Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 257: On Crystals, Tennis and Vampires — with Mena El Shazly
Speakers: Joey Malbon, Am Johal, Mena El Shazly
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Joey Malbon 00:02
Hello listeners! I’m Joey Malbon with Below the Radar, a knowledge democracy podcast. Below the Radar is recorded on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. On this episode of Below the Radar, our host Am Johal is joined by Mena El Shazly, a visual artist active in moving image creation, curation and programming. Her practice speculates on notions of presence and transcendence in the digital world, exploring how processes of decay provide alternative forms of transformation and regeneration. Am and Mena discuss her artistic practices, her early tennis career, the Sudanese Crystalist movement, and a teenage journey to Dracula’s castle. We hope you enjoy the episode!
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Am Johal 00:47
Hello. Welcome to Below the Radar. Delighted that you could join us again this week, we have a special guest, Mena El Shazly, with us today. Welcome, Mena.
Mena El Shazly 01:05
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's a great resource, I guess, below the radar for me as a visual artist. I really value it, and I actually keep coming back to it, because I think it's really, really amazing, like all the work you're doing. So keep up the good work.
Am Johal 01:23
Oh, that's so kind of you. It's so nice to have you here with us. You know, as someone who went through the graduate program at SFU, maybe we can begin with you introducing yourself a little bit.
Mena El Shazly 01:34
Okay. My name is Mena El Shazly. I'm a visual artist and I'm based between Vancouver and Cairo, where I'm mostly active in moving image creation, mostly video art and experimental film. So production, distribution, everything that goes around that I would say.
Am Johal 01:58
Yeah, wondering maybe if we can start with how you first got involved in art making. Were you doing it as a kid, or did you, did you fall upon a group of weirdos? And you know, how did you start to make work, or knowing that you wanted to pursue this in a way? We're going to come to the tennis in a bit, which I find fascinating. First of all, wondering if you can speak just a little bit to the kind of themes that you take up in your work, or the kinds of things, the ideas that are behind the work that you're making.
Mena El Shazly 02:15
It was actually a hobby of mine. Back in the day, when I was a tennis player, I used to love painting. I used to love drawing, and I used to sketch a lot. I would take my sketch book with me along, like in the tennis courts, in my tournaments. And I guess after I realized I don't want to play tennis anymore professionally like that, I automatically decided that that's what I want to do. Most of my work on media is already taking a very speculative approach to media. I think I engage a lot with how we consume media and what images mean for us today, in this world where we have maybe thousands of screens around us all the time. So this is definitely one theme I keep coming back to. Another theme that also, I would say, summarizes a lot of my work in the past 10 years or so, has to do with the idea of looking at the process of decay and valuing it. And this, I guess, stems from my observation that we, nowadays in the capitalist system, have the tendency to throw away our older equipment and have this obsession with everything new. And in my practice, I think about even cultivating decay, if we want to say and through that, I usually hope to arrive at transformation and regeneration. I mostly have done work on image decay. So when it came to transformation and regeneration, it also meant, I would say, glitch and feedback and working with obsolete technologies and so forth, I think, a little bit in the way that you're talking about the nature of obsolescence and temporality that might play in your work. And so when you use the word decay, of course, it has this relationship to time, but I'm wondering how you take it up materially in your practice? Well, I think that the starting point for me, of course, is just the technologies and materials I use that already have a decaying nature to them. I also, I guess, especially in the past two years, while I was doing my masters at SFU, I also learned so much about different compression techniques thanks to Laura marks. And through that, I also started to experiment a lot with small files and different compressions, which is also a decay in a way.
Am Johal 05:30
Now, one of the pieces that you work on, the multimedia series Death Spells, it's at Cairo Food Week right now. I've looked briefly at another sculptural work, the naming of parts, that studies decaying carrots and zoning. If you could speak to a few of those pieces and some others, where you work out your practice.
