Shibboleth

Shibboleth’s departure points are the absence and negation of dissident bodies from ethnographical collections, historical documents, and museological archives. The case study presented observes The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities and Ancient Egyptian collections in major European museums. How can we surface a community that has been prosecuted for its sexual use of the body and betrayed by photography’s forensic capacity? Sentencing a group to a furtive existence removes the possibility of a political voice or social representation: of owning an image.


Through processes of material transformation and the use of plastic, these new relics simultaneously contain the traces of a violent experience and the dignity of an artistic object. Masculine nude self-portraits are presented as archaeological artifacts, as an auto ethnographical archive which is both a symptom and a response of resistance to biopolitical normalization. The transformation from stone to plastic in the process of reproduction, provide alternate forms of speech to unprovenanced artifacts from museum collections which incite suspicion about their missing background. Lastly, images of empty vitrines in the museum infer erasure and displacement which elicits the viewer to fill in the absences with the objects presented and question the reasons behind their concealment. The subject’s fragmentation in these portraits evades surveillance while their materiality is an embodied testimony of repression. Fossilized representations are what remain of images which have survived social rejection, censorship, and erasure.

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Shibboleth

Essay by Joyce Joumaa

In Arabic, the term “Tahrir” signifies liberation. However, within the complex socio-political landscape of the Arab world, certain terms and concepts often fail to realize their full potential due to prevailing contexts. Tahrir Square, ostensibly a space for the liberation of protesters from Egypt's historical dictatorship, paradoxically becomes a site of control, surveillance, and punishment. Here, the historical refers to the present moment. This present moment which started in 2010 and has not ceased to exist since. They call it spring for it is in spring when the process of burgeoning happens, allowing for the metamorphosis of the bodies, or the coming of new bodies which make up the living organisms that flourish.


In Shibboleth, Pedro Barbachano undertakes an anthropo-archaeological exploration, navigating between proximity and distance from the present moment. By drawing from both historical and contemporary methodologies, Barbachano excavates the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, situated in Tahrir Square, uncovering enigmatic archaeological artifacts that challenge established narratives. Within the context of Cairo, the museum, allegedly serving the state, becomes intertwined with the state's repression of protesters, both entities regulating and surveilling bodies within this contested space.


What neither the state nor the museum know, is that both the protesters and the sculpted bodies are witnesses. It is in this process of witnessing that the counter-revolutionary act happens. In witnessing, one identifies and consequently defines. Related to this notion of identifying through processual gazing is one of the artist’s concerns in studying queer bodies as part of a figurative panopticon. Figurative because it is incessantly extending beyond the tangible walls of the institution. In the realm of these counter-acts, processual gazing becomes an alternative for what representation is meant to fulfill. In this show, Barbachano asks: How do you build a historical narrative from evidence that is classified as criminal? Is representation as understood in its Western canon, truly at the service of queer bodies when existing in a militarized state?


His work alludes to a negation suggesting that queer thriving doesn’t pass through traditional methods of representation in this specific geospatial context. Instead, he explores the virtual realm as a space for the extraction of evidence, utilizing an array of nude selfies collected amongst his friends to create fossilized objects that are recontextualized. Taking a photograph transforms it into potential criminal evidence, with each image serving as a record that can be used against the individual depicted. In an attempt to counter-analyze evidence, this process speculates on the possible readings of these photographs as queer-coded objects whose history has been erased and to inscribe the queer body in a historical and eventually, archaeological register.


The work considers the selfie as the only possible tool for self-representation, allowing for one to self-frame themselves sexually and to exist on the virtual map of the city. In a militarized urban environment where individual profiles can be meticulously mapped, the right to visibility for queer individuals is paradoxically constrained by the omnipresent surveillance apparatus. Despite the proliferation of monitoring mechanisms inherent in the city's expanded panopticon, the right to exist freely and openly as a queer person is undermined and often denied. By reinterpreting these photographic gestures, the artist introduces, through speculation, an archival element into the constrained narrative, creating a space for the construction of a potential history. This archive is cultivated through the collection, dissection, and merging of various elements that draw from the mundane in Egypt, serving as a method of retranslation through which queer bodies are identified and thus witnessed.

Pedro Barbáchano is an artist, cultural worker, and educator in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. His photographic practice observes speculative archaeology, the critique of documents, historical evidence, monuments, and issues with the representation of subaltern identities. Barbáchano identifies case studies that exhaust the photographic language and question private, public, personal, and institutional archives. His work has materialized as exhibitions, sculptural installations, books, and augmented reality experiences stemming from the photographic image. He has displayed his work in Canada, Spain, and Egypt at venues including SCAN (Tarragona, Spain), Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery (Montreal, Canada). Barbáchano is a recipient of Roloff Beny Fellowship and Gabor Szilasi Prize in Photography, Post Image Research Fellowship and the Heather & Erin Walker Humanitarian Award. His work is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and is housed in private collections in Canada and Spain. Currently an MFA candidate, he has lectured at Concordia University in Montreal.


