly, that's a building that was built basically in three different phases. Um, you know, and, and so it's with different architects actually involved. And this is one of the, again, one of the interesting, um, a usual sort of art historical things that we have to stick to is who's the author of the work, right? Who was the, it was, it was the artist who was the architect. Um, in Egypt, what I found is that it, wasn't always such a clear cut situation to do it. Wasn't a culture of celebrity or the proto of the star architect, uh, which, you know, uh, something that really defines the way, um, artificial history has been written in Europe and the us in particular, um, and are large places to have. I didn't follow this. And in Egypt I found that sometimes it is one architect, but he's not really there as, you know, the work is not sort of a work of genius.
Speaker 3 00:24:27 It's more like I, this was the head architect, um, was that, uh, for example, or was that as an old cough? And so that's just what they had to do with that was just like their day job. You know, it's not like, um, and sometimes other people were involved because they, you know, were there, or someone passed and someone else picks up the job and completes it. So the building power becomes this composite. Um, it's more the norm as opposed to the exception. I think the idea of presenting architectural always as, uh, they need work of genius architect or something is the exception that we've normalized and the way we understand view architecture. Um, so yeah, the appropriate administration though, there is a, is a fun example of this type of some would see it as confusing. But I would just say, this is honestly how our built environment is shaped it's by different parties who have different interests, and they have to negotiate them both with institutions, with the site, with the people, with the budget, with their stylistic preferences. And you end up with these kind of intentionally hybrid or unintentionally hybrid buildings that then shape art the way we see our environment
Speaker 2 00:25:35 And it's downtown where you expect to see sort of European and influenced architecture, right? So it's a really, I think when you take a look back and you look at everything in the city as a whole, you see that the city was part of different waves of development, that the way the neighborhoods were added to the city, I mean, you even include a new Cairo, so to speak like Amar. And I was surprised when I flipped to the end of the book and you had the new AUC campus, which of course is very, takes a lot of motifs from Islamic architecture, but was built in the last 10 years.
Speaker 3 00:26:07 Yeah, I mean, so it's interesting that you think that downtown, you would expect it to be, um, to have a very European kind of architectural identity. Uh, the, in the first phase of buildings that were built in the 19th century when the area was planned, uh, were first of all, most dimensions houses and villas and mentions and withdrawn burdens. Um, and, uh, quite a bit percentage was new Islamic because that was the trend or a new model or new Islamic has in the sense that it takes different elements from different historical areas within the history of Islamic architecture, sometimes from eating different places and combines them together. So it, a lot of this sort of new model of, um, uh, identity of the buildings that were built in what is today, downtown, where simply was simply gone when the area, uh, transformed into a dense urban sort of downtown, when it became a downtown, you have to think of it as a, more of a suburb when it was first built a suburb that was envisioned to be, uh, a city center, but it wasn't immediately built as a city center.
Speaker 3 00:27:13 And so time is not flat and it's not prolapsed. And so, um, as time progresses, different things are happening. Different things are fashionable. People's interests are in different coming from different places. They're traveling to different places and they're inspired by those things. The clientele changes who's, uh, who's moving in, who's moving out. And so the identity of the area, and until today, I would say, it's not, well probably now is the most static. I was going to say that identity of the area was never really started, but now it's kind of more or less, the most static as in there is the least amount of new construction, probably in all of Kira, I would say, happening in the downtown zone. And we can maybe get back to this idea of protection and heritage, and what's the, what's the, what's the right way to do it, to, to approach it.
Speaker 3 00:28:00 But something like the, the campus of AAC and U Cairo, I mean, this is why doing the book the way I did it. I think for me, it was interesting. So if we look at our, if we expand the timeframe from 1900 to the present, you'll see things cycle, you'll see things come and grow, uh, sort of the interest in sort of revival, different elements of, uh, let's say Islamic architecture model of architecture comes in rows. Um, and every time it's motivated by something different, uh, the new Tyrell campus of AUC is no exception in the sense that, uh, here is an opportunity for architects to imagine something totally new. They literally have what the modernists always wanted, which is what's called a tabula rasa place that has no memory it's, it's empty, there's nothing. And, uh, and instead of growing with something that's rooted in the present that reflects, uh, let's say the latest, uh, ethos or ideas or whatever, uh, they chose to find, uh, or to construct a language that refers to kind of a not very specific hybrid past, um, which is an interesting way of also thinking about what does, so what does that say about the present, if, if, when we have those traditions, that kind of budget, that kind of landscape, that train of sight, um, we ended up doing something that has a striped facade, so that it reminds us of a 13th century mosque.