Mena El Shazly 05:53
Death Spells is actually going to be showing in the Grand Egyptian Museum, which is really exciting, because this project looks at decay for sure. It looks at our obsession with immortality, especially when it comes to the way we use social media, our practices on social media, on the internet, but then also ancient rituals that ancient Egyptians were kind of obsessed about to attain immortality. So through this project, which had the format of a cooking show where we cooked three meals that are ancient Egyptian, so they all were green? So in this project, we invited social media activists and Egyptologists to kind of have a conversation together about immortality and what it means today. And interestingly, Ramadan Hossein, who's an Egyptologist, was talking about how ancient Egyptians decorated their tombs, not only with their religious titles or achievements, but they also highlighted their whole career, on their walls and so on. So this included executive titles, business titles, and basically all of their biographies were written on the walls. And this, of course, implies that, like they would only do that if their graves have been visited, right? So very similarly, in this project, we invited social media activists that we're talking about, the use of filters, for example, on Instagram, and this wish fulfillment of having an ideal being right? Like it's a bit similar to the Sphinx, if we want to say. So, with this Project, which actually involved, I guess, about 60 collaborators, both from Egypt and Germany, I developed the concept with a collective in Germany. Their name is Ongoing Project, it was a massive project. It just opened a big conversation around this idea of immortality. With it, we also launched an after-lifestyle TV station where we were thinking about the same themes and this idea of defeating mortality, if we want to say. And of course, like, critically engaging with that. From another angle, and moving on to naming of parts, I was working with carrots for measuring how long it takes for carrot ends to decay. And I started this project in Egypt, and it was actually around 2019, and then I started to think, okay, what is the difference between carrot ends in Egypt and carrot ends in Canada. And so I continued the project here, just trying to trace how carrots decay. And they just keep shrinking, so I would take the same carrot end and produce different casts of the same carrot end over time and just measure how much it decays. Of course, it was a study that made me realize that they keep shrinking, but then at the same time, when they do, I had like, a bit of technical instances that would stop me from tracing them until they completely disappear. But with this project, the most interesting conclusion for me, in addition to its beautiful esthetic, I would say the most striking conclusion for me, had to do with the idea that nothing ever goes back to its original state, because we have a tendency nowadays to think about this notion of repair. Or if you want to fix something, you want to remove any trace of its injury, for example, and you want to bring it back to its original state. So if you want to fix something, you kind of just want to transform it back as if nothing happened to it. And this was, for me, really exciting to just be able to prove that once something exists, it just has a story, it has a cycle and we can't fight that, I guess. And with capitalism, I guess, you learn that you just need to fix things, even your body, your car, your phone, everything around us. We just want to remove any trace of injury, remove any trace of life, right?
Am Johal 10:48
I'm going to jump to tennis for a second, and I want to come back and ask you some more questions about your practice and other places that you're involved with, with the contemporary art scene in Egypt as well. So, how did you get involved in tennis? It's not that many people in art who are, you know, skilled, highly national level tennis players.
Mena El Shazly 11:09
Well yes, I started playing tennis as part of my parents project, I would say, to introduce me to different sports. When I was nine, I I started playing tennis, and I loved it. I already love running. I'm fast. I have a good reflex. So I started playing at 9, and I started competing at 10. And very, very quickly I was able to win tournaments at the national level. So I was among the top three under 12 and under 14. And of course, like any other professional sport, as long as you win, you are wanted, and you things keep coming to you, I guess, and people want you to play with them. So I started playing with the national team at around 13, and played the African Cup at the time, reached the quarterfinal, and then started playing internationally. So I started traveling, and it was really great, because I guess my career was like from 10 to 14 around this time, but I had already – it taught me how to be so independent and so much more, of course. But then I guess – I actually have a story from the time when I was playing the International Circuit. I was about 14, and I was supposed to go to Romania, and it was really exciting. I remember the day before traveling, I remember that very well, just the excitement I had to go to Romania. Of course, for me, it's super exciting because it's also the birthplace of Dracula, like Transylvania. And I arrived in Romania, and then saw the tennis court, and it's exactly the same box, the same dimension, and it made me feel a bit – I don't know, maybe I was expecting things to look different over there, but it turned out that the tennis court is exactly the same dimension, the same box. right, the same lines. And so it was. I felt it for a second, but I played the match, I lost in the first round. I couldn't focus at all. And I remember at this time, I was crying to my coach and telling him, like, "I just want to see Dracula. What are we doing here in the tennis court? I just want to go see Romania. I'm sick of the dimensions of the court." And I guess with professional athletes, the moment your mind drifts away for just a second, there's like hundreds more people who kind of like, step over you and kind of like beat you and just move on, right? So, this happened to me there, and of course, they took me to see Dracula [laughter] and I remember I came back to Egypt. Of course, you lose and you're sent back, like no one wants to pay for your extra days of vacation. But I remember something changed for me in this tournament, because I realized that I don't care if the ball is inside or outside the box. I'm curious about other things, and I guess this is - of course, it happened gradually. It was not that this tournament kind of killed my tennis career, but something changed, I would say for sure, as soon as I realized that this box - I just want to get outside, out of this box and and move on to see other things and do other things. It was quite a realization for me, and I'm happy.
