GRAFFITI AND CULTURAL PRODUCTION IN CONTEMPORARY CAIRO: ARTICULATING LOCAL AND GLOBAL ELEMENTS OF POPULAR CULTURE Georgiana Nicoarea

University of Bucharest
Abstract. The recent uprisings in the Arab World are indicators of continuous contestation of authoritarian regimes, a continuing process that leaves its mark on the field of cultural production. Revolutionary graffiti represent a dynamic self-expression practice of public opinion in Cairo, Egypt, during and in the aftermath of the 2011 Revolution. As a medium of both communication and subversion, residing at the intersection of art and transgression, graffiti largely serve to re-appropriate the public space and their popularity is mainly due to the themes addressed and their relevance to issues of everyday life. But can this re-appropriation be seen as more than just a socio-political territory marking of the city? Can graffiti be integrated into a discussion about culture in the Arab World? Keywords: cultural production, graffiti, popular culture, political engagement, Egypt

The graffiti scene in the Arab World has witnessed a media and popular increase in interest since the beginning of the Arab uprisings. It is hard to establish which came first, but needless to say, forms of what is considered revolutionary street art, in which graffiti could be included, in countries like Tunisia or Egypt have attracted the attention of a mostly enthusiastic large public and are now more than ever present in public space. As it is an unsanctioned practice, its presence sometimes creates debate and perhaps one dimension of this debate revolves around its legitimacy and the right the practitioners have to inscribe it on the walls of the city. Related to the legitimacy issue, another element of this debate concentrates on whether or not this form of manifestation in public space conveys a message and if so, what is the role of the message.

Graffiti as small-scale cultural production In search of graffitis legitimacy we will tackle in this article the use of both high - and popular culture references and icons, as one of the elements that conjugate to form the particularities of Egyptian graffiti. We further posit that these local characteristics can qualify graffiti as a cultural practice rallied to the field of cultural production in the acceptation of
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French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu 1996). He describes the field as framed by the relationship between two subfields, small-scale production and large-scale production that are distinguished by their degree of autonomy from the field of power. As opposed to large-scale, small-scale production is characterized by a higher degree of autonomy - even though never a full one -, it is oriented toward the production of pure artistic products in contrast with the commercial cultural goods largely produced and it is viewed as production for producers due to its rejection of the market. Graffiti in general could be described as a form of small-scale production that pertains to the field of cultural production. Ever since its popularity registered a peak in the 1970s and the 1980s, a very common theme of debate within the graffiti subculture is the one around the relationship with commerce and the world of art. The interest of galleries in street art lead to what can be considered a split in the subculture between the supporters and the adversaries of the commoditization of the subcultures products. The emergence, within the subculture, of the term post-graffiti to refer to the displacement of spray-can graffiti from the spaces of the street and subway into Manhattan galleries during the mid 1980s (Dickens 2009:17) indicates its rejection of the market and its perception of graffiti as a purely artistic product. The roots of this rejection can be found in the writers appeal for anonymity and the authenticity, two important aspects of the subculture. As ethnologist Nancy MacDonald states, this drive to keep graffiti illegal and out of commercial clutches does not come from the lure of authenticity alone (MacDonald 2001:173). Nancy MacDonald underlines the important role of what she calls subcultural fidelity, a value best defined by the impulse described by graffiti writers to stay true to the subcultures traditions, which speak to insiders alone. Contrary to the common belief that graffiti, perceived as an illegal act of vandalism, are directly addressing those situated outside the subculture, Nancy MacDonald implies that the production of graffiti is more likely to be one addressing its own producers, a production for producers: what is hidden from and then rejected by the outside world becomes their loss and an insiders gain. The subculture remains their world accessible and meaningful to them alone (MacDonald 2001:178). This position could explain the opacity of some of the messages carried by urban inscriptions whose deciphering requires sometimes more than just contextual and cultural knowledge. One of the defining aspects of the graffiti subculture is its illegality that, as Susan Phillips states, creates intersections where legitimate and illegitimate meet and enables cultural groups to define themselves. Because graffiti is easily produced this practice is often
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adopted by the disempowered to negotiate relationships of power (Phillips 1999:20) and this use points towards the subculures autonomy, although it is largely acknowledged that other agendas may intervene in the process of negotiating relationships of power through the production of graffiti. More than autonomy, Jeff Ferrell points that the politics of graffiti writing are those of anarchism (Ferrell 1993:172) and he further adds creativity to the aspect of illegality. According to Jeff Ferrell, graffiti as the product of both illegality and creativity represent a resistance to authority, as well as a stance against private property constrains, law and corporate art, a sign of direct action against these authorities. The autonomy stance is additionally developed into an alternative street aesthetics that challenges the culture industry. As Jeff Ferrell points out, graffiti writers play with their own images and designs while they appropriate and re-configure popular culture icons. These acts of appropriation and reconfiguration are interpreted as an engagement in a process of cultural resistance (Ferrell 1993:173). Sociologist Stephen Duncombe uses the term cultural resistance to describe culture that is used, consciously or unconsciously, effectively or not, to resist and/or change the dominant political, economic, and/or social structure (Duncombe 2002:5). Even if graffiti had previously existed before the 2011 Egyptian revolution, though it must be noted that to a lesser extent, street art has mainly become a point of interest during and in the aftermath of the uprising. Urban inscriptions consequently began to be perceived as an element of what is popularly known as the art of the revolution or what Charles Tripp calls the art of resistance. Icons of both popular and high culture are abundantly found on the streets of Cairo and their presence, the transformation they suffer and the contexts they create or appropriate could contribute to the further interpretation of the processes of cultural resistance in contemporary Cairo, in the revolutionary and post-revolutionary contexts. This interpretation may prove itself to be important if we consider Stephen Duncombes assertion that revolution is the complete overthrow of the ruling system and a time when the culture of resistance becomes just culture (Duncombe 2002:8). Whether or not Cairos urban inscriptions will come to be sanctioned as elements of popular culture is perhaps too soon to be discerned but the amplitude of the practice, with at least six books dedicated entirely to it, the massive media coverage and the impressive popularity it has gained on social networking websites, makes an important stance in favor of its analysis.