Speaker 3 00:29:31 Interesting. Right. We should think about it in those ways. And why, why is the university referring to Islamic architecture from its poor period, um, you know, dozens of kilometers away, uh, with, without being faithful to that style, but also try to be innovative by adding certain elements, but also using concrete, but also air conditioning. You know what I mean? So it's, um, I think the most useful thing to do in this situation is to look at the building and try to understand why these decisions were made. What does it tell us about those who are behind those decisions and their desires and fair, maybe conflicted use of identity, uh, which has I think exactly where Egypt has stuck, um, uh, probably for a few decades now, since, uh, since the field, the nostrils project has been an ongoing, never ending, uh, running around in the same circle of kind of that, who are we in? What, so what should we dress light? And are we Western or Eastern? And what is it, what are these concepts? And what's, what should our arc that should be if you ask most students at AUC, what they know about the history of Islamic architecture, if the, how they think their campus actually connects, they'll have very little idea I presume. Um, and I think that's a problem.
Speaker 2 00:30:43 Well, it's a problem because AUC subscribes to video the neoliberal university. And for that reason, the vision that they're cultivating within the heads of the individuals that they're training is very much, one of money should be the object. These classes are here as sort of parsley on top. I might cut this out anyway. <inaudible> is that it's turning out people to take a place of the so-called elite, but that elite is vacuous. The intellectual elite to some extent has dispersed and is finding new centers and isn't necessarily gravitating towards that university.
Speaker 3 00:31:24 I mean, the future university is just across the road from a UC, and it uses basically the same, uh, technique, but it pulls from a totally different set of references, even more garish by combining, I dunno what, it looks like an element of the Coliseum with a glass blue glass type of facade. And, uh, you know, it's not postmodern in the sense that it's not born out of a genuine critique and understanding of the history of modernism local or international. Um, it's kind of, I think the product of confusion, which, uh, is itself valuable confusion as valuable, fine, but it's valuable in the sense that we can identify it and then understand where the confusion comes from. And maybe like that it'll help us position things. Um, otherwise we end up just continuing in this, um, uh, it's like, it's like shooting darts in a dark room. You know, you just don't know where their land. One time you'll get a new Islamic building. One time you'll get, you know, a private Villa with a pediment that says Michelle law inside of the impediment, you know, one time you'll get a Coliseum fragment as part of a university that actually calls itself future university. That's a little weird
Speaker 2 00:32:43 It's to me, I mean, on the complete outside, like I spent four years in the Gulf as a, for high school. This just looks like it's, it's imitating somebody, like think I'm, I was just imitating so many different elements of that when it comes to the garish. Besides you see that a lot, that confusion. I think the Gulf, I think shad is just a little different sometimes. I think they've always been the weird one, but like so many parts of Dubai, like not the main part it's like off of the main sort of roads have that garish, like the mentions are so confused, like they have columns and then they,
Speaker 3 00:33:24 I mean, I think, um, one of the conditions of let's say the, the present condition of, uh, of architecture in the region and, you know, places that the grandma in Egypt and Tyro, uh, express this, or the draw, as you say, um, is that they're really born out a lack of confidence, um, in who the architect is or how they see themselves, who the patron is most importantly, because, um, I think also one of the, uh, one of the problematic approaches or things that are traditional art history shows us is that, you know, the, the, the building is really the work of the architect, but that's actually not true because you're, in reality, in most cases, the building is really the work of the client who wants the architect to do a, B or C, and then the art that tries to translate those ideas into material form.
Speaker 3 00:34:16 But, um, so the lack of confidence, um, is definitely a tradition. And then the other thing related to this is that the ref that made sort of that international withdrawal is that the growth rose during a very interesting time when there was a surplus of resources and, um, an emphasis of things, a surplus of resources, and then that was providing where architects in essentially the centers, uh, that, that they work out of New York, London, and so on. Um, modernism is hitting a crisis in the west and, uh, offices need to expand and find new terrains to work. There's a preservation nest impulse in most European cities that have made, have limited where architects to actually build bold and interesting buildings. Um, and so the middle east was happening, you know, at the same time, all of this. And then you have the rise of Islamism, the collapse of narcissism.