Am Johal 15:32
And again, I suppose it gives you other things like discipline, and tenacity, and purpose, and those kinds of things that you know, a sporting training mindset can do that can, you know, perhaps, be replicable in other areas of interest.
Mena El Shazly 15:46
Absolutely. I think that one of the most valuable things for me from playing tennis is just the idea of having a practice, you know, and being able to be patient and trust in yourself. And of course, with tennis, it's a single sport, so it's very tough. It's very stressful, and someone has to win and someone has to lose in that way. So it's different, but at the same time, it was really exciting for me. And yeah, I learned so much from this experience.
Am Johal 16:25
So two questions related to tennis, for those who are listening and are amateur players, what is the secret to a good serve, first of all, and secondly, what's your strategy? Are you like a baseline player, or do you serve in volley? How do you approach your game?
Mena El Shazly 16:44
That's a great question (laughs) A good serve, I would say, of course the toss is the key to a good serve. And as you go along, you also learn that it happens from your upper body, the way you send the ball to the other side of the court. But the toss definitely is it, I think, like if you go back to all the errors you've made and serve and look at your toss, probably it will be somewhere there that something went wrong. I am a baseline player. I I love running, I have really good ground strokes. I'm back now to playing tennis after 17 years of having a break from tennis, and I'm slowly learning to play the net, because back then I was just a good baseliner, and that's how I won all my matches, actually, just with my good strokes, yeah.
Am Johal 17:56
That's fascinating. And so that was a wonderful story about leaving tennis, and at what point did you start to get serious about your art practice or the context that you were working?
Mena El Shazly 18:08
So at 14 or 15, I knew that I would not continue as a tennis player, as a professional tennis player, and that I needed to figure out what I wanted to do. And at this age, it's very, very common for for a lot of young professionals to quit, because this is the age where you have to take a decision if you want to play college tennis, and in that case you choose your college where you will study based on its tennis, because you know that this is your priority. And because, since it was not, I automatically resorted to my hobby. I was thinking, "Okay, if I don't play tennis, I will just take my hobby seriously and just make more time for it." And that's how I decided to study visual art at the time.
Am Johal 19:18
Now, in terms of going to graduate school, you already had a well developed practice before you arrived here. How did your graduate school experience alter, change, nuance your work, or how did your work shift as a result of your experience in graduate school and working in different ways and with new ideas?
Mena El Shazly 19:42
I think that grad school allowed me to have a daily practice in what I do, in an environment where I have resources, I have support, I have other colleagues that I can also have conversations with and learn from. And this definitely was the best thing for me to be able to just have a daily practice that doesn't necessarily lead to something concrete, but just to develop my own methodology to play with what I have, to learn new techniques inside and outside of my main focus of video. So for sure. Actually, now that I'm done with that, I really miss just – I think it allowed me to just be a visual artist in a way where I don't have to worry so much about other things, I guess.
Am Johal 20:54
You touch on different disciplinary areas. But also, there are unclearly theoretical influences in your art, either from media theory or the ways that you're looking at and deconstructing power. So I'm wondering if you can just speak a little bit to how either disciplinary or particular theorists, thinkers influence your work in some kind of way.