Joyce Joumaa is a video artist and writer based between Beirut and Montreal. After growing up in Lebanon, she pursued a BFA in Film Studies at Concordia University in Canada. Her work focuses on microhistories within Lebanon as a way to understand how past structures inform the present moment. Central to her practice is an interest towards the political charge inscribed in spaces and the social psychology that unfolds out of this tension. Her current research revolves around the post colonial education system in Lebanon and the maritime border conflict with Israel.

中文翻译 Chinese Translation ...

在阿拉伯語中，“Tahrir”一詞意味着解放。 然而，在阿拉伯世界複雜的社會政治格局中，某些術語和概念往往由於當時的背景而無法充分發揮其潛力。 解放廣場表面上是一個將抗議者從埃及歷史獨裁統治下解放出來的空間，但矛盾的是，它卻變成了一個控制、監視和懲罰的場所。在這裏，歷史指的是當下。這個當下始於 2010 年，自那以後從未停止過。他們稱其爲 "春天"，因爲春天是萌芽的季節，身體可以蛻變，或者說是新的身體的到來，這些新的身體構成了蓬勃發展的生物體。 在《Shibboleth》中， Pedro Barbachano進行了一次人類考古探索，在與當下的距離和距離之間遊走。 通過借鑑歷史和當代方法，Barbachano查諾挖掘了位於開羅解放廣場的埃及博物館，揭示了挑戰既定敘事的神祕考古文物。 在開羅的背景下，據稱爲國家服務的博物館與國家對抗議者的鎮壓交織在一起，這兩個實體都在這個有爭議的空間內管理和監視機構。 國家和博物館都不知道的是，抗議者和雕塑人體都是見證者。 正是在這個見證過程中，反革命行爲發生了。 在見證過程中，人們認同並因此定義。 通過對過程的凝視進行認同的概念相關的問題，是藝術家在研究酷兒身體作爲具象萬花筒的一部分時所關心的問題之一。說它具象，是因爲它不斷延伸到機構有形的牆壁之外。在這些反行爲的領域中，過程凝視成爲表徵所要實現的目標的替代方案。 在這個展覽中，Barbachano 提出了一個問題：如何從被分類爲犯罪的證據中建立起一個歷史敘事？當存在於一個軍事化的國家時，理解西方規範中的表徵是否真正服務於酷兒身體？ 他的作品暗示了一種否定，即酷兒的興盛並沒有通過傳統的表現方法在這一特定的地理空間環境中得到體現。相反，他將虛擬世界作爲提取證據的空間進行探索，利用在朋友中收集的一系列裸體自拍照，創造出被重新語境化的化石物品。拍攝照片會將其轉化爲潛在的刑事證據，每張圖像都作爲一份記錄，可以用來對所描繪的個體進行指控。在試圖對證據進行反分析的過程中，這一過程對這些照片的可能閱讀進行了推測，將其視爲酷兒編碼對象，其歷史已被抹去，並將酷兒身體銘刻在歷史上，最終形成考古學的記錄。 這個作品將自拍視爲自我表達的唯一可能工具，使個人能夠在虛擬地圖上性方面的自我定位並存在於城市中。在一個軍事化的城市環境中，個人檔案可以被細緻地繪製，酷兒個體的可見權卻被普遍存在的監控裝置所限制，這是一個悖論。儘管城市中擴展的監視機制無處不在，但作爲酷兒個體自由，公開存在的權利卻受到了削弱和經常被否定。通過重新解釋這些攝影手勢，藝術家通過推測引入了一個檔案元素到受限制的敘事中，創造了一個潛在歷史構建的空間。這個檔案通過收集、解剖和合並吸取埃及日常瑣事的各種元素來培育，作爲一種重新翻譯的方法，通過這種方法酷兒身體得以被辨認和見證。 Joyce Joumaa 簡介：

Pedro Barbáchano 是蒙特利爾/Tiohtiá:ke 的藝術家、文化工作者和教育工作者。 他的攝影實踐觀察推測性考古學、對文獻、歷史證據、紀念碑以及底層身份表徵問題的批判。 Barbáchano 列舉了用盡攝影語言的案例研究，並對私人、公共、個人和機構檔案提出質疑。 他的作品以展覽、雕塑裝置、書籍和源自攝影圖像的增強現實體驗的形式呈現。 他曾在加拿大、西班牙和埃及的 SCAN（西班牙塔拉戈納）、Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery（加拿大蒙特利爾）等場所展出過自己的作品。 Barb¡chano 曾獲得 Roloff Beny Fellowship 和 Gabor Szilasi 攝影獎、Post Image Research Fellowship 以及 Heather & Erin Walker 人道主義獎。他的作品得到加拿大藝術委員會的支持，並被加拿大和西班牙的私人收藏。他目前是一名藝術碩士候選人，曾在蒙特利爾康考迪亞大學任教。


Joyce Joumaa 是一名視頻藝術家和作家，常駐貝魯特和蒙特利爾。在黎巴嫩長大後，她在加拿大康考迪亞大學攻讀電影研究學士學位。她的作品側重於黎巴嫩的微觀歷史，以此瞭解過去的結構是如何影響當下的。她的創作核心是對空間中蘊含的政治含義以及由此產生的社會心理的興趣。她目前的研究圍繞黎巴嫩後殖民時期的教育體系以及與以色列的海上邊界衝突展開。 中文翻译 Chinese Translation