The Pretext

By Mounir Fatmi

My father has lost his teeth, now I can bite him


I’m going to try to be very careful in my thoughts and judgments. Information moves very fast.

We are living at unequaled speed. Two revolutions in two Arab nations in less than two months, where before everything had been frozen in time for more than 35 years. It’s as if God, if He exists, hit pause on an image in that part of the world and forgot to press play. As long as oil flowed at a steady stream and a pseudo politico-religious stability was in place, no one could see or wanted to see the malaise of Arab societies. It’s crazy to realize, all of a sudden, that these countries have populations, often very young, that are starved for freedom, democracy and justice. God has finally realized the VCR was stuck on pause in these countries. Panicked for a few moments, I think He didn’t realize what he was doing and hit fast forward. Events followed each other so fast that the media started talking about Arab Spring, even before spring had even arrived.

And so here I am obliged to talk about image in the Arab world by jumping a whole period of postcolonial institutions created to brain-wash—by which I mean state television—and to begin directly with the founding of Al Jazeera’s in 1996 in Qatar. A year prior, Hamad ibn Khalifa AL Thani, then minister of defense, deposed his father in a coup d’etat and took power while the elder was abroad in Switzerland. I think we can consider the date as the beginning of the new image of the Arab world—a rupture with the father, the launch of a television channel. Let’s be clear, I’m not making apologies for Al Jazeera, which bears criticism for a variety of things. The rebellions of the Arab Spring would have taken much longer without the efficacy of social networks, but also without Al Jazeera’s diffuse broadcast to more than 40 million spectators worldwide.

Let us try and look at all this with God's VCR and video tape: we'll be able to fast forward, rewind, slow down and freeze frame. There are several dates, without which it would be difficult to talk about the birth of Arab countries' new society of information. I'm going to quickly choose a few symbolic events here, from television to internet networks, that have influenced the Arab street, and that have also influenced me personally. 

A quick flashback, let's rewind the tape and stop at 1990, the Gulf war led by George Bush senior, Kuwait's invasion of Iraq. January 1991, the United States and the coalition are protecting Saudi Arabia and liberating Kuwait. The name of the operation was Desert Shield, which then became Desert Storm and which in the end could be characterised as “Desert, period”. All these titles, reminiscent of bad Z-list Hollywood films, were given by the US Department of Defense. All, or nearly all, of the information was managed by the Amercian TV channel CNN and some European media.

Fast forward... stop. September 11 2001: the shock. A large proportion of the images were filmed by amateurs on their cell phones, except for a few film crews who happened to find themselves in the right place at the right time. The image of the Arab world, or rather of Arabs in the world, took a fatal blow. Everything had to be rethought, but the media machine was so powerful that it almost convinced the Arab youth that their hero was called Bin Laden, their cause was Jihad, their only weapon was their body and that the only solution was terrorism. The events that followed have proved the contrary. 

Mounir Fatmi,

March 14,  2011. Paris

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mounir Fatmi
• Release date: Jan 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9791090680067

Mounir Fatmi

mounir fatmi is a visual artist born in Tangier, Morocco in 1970. He constructs visual spaces and linguistic games. His work deals with the desecration of religious objects, deconstruction, and the end of dogmas and ideologies. He questions the world and plays with its codes and precepts under the prism of architecture, language and the machine. He is particularly interested in the idea of the role of the artist in a society in crisis. mounir fatmi's work offers a look at the world from a different glance, refusing to be blinded by convention. He brings to light our doubts, fears and desires.   He has published several books and art catalogs including: The Kissing Precise, with Régis Durand, La Muette edition, Brussels, 2013, Suspect Language, with Lillian Davies, Skira edition, Italy, 2012, This is not blasphemy, in collaboration with Ariel Kyrou, Inculte-Dernier Marge & Actes Sud edition, 2015, History is not Mine, SF Publishing, Paris, 2015, and Survival Signs, SF Publishing, Paris, 2017. He has also participated in the collective book, Letter to a young Moroccan, edition Seuil, Paris, 2009. He has participated in several solo and collective exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world including: Mamco, Geneva, The Picasso Museum, Vallauris, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, The Brooklyn Museum, New York, N.B.K., Berlin, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, MAXXI, Rome, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow, Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, the Hayward Gallery, London, the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. His installations have been selected in biennials such as the 52nd and the 57th Venice Biennial, the 8th biennial of Sharjah, the 5th Dakar Biennial, the 2nd Seville Biennial, the 5th Gwangju Biennial and the 10th Lyon Biennial, the 5th Auckland Triennial, Fotofest 2014, Houston, the 10th and 11th Bamako Encounters, as well as the 7th Biennale of Architecture in Shenzhen. mounir fatmi was awarded several prizes such as the Cairo Biennial Prize in 2010, the Uriöt prize, Amsterdam, the Grand Prize Leopold Sedar Senghor of the 7th Dakar Biennial in 2006 as well and he was shortlisted for the Jameel Prize of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London in 2013.

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