Speaker 3 00:35:18 Um, and so with all of this, what the international architects who were invited or were commissioned to come to the, at least mostly the dolphin at that point, and, uh, tasked to design everything from hospitals to government buildings and so on, uh, as postmodernism is on the rise where they come from, they have pushed the question of identity to the forefront. And if you, the problem with identity is that it's not something that you start with a, it should sort of be the result of everything else. Uh, so instead of solving an architectural problem or an economic problem or a cultural problem, I dunno, uh, identity becomes the starting point. And so the facade becomes the most important element. And so, you know, this is, and then we we've been stuck in that arena for quite some time. And I think it's a, quite a common condition in the post-colonial world.
Speaker 3 00:36:14 So nobody would really dare ask, you know, a German art therapy or, you know, REM Koolhaas is like more of the most important architects in the world today, uh, from the Netherlands, nobody would ask them, you know, how it touches your building. You don't start with a Dutch idea for a static idea of a Dutch identity when you're deciding to build it in Rotterdam, that's irrelevant. You just do the best building you can do with the conditions, materials, uh, rules and regulations, and so on. And automatically when someone looks back at it in 10 years, then they'll say that was the identity of that time at that, in that place. And we're not doing this. Um, and so to them more, and all of these developments have sort of just, um, entirely commercialized this approach, which is easier. It's easier. It's very, uh, capitalist friendly in the sense that you can easily just like try to up to a set of formulas that you then also, you want a bunch of columns. Sure. You want a bunch of, pediments sure you want a bunch of Mashama's great. And, you know, and then we tend to attach those to a pretty standard concrete, uh, column in slab building. And then we call it, you know, our identity.
Speaker 2 00:37:25 So it sounds like for you, you want us to abandon this question of what are we, are we east or west, are
Speaker 3 00:37:33 We don't care about
Speaker 2 00:37:37 Your opinion on whether or not this should be a part of the process because I think, I think you're absolutely right. I think post-meal citizen, especially, I don't think this question of are we east or west? I think it was asked beforehand. I think like there were questions of, I think Egypt in particular, you know, Ari Mediterranean. I that's already that prior to the Nautilus project, but I think on mass, the Arabic speaking world is facing this problem post. I think it's part of the post-colonial experience. And I think it's part of us digesting this narrative that we have to choose and that we have to the east and west star concepts.
Speaker 3 00:38:14 Well, I mean maybe, and I'll just try to voice my view quite honestly about this. And, um, I think we need a genuine proposition, but what this postcolonial mean, Egypt, just this year marks 150 years of this Western L uh, I don't want to have a developmental, but ideally pull on your one. And also cellar marks, not celebrates. It's marking also a hundred years since the 1919 revolution. Neither of those very important events, um, are actually been officially marked in the sense that, you know, there are no, uh, it's not on TV shows. Uh, there is no special soap opera that was produced about this or that there is the, you know, there are no lectures. Uh there's uh, I, it doesn't feel like, like these two momentous historical moments are actually being marred. So again, if you ask probably most AUC students, so do you know that this is not only a hundred years of AC, but it's also a hundred years since the 1919 revolution, don't have no idea what you're talking about most likely.
Speaker 3 00:39:18 Um, and, um, that doesn't sound to me, electrical's colonial context. That sounds like a deeply colonized context when people are so unaware of such important recent history and its, um, political dynamics and how Egypt fit within a broader world and its relationship to Europe and so on. And so maybe a starting point, uh, is to have a genuine societal societal debate about what does post-colonial actually mean in a digital context without, you know, um, and entering into, uh, the echo chamber of post-colonial studies and his debates that were really done by an, in, uh, yeah, it might've been people from the end of the Aspro from the region who were engaged in a lot of this, but, you know, it's proven to, for me to be quite a conversation that has to do more with north American academia than anything else. And, um, here we are in the supposedly post quality experiencing quite a colonized reality, and nobody, uh, has really engaged with this in a, in a direct and public way, in a different variety of fields from architecture to arts to film and so on, and sort of the regional dynamics of this.
Speaker 3 00:40:34 How, how has this colonial presence been reshaped, uh, to include other sets of forces, regional players, you know, the Saudi Arabia have to do with it all, you know, things like this. We don't talk about these things. Um,
Speaker 2 00:40:50 That's a big part of this conversation is the book meant for 10 float to inspire these thoughts in the reader, because it looks like a guidebook, but I've said before, it's a very well-researched guidebook that has all these nuances baked into it. What do you want the book to do?
