A Square A movie by Mitra Azar Music by Redrum Murder http://www.disobediencearchive.org/ A square is a short-movie shot during the Egyptian revolution. It is part of the Disobedience archive, on going curatorial project collecting videos of social resistance from the seventies until now. The work has been shown at Castello di Rivoli Torino, MIT Boston, Raven Row London, Sala de Arte Publico Siqueiros Mexico city, Bildmuseet Umea, Bureau Public Copenaghen, Salt istanbul, among others (http://www.disobediencearchive.org/). A Square illustrates the second momentum of the Egyptian revolution, which began more than a year ago against Mubarak's regime. The video focuses on the people’s efforts to get rid of the military regime which replaced Mubarak's and which is appearing increasingly similar to its predecessor. We hardly understand towards whom the stones are thrown: the decision of pointing the camera to the protesters tries indeed to give the video a surreal dimension by suggesting that the enemy is becoming invisible: the military structure is infiltrating into the civil society nowadays by incorporating every administrative position into the national organisation chart. Further, the resistance of the civil society through the throwing of stones is reminiscent of the Palestinian Intifadas and inscribes the Egyptian conflict into a broader perspective. In this sense the video is also a critique of the West-ascribed, reassuring label of ‘Arab Spring’, which suggests that Arab revolutions were made by wealthy, well-educated, internet-generation youngsters. On the contrary, most of the protesters in the video clearly appear to belong to the lower classes of Egyptian society. At the same time the music is highlighting the importance of Midan el Tahrir as the physical tool without which the revolution could have never happened the way it was perceived, beyond Twitter and Facebook.
