#SYMBOLISM IN THE PEDESTRIAN SERIES#
A longitudinal series of images will be presented from one wall in the area of Tahrir Square during and after the Egyptian revolution of 2011, images which were made by different social groups in response to political and social changes, and which thus demonstrate contested political dialogue in the form of inscribing and re-inscribing the recent history of the revolution. A longitudinal methodology is used to follow the transformative social lives of those images as they borrow from, and respond to, one another. The images are conceptualized through sociocultural psychology as intervention tools that are used by different social actors in response to different political dialogues in public discourse.
The paper argues for the centrality and predominance of the visual in the way everyday political discourse is negotiated and in the process through which space is produced in the city. The aim of this paper is to explore political street art images as sequences in a dialogue that feeds from, and extends to, wider political discourse.
#SYMBOLISM IN THE PEDESTRIAN SERIAL#
Building on the concept of collective memory, as well as Bartlett’s studies of serial reproductions and theorization of reconstructive remembering, I will follow the reproduction of different symbols in the city and how they were perceived and remembered by pedestrians. In the context of the city space of Cairo in the five years following the 2011 Egyptian revolution, I will look on the one side at efforts of activists to preserve the memory of the revolution through graffiti murals and the utilization of public space, and from the other, the authority’s efforts to replace those initiatives with its own official narrative.
Once those symbols are introduced into the city space they take a life span of their own in a continuous process of reproduction and reconstruction by different social actors. Our urban environment is filled with symbols in the form of images, text, and structures that embody certain narratives about the past. This article looks at how symbols in the urban environment are intentionally produced and modified to regulate a community’s collective memory.
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