Speaker 3 00:41:06 Um, I would say, and I'm thinking off the top of my head to, they actually didn't necessarily do the work or look right at the board with, with a very clear set of intentions. My most obvious intention was that the city is so unaware of itself that, uh, there needs to be an accessible, easy to digest, uh, sort of reference that. Doesn't try to tell a story that it's not about introducing a set of characters and, uh, it's more about making quite visible accessible. Uh, you know, here are buildings and these are not the only buildings that you should know about, but it's a sampling of buildings. Uh, and within each one of these buildings, you get a little story about how it came to be and just straight up artificial description as well to also help people, um, not know why. It's amazing. Why is great, why it's genius, why it's unique, why these are not, again, the territories that I'm concerned with, but to look at a building and realize that literally every single building, including ones that you would see today built in, uh, an informal areas, they have stories and they come out of very specific economic, cultural, political, uh, traditions that produce every single building.
Speaker 3 00:42:27 Nothing is really just comes out in a vacuum. And I think what I would say is the most important thing for me is not only to make the city kind of legible, uh, for both visitors and habitants, but to shake away maybe some of these inherited approaches to how we read architecture by looking for masterpieces, but by actually encouraging the fact that people can read a building that they take for granted NCS nothing special and see that it has a little backstory that actually might be interesting for them. And interesting for us to, in general, to understand those why these buildings, what this building has come to be.
Speaker 2 00:43:06 So let's switch gears again. What I like about the book is that it documents buildings that aren't necessarily there anymore and came Asley. Um, I used to settle a fight the other day, someone insisted that when Griffin's Villa was still existed and I was like, no, it's not. So I pulled out my PDF of the book and I showed the puddle. So thank you for wanting to meet that fight. But, um, of course women's Villa, for example, has gone. It was demolished. I don't know, 10 years after her death, something like that, like five to 10 years after her death. Um, and what I appreciated about the book is that it documents it. But at the same time, I go back and forth myself is, is demolished, which was part of the natural growth of a city. Cairo has been, or previous incarnations of Cairo has been demolished and reincarnated multiple times over the last 1400, 1500 years, even further back, perhaps do you, are you precious about preservation? What should we preserve? What should we document? How should we do? So
Speaker 3 00:44:06 That's a, that's a complicated question, but first of all, <inaudible> does exist, but in bad, bad. So, so there's the Iraqi version, uh, or a Latina Rocky businessmen who built himself a ruptured Dravet that survived three Gulf wars, but the Villa in Cairo, it hasn't survived. So one of this perhaps is a, is a nice segue, uh, grown back to 1945 article by one of the architects. One of the main artists that I really worked on and focus on who was very present in the boat. He has the most number of buildings in the book say to him in 1945, when world war two, uh, ended, he, uh, he published, uh, in, I think it was a left clean with Tonia, a controversial little piece, uh, that just asked what if Kyra was destroyed in the war. Um, essentially he was lamenting actually that it wasn't because, um, what award does to a city in his modernist imagination, as you were seeing was, uh, unfold, starting to unfold already in Europe is it creates new ground for the architecture of today to make his intervention.
Speaker 3 00:45:17 And so he felt like, um, you know, I'm in the city that, uh, somehow survived the war so less, less new, fresh terrain for me to develop in my own vision. And so that's a very typical modernist approach, but it's like, it's like wishing for things to be demolished and destroyed, but like, we're not going to do it ourselves. Let's just hope this event that's bigger than us. Like a war will do it for us. And so we can intervene. And I think what's really interesting in that is that the sentiment he has, he expressed in that short text is that Cairo actually faces more damage in times of peace. This is one of the arguments he made then European cities, uh, had to sustain in a condensed way during world war II. Um, and I, I think this is a sentiment that actually, I mean, it's a bit extreme, it's a bit dramatic, but, uh, but it brings us kind of, um, it feels very relevant today.
Speaker 3 00:46:12 Uh, one of the, you know, participative regimes since last would have always talked about peace, it's peace time and it's stability, and these are actually the main tenants, why they, they, they stay in power and they do what they do. Uh, but in fact, this peacetime has actually resolved quite, uh, resulted in quite a, um, a catastrophic, uh, uh, transformation of, of Egyptian cities, uh, in the sense that it's an incremental almost everyday kind of level of, uh, demolish replace demolish replace demolish replace. There is not a single, I would say there's not a single district in all of Cairo that as a whole, as an area, uh, retains, or let's say March as specific historical era, I can, I can work in Mexico city, which is a much more recent city and probably stand in certain neighborhoods and be surrounded almost entirely by buildings that proforma as a relatively narrow range of years.