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Politics of graffiti in urban Cairo The corpus of graffiti images this article is based on, gathered in September 2012 in Cairo, showed a predominance of political graffiti and stencils with a high concentration in Tahrir Square, the nerve center of the revolution, and the surrounding streets. This type of graffiti exists more often than not under authoritarian systems and emerges during revolutionary events challenging the states attempt to reduce and control public space. The relevance of political graffiti thus lies not only in the message they display, but in its reclaiming the public space. As Charles Trip mentions it demonstrates that public space is no longer monopolised by the politically powerful and the military occupiers (Trip 2012:398) . The walls of downtown Cairo stopped being mere architectural elements as they were transformed by the members of the society who took charge of them and used them in ways that suited the needs and wishes of a people involved in a revolution raising political consciousness. The Egyptian 2011 Revolution transformed the urban geography through the impressive quantity of street art its participants produced on the walls of the city that marked, through its omnipresence, a re-appropriation of public space. But maybe we can say that it did more than that, influencing not just the political but also the cultural sphere. As Lyman Chafee notes, the role of street art in general is to form social consciousness (Chafee 1993:4) and in order to achieve it, its practices, graffiti included, may involve cultural icons, pertaining to both high culture and popular culture. An additional function of contemporary Egyptian graffiti is underlined by sociologist Mona Abaza, that of creating a memorial space (Abaza 2013:122) underlining their crucial significance for the visual and artistic narration of the revolution (Abaza 2013:131). Through this memorialization functionality graffiti become a source of popular history and we posit that it greatly contributed to the creation of revolutionary popular culture icons, transforming participants and martyrs into paragons. The high density of political graffiti in Tahrir Square is motivated also by the fact that by and large this type of graffiti addresses the general public, thus having a wider intended audience than regular graffiti. Tahrir Square, the focal point of the revolution, is the main public square in downtown Cairo, in the middle of which a busy traffic circle is situated. As the entire world has seen it on news channels, during the sit-ins the entire open space was occupied by the revolutionaries. What the media only later revealed was that the walls of the buildings in the area, including the dreadful Mogammaa government building and the original campus of the American University in Cairo, were transformed into graffiti canvas.
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Because of the maximized exposure due to its position and the fact that governments view such graffiti as disruptive and subversive (Chaffee 1987:39), the Egyptian Central Security Forces adopted a similar agenda to that of officials in Peru, Argentina and in the Spanish Basque country. In those regions of the globe where political graffiti is prevalent as a prodigious manifestation of political dissent, officials often take up an agenda of cleansing the city walls of urban inscriptions containing social and political commentary. Perhaps the most significant attempt at cleansing from the part of the authorities is the repetitive painting over of the murals on the walls of the American University in Cairos old campus on Muammad Mamd Street, that Soraya Morayef described as whitewashing Cairo's Memory1. During one of these campaigns, in September 2012, only the AUCs campus wall was covered in white paint, leaving the surrounding graffiti untouched.