Mena El Shazly 21:18
Yeah, just this past three years, I have been really influenced by the Crystalist school in Sudan, who are a group of artists that existed in the 70s and published a manifesto in Al-Ahram newspaper in Sudan that they all signed. They were about four people, four artists. And for me, I take their theories really seriously. And just for those that don't know about the crystalists, they argue that a crystal has an inner core that extends infinitely inside, an outside form that also extends infinitely outside. And a crystal is just like a glass of water, [it] has a bit of transparency to it as well. And for them, they try to look at the whole world through the crystal, through the crystalist lens. So in their manifesto, which is accessible, they published it in Arabic, but it's been translated to English, and it's published on the MoMA website. It's called the Crystalist Manifesto, and in this manifesto, they just cover a lot of theories from their own understanding of the world, but then also theater, art, color language, and everything in between. And for me, I resonate a lot with their theory, of course, because I'm really interested in their collectivity and them, just like working together and being able to have this conversation together, but then take a treaty seriously and publish it in a public newspaper at the time. But then also because of just their way they approach life through this crystal I guess that really resonated with me, so the work I have been producing in the past three years has been extremely influenced by that. Another big influence in my artistic career, I would say, is Asunción Molinos Gordo, an artist that is based between Spain and Egypt. I was very lucky to study with her in my Bachelor's for a while, and for me, her work is really inspiring. Most of her practice centers around contemporary peasantry. She thinks about this idea of rural notions of how we can measure success. And she looks at rural life as her main focus of study. And it's been really inspiring to learn from her, like her own methodology, the way she constructs her research. And yes, so definitely she's also a big influence.
Am Johal 24:39
I want to talk to you a little bit – I know that you worked as the artistic director of the Cairo Video Festival, so clearly, you know, very much plugged into contemporary artists as well, wondering if you can speak a little bit to that experience and working with other artists in Egypt.
Mena El Shazly 24:57
I am still working with [the] artist run based Medrar, it's based in Cairo. And so Medrar is a contemporary art space in Cairo. And under that, there's many projects, and I am involved in the Cairo Video Festival since 2013. Our upcoming edition is actually this December, December 2024, and it's been really inspiring for me to develop the program of the festival, to work on the publication, to think about work with artists, commission works, and most importantly, I guess, just look at video, art and experimental film. So each program focuses on recently produced work, it's International. We get thousands of submissions each year. We've been working up to, I guess, like establishing a really good space where artists can trust us with their work. And it's been really great to be part of that and to see it grow like that, and for this, I guess what was really helping. And since I also mentioned Asuncion Molinos Gordo, the artist, I remember when I was doing my Bachelor's. She once talked about a friend or someone she knows who was an artist, but then was also a fisherman. So he would produce artwork. And then in summer, he would just go on his sailboat and do his thing and earn some money, and then come back to his studio and produce work. And I was really inspired. I don't know his name, but I remember this story that she once mentioned to me, and I was really inspired by him, because for me, at least, I won't be able to produce all the time with the intensity I want. And sometimes it's good to disappear from what you do and then, like, reappear and discover new things. So for me, working with Medrar, the artist collective, definitely allowed me to have that. Another point that's on my mind is that the way I was working in Medrar, especially when commissioning works, or when putting together an edition of the Cairo Video Festival, had to do a lot with working with what you can have, but then not really with what you want, because somehow from there, you can go and reach the maximum with what you can have, and then in the process, you discover these things that you would have never expected. And this definitely informed a lot of my artistic methodology as well, to be able to understand your resources, understand what you can have in this current stage. And then, like, really go as far as you want, like, the sky's the limit. And, for me this, this was one thing, and then there was this other general thought I was thinking about that with my work with Cairo Video Festival, I try to, I guess, introduce audiences with what cinema and video, the capacity of cinema and video, and what, what we can do with this medium, because we experiment a lot with the medium itself. It's not really cinema and it's not really visual art. So it's somewhere in between. And some of the films don't even have a story. They are just like, experimenting with the medium itself, in a way. And not everyone is familiar, I guess, like with this very specific video art, experimental film space, I guess.