Speaker 3 00:47:18 That's something that I can't do in Cairo. That's, that's, that's, I don't know if that's a good thing and it's an interesting thing. Or, uh, and, and the, the problem is that on the one hand, um, there's something there's nothing more modernist than say King's impulse, which is demolish everything. Let's do it a new, which is also kind of, uh, anticipating that future generations will do the same to your own work as a modernist, right. It too might be seen as in the way of what's new and current at that time. So that's kind of an approach to say, you know, like the value isn't really in the buildings themselves, but on the other hand, um, the cities need to preserve their memory in the sense that change is inevitable, but, um, what's the historical, what's the historical sort of register, uh, that people have access to, to help them understand their present and imagine their future based on actually having a practice to what the past in this place has looked like.
Speaker 3 00:48:20 And George had to bead who's the, who runs the, who founded and runs the Arabs center for architecture in Beirut, in, in a lecture. Uh, he said something really nice that I, that I, that I liked, which is that, uh, you know, modernism, you know, the, the evolution of architecture is really attentive to them as a sequence of modernisms in the sense that in every era it was, it was what people can achieve within their limits and their needs and desires at that time. Um, and so it's a sequence of those. So this set of, um, obsession, let's say of one of those sections of this detective histories of modernisms, if we'd like to think of it in this way, uh, freezes things in place, and it also makes it difficult for a new reincarnation to take place that's very different from what's happening in Cairo.
Speaker 3 00:49:14 Tyro is kind of a self devouring city. It's not a city that's, um, that's sacrificing the old for the sake of really the new thing that represents us the best way today. Uh, it's, it's, uh, it's, uh, self cannibalizing, devouring, however you want to call it, but it's entirely run by, um, unfortunate ideas of what real estate development, uh, can be and should be. And architecture has always been about real estate in Egypt. Um, again, it wasn't about the work of genius architects. It was really, those artists were always trying to satisfy real estate needs. Uh, how much of that, and in the book I mentioned, for example, that even an area like downtown, so much of what we see today and look at it and say, this is a model. This is a building that's worth saving, was itself built on the ruins of another building that maybe lasted only like two decades or something like this.
Speaker 3 00:50:07 Um, so this is a long roundabout answer, but I want it that's what I'm trying to say is the question preservation is complex. Tyrone is not sentimental about its history of just earlier this year. I would Canada, that's nearly 900 years old at the start to shut out mornings was demolished. Um, and this gradually happened, you know, uh, so we're not only talking about <inaudible> type of thing. We're also learning about, so where do you draw the line? And so I think preservation, the purpose of preservation, um, has multiple things in the west. It has also, um, an interest for real estate, right? Like when you preserve a building, you attach certain value to it that translates into money in Egypt, that hasn't happened the preservation while there is no really active preservation, uh, specialization and movement and so on. But the heritage listing process doesn't is not coupled with an economic model that actually makes a heritage building, uh, equal money.
Speaker 3 00:51:10 So if you look at the website of the national order, is it called new national organization for urban harmony, which is the entity that doesn't actually have power to implement anything, but is the one responsible for listing buildings, other website, they list the buildings, but they also show that there's any court cases to delist the buildings. I bet you, I know I've looked quite extensive at this, that all of the cases of, uh, court cases to deal as buildings are by their present owners. So it's the total opposite of what's happened. Let's say New York city, right? Where people want a Landmark's permission after what happened to them in Penn station, and necessarily immediately translated still into capital's still into real estate, but in a very different way where actually it might be desirable to have a heritage listed building, not because the architecture is genius or not because of his only its historical record, but it's also because it has a very, uh, impactful, immediate potential in the president and investment and so on. Um, so we should obviously try needs to reconsider urgently it's, um, what it preserves and how it does it, but what's really more important is having an accessible, um, archive of the consecutive and many layers of the city's history is not
Speaker 2 00:52:36 Achievable.
Speaker 3 00:52:38 Um, I think at this point it might seem like quite a daunting task. Um, Egypt is not the most archive friendly place in the world. It's a place that ironically I find has a deep history, but very little memory, um,
Speaker 2 00:52:53 To use your word of cannibalizes on archives.
Speaker 3 00:52:57 Yeah. I mean, the ones that are available that people strollers come from all over the world to, to, to study and they come for these archives that exist, but they face difficulty, you know, there a security apparatus that shuts it down. There's a lot of unknowns, entire things like film, archive get sold to other countries as we've seen. You know what I mean? And,
Speaker 2 00:53:19 Um, I do wanna ask one more question, which is about, so you've written a book, you have a, you do all these curatorial projects. What's next? What projects are you working on right now? What do you want to work on? What are your dream project?