Street sign on Muammad Mamd Street. Minaqat grft graffiti zone. September 2012 (authors photo)
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http://www. acus. org/egyptsource/mohamed-mahmoud-mural-whitewashing-cairos-memory-past 265

This particular area is symbolic for the graffiti scene of Cairo not only because it witnessed a great deal of revolutionary and post-revolutionary activities and violence but mainly due to its subsequent transformation into a place of remembrance for the victims through the successive murals painted there. The dynamics of the area accompanies the dynamics of the society in the post-revolutionary period and as sociologist Mona Abaza notes, this part of the city center and the wall of the old American University in Cairo campus in particular witnessed fantastic mutations and transformations on a weekly basis epitomized by a constant war over the painting of walls (Abaza 2013:129). This war involved graffiti practitioners on one side and the Central Security Forces on the other, but in spite of the repressive actions and the whitewashing campaigns, the urban inscription rapidly filled in the empty space that turns out to be even more inviting.

Representations of popular culture If there is no doubt that the themes of Cairene graffiti currently revolve for the most part around politics and tangential social matters, one cannot ignore that the content reveals more than just plain politics. The pragmatics of urban inscription is a complex mechanism and its main goal is to maximize the efficacy of the messages it tries to communicate to the larger public. One of what we can call captatio benevolentiae strategies is the common use of popular culture icons and in general of an iconographic style, meant to add further transparency to a form of communication perceived as being self-revealing even if its transparency is disputed. This image centered style is rather a recent development in street-art, which characterizes the so called post-graffiti aesthetic practice that distinguishes itself by a shift towards iconographic forms of inscription. The reason may be that identified by Tristan Manco, who notices that in the contemporary city images speak louder than words (Manco 2004:16) and thus using an image instead of writing broadens the urban audience as it is a more universal language, a language that predates words. These instantly decipherable iconographic inscriptions are further more considered by Luke Dickens as an attempt to directly engage with urban audiences through (...) using critical, intriguing and often humorous graphics in order to challenge their visual understandings and appreciations of the city (Dickens 2008:474). But perhaps this way of interacting with the city can reveal some of the characteristics of the popular culture of a city whose center has become symbolically iconic. In this section some of the popular culture
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icons used in Cairos graffiti are presented in an attempt to put together some of the pieces of a large puzzle that would probably need some time to be arranged. The walls in downtown Cairo bear witness of a complex and surprising intertexuality that connects different types of techniques and sources in an effort to enlarge the sphere of the audience targeted by graffiti practitioners. Whether or not it reaches its goal or whether this is an intended tactics, the mix of icons, symbols, connotations and references creates a concentrated panorama of what resides in the concept of popular culture. Defining this concept within the framework of Arab cultural studies proves itself problematic because of the political and intellectual project that alienates other types of interpretations of culture described by the Morrocan anthropologist Tarik Sabry as the historicisation of the category Arab culture (Sabry 2010:45). An Arnoldian-type vision of culture is familiar to the ArabicIslamic cultural heritage and it excludes the anthropological studying of everyday life and cultural products of society in the spirit of the Birmingham School. As an attempt at defining Arab popular culture surpasses the scope of this article, we will limit ourselves to a survey of the popular culture scene as it is represented in the graffiti encountered in downtown Cairo, in the autumn of 2012, for the purpose of outlining some of the roles played within what we can describe as contemporary cultural production in Egypt. From the large array of popular culture elements employed some categories seem prevalent: local Egyptian icons, whether from the domain of music, cinema, literature or media to which international symbols are added. From the point of view of their production, the type of graffiti most encountered for this kind of representations is also relevant as the stenciling technique is almost exclusive. The stencil is a term used to define the type of graffiti produced with the help of a pre-made template that is painted through with spray cans or using regular brushes. Its advantage resides in the possibility of a somewhat mass production of graffiti with a lower degree of risk, as the time needed to accomplish it diminishes considerably. Additionally, an element of street credibility is added as stencils are common ways of production for promotional campaigns and utilitarian urban inscription. Its use is related to the shift towards more iconographic forms of inscription observed in the recent developments within the graffiti subculture. Celebrated icons of Egyptian cinema and music stars alongside citations from a large sphere of literary genres, from the Koran to Sufism and modern Arabic literature, politically engaged poetry or political essays can be counted among the re-appropriations of popular culture symbols by graffiti practitioners. Actors like Mohamed Reda, Nagah el-Mogy, Tawfik