Am Johal 29:18
With all the political convulsions in Egypt, overthrows of systems, changes, things going back and forth, I'm wondering how this has impacted artists, whether it's at the level of censorship or just new networks building up, people figuring out how to work in a rearranged political configuration that's constantly shifting, and wondering if you could sort of speak to how artists are being resilient in this time of political upheaval.
Mena El Shazly 29:49
Yeah I really wish things were different. I want to say a couple of years ago, I read somewhere that there are 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt, this was a couple of years ago, and things have not gotten any better. On the contrary, like things are getting worse with freedom of speech, of course, like there's censorship right now is at a really critical stage. It's always been there, but now it's even worse. This was maybe six, seven years ago that there was one person that just photoshopped Mickey Mouse ears to a photo of the President and spent three years in prison. So this is like seven years ago, maybe eight years ago. And things did not get any better for us artists, and for us as Medrar, as an art space, you – I think, especially for us as Medrar as an art space, we have a responsibility, I guess, to continue working, and to also understand the space where we can work, not in a way that destroys our art or other people's art that we are showing, but just understanding like not playing with fire for the sake of playing with fire. I would say, personally, I'm really interested in my work, and encoded messages in, in how you can[...] talk about something, how you can reference something and not reference it at the same time. I think it's a tricky question, because it's like you don't want to be a victim to censorship. You don't want to think about it so much that you actually end up censoring yourself, but then you also don't want to forget about it at all and get yourself in trouble. So it's with every iteration, with every project, with every – it's different, and things keep changing too, but one thing for sure is that artists have each other, especially for contemporary art or experimental art, we rely so much on each other. We protect each other in ways that I guess, is extremely inspiring to see how it's happening.
Am Johal 32:26
Yeah, this question of how to smuggle things in and smuggle things out, and also to determine where the line is, those are constantly questions that artists come up against all the time. Wondering, you know now that you're based here in Vancouver after grad school, and obviously circulating back through Egypt and other places. In terms of the kind of artistic context of working in Vancouver, this expensive city, [with] all these other kind of challenges to making artwork, how you think that through, and the kind of being plugged into different artistic communities here and there, where do you see overlaps, in places of configuring things in new ways, in terms of how you think about, you know, which communities of artists you're involved with?
Mena El Shazly 33:17
So when I actually started my master's in Vancouver – it was my first time in Vancouver. I'm much more familiar with Montreal and Toronto, even, but I've never come to Vancouver before. So now it's been about like, three years. It's making me realize for sure that having a community takes a long time. I think that it's very exciting for me, upon completion of my masters, to work in Vancouver and to produce work that is actually current here and alive here, in a way. And so for me, that's definitely one thing that's making me excited to stay here and, it's really rich here, in terms of everything I would say, and that's definitely holding me. Like it's making me feel grounded and making me feel like I just want to learn more about everything and be able to meet more people, be able to just produce more work. In the past couple of years and in general, my practice looks a lot to this idea of presence and transcendence when it comes to, like, the way we, for example, use the internet, like the internet culture. But then also, I ask myself, like, with the use of the Internet, where do we want to transcend, or where do we want to be present, and what kind of priorities do we have? I'm thinking more about displacement. You can see a lot of displacement in Vancouver, of course. So for me, it's interesting to just look at this really complex environment we are in here, which is extremely rich, extremely packed and extremely tense as well, like there's a lot of tension that you feel.
Am Johal 35:26
Mena, is there anything you'd like to add?
Mena El Shazly 35:30
I can't really think of anything.
Am Johal 35:32
Ok well Mena, thank you so much for joining us on Below the Radar and also to share, of course, also about your tennis career, too.
Mena El Shazly 35:40
Yeah. Thank you. That's, yeah, it's, it's been really fun chatting with you.
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Joey Malbon 35:48
Below the Radar is a knowledge democracy podcast created by SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Thanks for listening to our conversation with Mena El Shazly. Head to the show notes to learn more about Mena’s work. If you would like to support our podcast, you can donate at the link in the description below. Your generous donation will help support the podcast's activities and associated public events with SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Thanks again for listening, and we’ll catch you next time on Below the Radar.