Speaker 3 00:53:34 Oh, this is actually what I'm planning to do next week. When I take some time off to go to look sort of, to think about 12, let this get out dream projects that I'd love to do in the next couple of years. Um, well, um, I would say, uh, something that I feel needs, uh, that I need, that I feel like I need to do, which is, uh, to do something, uh, a publication and an exhibition that comes out of the water and Egypt project that I did for the British museum that was mainly a collecting, uh, project. So my job was really to build a production for the museum, but, and everybody asks me so many people ask me, um, you know, what's the exhibition? When is the exhibition that was that an exhibition? I said, no, there was no exhibition. This was really meant for the museum to have a collection, but there is, uh, I think a desire, um, for me, I need at this point, uh, that this needs to translate into, so this is how we can use this collection that I've built. Um, so I'd love to see in the next couple of years, um, and exhibition and the publication come out of the modern Egypt project. Um, uh, what's next also on my list, um, is on Alexandria. Um, yes. Well, the title that I have for right now is something like portrait of a sinking city. So maybe that will change when it goes to the publisher, but it's
Speaker 2 00:54:56 Why do you what's what's this what's so, unless this is overly personal, what's so torturous for Alexandria for you. Is that the,
Speaker 3 00:55:04 Well, unlike Cairo, I have memories in them and I'm sorry, I have memories in Alexandria. So I can approach Tyro in a way that's removed from personal experience. So my personal experience is in the present as opposed to Alexandria, which certainly has an important element of my own personal past that has also shaped who I am. So buildings and sites that as a child, visiting Alexandria in the summers, um, really made me actually love architecture and, and want to pursue it as something that I do for a living they're gone. And they're almost all of the landmarks that I admired. There was the shot VI casino, which has been, which was left to rot and then was redressed in some awful, just basically done is redesigned to something completely different. The cabins that used to be along the beach, um, in different parts. I was from Stanley.
Speaker 3 00:56:04 I am from Stanley and Stanley bay had this two beautiful cabins that wrapped all the way around. And now there's a bridge that cuts right through it. And half of the chaplains were demolished. The Montez, uh, complex had the moon as a palace droplets had its own Palestine hotel, which is still there, but they know this the bit. Um, the tap is that were there also gone crazy stuff, you know, stuff that like, I, you know, my water, my water is this incredible late fifties. Um, roughly around 1960, it was basically done. Uh, essentially government built a beach resort for the middle class, uh, which was part of a set of these that were done in different parts of the country, gorgeous, modernist, uh, aesthetic. And again, not because of the architects at the time, trying to emulate anything else, this is actually what they thought represents them and the society at the moment.
Speaker 3 00:57:00 And so all of this is in either deplorable condition or is completely gone and sell amphitheater, which was this gorgeous open air theater on the Cornish, uh, with this light, very interesting shell structure that looked and made it look like a porcupine. And that's what I was as a child called it, the porcupine Ron, and the massive military built hotels going to displace right now. Massive. Um, you know, and the sea is literally, um, rising to the point. Alexandra is one of the most endangered cities in the world actually, when it comes to, uh, to climate change. And none of, that's not part of the conversation whatsoever, which is ridiculous. So it's, it's a very conflicted place for me. Um, um, and, and for many other reasons as well, and I find it to be always fascinating that, uh, it's again, kind of like, it's a microcosm of what I was saying about Egypt, deep history, no zero memory.
Speaker 3 00:58:01 It's like, it's, it's, it's like a, it's like an old person that's lived forever, but actually they have no idea that they've lived forever because they have let an intense case of amnesia or something. And it's, um, it's frustrating when you're, then the visitor to that old person with zero memory. And then you're like, no, but you did this and you're that. And you looked like this and they have zero clue nor do they care. Uh, and so yeah, the dinner breaks my heart greatly, but I think it's an important city to, uh, it's a, it's an important lens for me to, through which statute looked at Egypt in Japan in general. So that's definitely a project that's next to the work. I also want to write a novel. So I have a few things that I'm imagining that, um, I don't know if I'm going to of years it's done, but I'm fantasizing that.
Speaker 1 00:58:54 Thank you for listening. And again, a big thank you to how much you can follow Mohammed on Twitter at Cairo observer, you can follow me at <inaudible>. You can follow them. They done at the may down on Twitter. The production team includes Micah Hughes, who you can follow at Micah, a Hughes almond to Kelly aloo, and most importantly, our audio editor, uh, Sophie Potts, a big thank you to the Luce foundation. Our music is by blue dot.