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el-Deen, Ismail Yasin and last by not least, Adel Imam and Dalida, to whom we must add the beloved Lady of Arabic Music, Umm Kultm, are featured in stencils serving a role similar to that of the characters included in American-style graffiti, that is to communicate with mainstream audiences beyond the subculture itself (Dickens 2009:79). Unlike the characters that are appropriated from secondary sources like the works of recognized cartoonists, the above mentioned icons have gained their notoriety in the popular Egyptian cinema or as music superstars. Often blamed by critics for its triviality, popular Egyptian cinema captivates to a large extent the local audiences due to what Viola Shafik identifies as its recurrent dramatic patterns, ritualized performances and some almost archetypical, yet partly contradictory stereotypes (Shafik, 2007:2). The appeal the masses might have for the images reproducing these actors most famous poses is further augmented up by the choice in the appended text, whether it consists of lines from the scripts of well known movies or literary texts. Among citations from Naguib Mahfouzs Palace of Desire, the second volume of the Cairo Trilogy or the mystical writings attributed to the ninth century Sufi Junayd of Baghdad or to al-Nifarri who died in Egypt a century later, graffiti are abundant in modern and contemporary colloquial Egyptian poetry that bears a strong political stance. As modern manifestations of zaal, the lyrical works of poets like Abdel Rahman el-Abnudi (fragments from: lissa-n-nim masqa, The regime didnt fall yet), Amal Dunqul (fragments from: la tole, Do not reconcile), Salah Jahin (leading poet of the 1952 Revolution) or the emblematic Ahmad Fuad Negm are associated with popular literature, al-adab al-mmiyy, not just because of their use of spoken Egyptian Arabic but also for their notorious popularity and the peoples identification with the messages their poetry conveys. The above mentioned poets pertain to a wave of politically engaged poetry that was influenced by and in the same time accompanied the political events of the past century and subsequently left its trademark on the contemporary lyrical production viewed as a form of genuine popular expression, a perception that contributed to its growing popularity. It is therefore no surprise that graffiti with their claim to authenticity embrace these authors work as they are both types of writings used mainly by the disempowered as a common form of expressing dissent. Whether the high degree of public attractiveness determined the choice in literary texts employed in graffiti, their use comes as an attempt to emphasize connections with the cultural heritage of Egypt, pertaining to elements of the so called high culture that the practitioners do not intend to neglect. Sanctioned culture is not just exempt from the undermining it usually
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suffers from in other parts of the world but a dialogue between well known literary texts and a somewhat newer kind of writing is established, perhaps also as a method to contribute to graffitis perception as an art associated with established cultural texts. It was in fact within a campaign entitled, al-fann mi arm, Art is not a sin that images of Egyptian actors and singers started to be used. The partnership between street art and popular culture goes even further as these texts engage in a dialogue with the public as their choice has a high contextual appropriateness. For example, a stencil depicting Umm Kultm and bearing the caption li--abr udd, patience has limits seems to convey further strength to the message as it is a verse from a popular song. The same tactics of promoting messages using already known lines can be identified in a stencil representing Dalida, the Cairo born Italian actress and a scene from the movie Alyawm as-sdis (The Sixth Day) by Yousef Chahine in which her character, adqa, has the following line: inta fkir inn d ika? Da gar f wi (Do you think this is a smile? This is a wound on my face). Beside local elements of popular culture, Egyptian graffiti is not a stranger to the global graffiti scene. References to internationally graffiti icons like Banksy and Shepard Fairey, just to name two of the most publicized figures, are made through some of their most emblematic work. Even if perhaps referring to global practitioners may remain opaque for the general public, Cairos urban inscriptions created by self-conscious graphic artists or painters are inscribed into the global cultural