Published by Ahram online
Original link :
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/5/25/36635/Arts--Culture/
Visual-Art/The-Agreement-by-Hassan-Khan-melds-literature-and-.aspxh
The Agreement is Hassan Khan’s new bilingual publication
that follows his solo exhibition The Twist that was held last
September at Objective Exhibitions in Antwerp, Belgium.
Rather than introducing his new book The Agreement in a
gallery space or museum, Khan pensively probes a new
territory by launching an artistic publication in Kotb Khan bookstore
in Maadi last Thursday and thus turning the place into a juncture where
various creators such prominent filmmakers, bloggers, writers, artists,
curators and designers meet.
The evening opened with a presentation by Bassam El Baroni,
the director of Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum and
curator of the publication Fifteen Ways to Leave Badiou’ in
which he invites critical theorist Suhail Malik with fifteen
artists to produce a text and artworks responding to Alien
Badiou’s piece Fifteen These On Contemporary Art.
Later Hassan Khan, along with writer Haythem El-Wardani
and May Abo El-Dahb, director of the art space Objectif Exhibitions,
started an engaging panel discussion about Khan’s
latest publication and artistic project.
Through the narration of five short stories and the display
of ten sculptural objects, artist, writer, and musician khan
explores new areas at which a colloquial language is
built in its either lingual or textual form.
The stories don’t necessary have a dramatic climax,
but moments of tension and distress where the reader
finds himself in private voyeuristic position with very
unusual yet familiar characters and specific occasions in their lives.
Through a meticulous description and vivid portrayal of their
ubiquitous setting, the protagonists become recognizable that it
would be unnecessary to continue the rest of the anecdote.
It’s a specific relation between a person and his siblings, a
pet or an object that would create a certain cultural demographics,
an aesthetical ambiance or recurring model in the Egyptian society,
which is contemplatively captured throughout the pages of the book.
The book opens with a portraiture of Amal, a spinster who chose
not to get married knowing that her birth defect and fortune might
be an attraction for some greed and lives at her family’s building in
Heliopolis with her veiled sisters-in law and two brothers one of
which is an army officer.
Neither the dermatological sequence nor the descriptive
narrations form the structure of the story of Amal or the
rest of the four stories.
However, its a specific anomalous mise-en scene that
was shaped with the juxtaposition of different elements
together such as a specific way of dressing, vulgar colloquial
words used, a day-to day habit or even a possession.
Such a peculiar milieu can be found between officers Ashraf
in his brutal speech with his informers or in the fierce playfulness
of Hassan and Waleed at the court yard of the British school
with white Muslim converts teachers.
An interdicted relationship of unrelated elements build the
sequence each story. For example, Talaat ‘s recent promotion
at the governor’s office will consequently make him able to replace
his yellow Fiat 128 and boost his confidence in front of his loser
old colleague in accounting, Fikry.
Also, the German Alsatian dog Rex is not just a pet for Haythem
who is a weed smoker, a Pink Floyd fan and a resident of four story
apartment block with smoky dark glass windows in Madinet Nasr,
but he completes a specific idiosyncratic of a nineteen-year old boy
of that era. “ He had no idea what he meant within class information
of 80’s and 90s youth culture in Cairo,” wrote the author speaking
about t Rex.
The stories are reassembled with an image of the croquet court
at Heliopolis sporting club and photographs of ten sculptures with
unusual titles. Some of which had the title of the characters of one
of the tales such as "Haythem’s Dream" a glazed ceramic cylinder or
the glass sculpture "Fikry’s Soul and Hassan’s Tree", however none
holds a direct symbolism of the tales' moral or reference to any
incident in it.
It is interesting then to see how an international established artist like
Khan would purposely design kitsch objects of domestic popular
ornaments and display it on a shelf in a contemporary art gallery
under the title The Twist and later print a photographed version of
them in a publication under the title The Agreement.
Although some of the audience at the book launch tried to discuss
the classification of the text, critic Haytham Al Wardany described
it as a genre of literature that has been “ Instantly born”. And in fact,
the ten images with the five short fables form together an anomalous
artwork that can hardly identified under a certain genre or label.
Not only khan’s interdisciplinary work has varied from performance,
video, music, installations and writing, but also he would
re-orchestrate all these together to create a new unexpected
provocative blend.
“ I don’t want to have a defined signature”, explains khan answering
one of the questions.
This can be also understood in khan’s text or reply to
Alien Badiou in the other publication that was also distributed
this evening Fifteen Ways to Leave Badiou, where khan in his reply
piece The Knot in which he explains that “ the subject of an artistic
truthis the set of the works which compose it” so that what articulates
a piece isa “ set of references that can ultimately allow us, the viewers
of the work to be able to recognize it”.
The Agreement is not khan’s first work that follows an exhibition or an
artwork as he previously produced another publication within the
exhibition Photocairo entitled “Nine Lessons Learned from Sherif Al
Azma in which he takes his 17 years old friend as a source of inspiration
for a series of self-reflective lessons.
Another self-critical piece was his performance art 17 And In AUC.
For 14 days the artist sat in mirrored glass room at AUC and spoke
about his experience with the academic institution such as his
literature classes, Greek campus or his mates’ birthday’s parties.
He then documented what he has said in a book of transcriptions
for the act and published it under the same title.
Although these publications differ than each other in their format
and structure, they all experiment with the literate text , have a
hidden sarcasm within it and holds a sense of a fictional
documentation of our contemporary time.
Even in his formal writings in several prominent publications, Khan’s
textual pieces seek to analyse local sociological history and
reflect an instinct for the unconventional.
Such as his witty piece inE-flux online journal "In Defense
of The Corrupt Intellectual " or his writings in Bidoun magazine
such as The Popular that is not Pop: An album cover for the
Anxious on on 1970s shabi (popular culture) singer Ahmed
Adawiya or Doctor Know that was about Dr. Mustafa Mahmud
and his examination for the underground shabbi music scene in
Loud, Insistent, and Dumb.
The Agreement is sold at Kotb Khan bookstore and
online at amazon and Sternberg press’s website’s http://www.sternbergpress.com.