dynamics. Graffiti thus can be said to denote a kind of shared experience that brings together young people through the internet, whether it be the simple community of consumers or that of practitioners. The global references in the Egyptian scene can be interpreted as a way to indicate street art literacy and to integrate the local practice within the global dynamics of graffiti. A popular stencil of the England-based graffiti artist known as Banksy, assumed by graffiti practitioners almost all over the world, also encountered in Cairo, is that of a protester throwing a bouquet of flowers, a stencil made in the West Bank as a form of protest against the Israeli West Bank barrier. A version of one of the most famous works signed by Banksy, featuring two police men kissing, was initially painted on the American University in Cairo wall as a means to subvert the authority of the local police as it was accompanied by an English language message intended as an insult: Cops are Gays. The message was rapidly covered in white paint and another slogan, also in English, appeared: Homophobia is not revolutionary while two rainbows replaced the moustaches of the initial police men.
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Internationally notorious stencils and posters, authored by famous street artist are present in Cairo in both the original form and as re-appropriations as well, playing on accidental or provoked similarities. For example, the Obey poster, featuring the image of Andre the Giant, a former French professional wrestler, turned into a viral street art campaign by Shepard Fairey, an American contemporary graphic designer and illustrator, who emerged from the skateboarding scene, can be regarded as associating the image of the giant with that of Hosni Mubarak, on the basis of a fortuitous physical resemblance. Another strategy popular with stencil graffiti is culture jamming, a form of media sabotage that works creatively to alter logos, advertisements, corporate images and so on, sometimes in order to reveal darker corporate realities (...) and sometimes simply to parody or debunk (Gelder 2007:150). It is used by a Cairo based artist, known under his street-art alias of Keizer, who hijacks logos of popular international corporations from the food industry like Coca-Cola and Pepsi in order to criticize consumerism while the choice for the stencil technique, in which a strong repetitive potential resides, can be interpreted as an effort to subvert the invasive advertising campaigns these companies usually conduct. Additionally a type of stencil graffiti encountered as well in our corpus is the one in which popular culture elements, both local and global, are mixed together, resulting in a collage-like image that both attracts the attention and transforms the practice into a syncretic and transcultural medium in accordance with Nestor Garcia Canclinis definition of graffiti as a cultural practice that ignores the concept of patrimonial collection (Canclini 1995:249). Symbolic productions are relocated and used to convey and sustain messages that pertain to the complex events of revolutionary Cairo, like the stencils representing the Argentine Marxist revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara depicted by Keizer wearing a pharaonic b eard or wearing an Islamist beard and skull cap by another street art practitioner known as Sad Panda. Deterritorializing the popular image of the South-American revolutionary determines a break with its geographical origin which is replaced with local elements that contribute to its adaptation. The symbols depicted alongside symbol acquisition and adaptation follows the way graffiti practitioners relate to the local space and the cultural backgrounds of other cultures that influence them.

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Conclusions Without aiming at being exhaustive, this approach of the Cairo urban graffiti has targeted representations of popular culture involved in the local graffiti scene as an attempt at sketching it as an element of the production of culture. In the aftermath of the revolution, Cairo has become one of the central spaces for the production of political urban inscriptions with practitioners fueled by the revolutionary transformations rising in these particular circumstances. Even if perhaps time is still necessary for the dust to settle on the changes that took place in Egypt recently, the emergence of a powerful and very productive graffiti scene cannot be neglected. As the analysis of our corpus indicates, graffiti in downtown Cairo, although mainly influenced by political and social developments, articulate numerous elements of local and global popular culture. Considered an art of protest, the urban inscriptions found in downtown Cairo proved to form their own cultural alphabet if perceived as a set of communication techniques born in a specific context. The analysis of popular culture elements that graffiti articulate, both local and global, offers new perspectives on political and social items that can shed light on the production of culture in a society traversing important changes in many of its aspects.

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