False Awakening

2012

Video

In this video the artist deals with the relationship between memory and time and how she perceives them. The text is poetic and combined with images that have been selected to suggest a certain memory and imply a certain feeling the artist had walking through her mind and dreams; like walking through a computer program – using a program and dealing with its images while still listening to the sounds of the other program running in the background. This implies the virtual world effect on the way she feels, thinks and expresses her ideas; capturing this emotional feeling with/of a machine and introducing it through questioning the world, herself – the way she feels trapped in these recalled memories, images and sounds. The artist chose two countries she had been to and had intimate memories of: Italy, where she lived for six months at Villa Romana in Florence. She felt at home there and developed her artistic research. And France, where she did her first video workshop and had lots of personal experiences with different places. A year later she returned to the same place. This made her memory combine both the present and past- like a false wakening, and made her question the cultural diversity of societies and investigate what humanity means to her. She took tours around the city of Aix-en-Provence deciding on certain places related to her ideas, while side-by-side working on the text. The moments of silence, the colourful images, the model representing herself and every detail is so personal that it deeply communicates with the viewer in one way or another.

False Awakening, 2012, video, colour, sound ,text, voice, 7’35”
memory, body, sound, past

Eman Hamdy

Eman Hamdy, born in 1986, is an Egyptian artist, based in Alexandria. She studied art at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Alexandria University and graduated in 2010. She currently works as a teaching assistant in the faculty of fine arts, Alexandria University. Hamdy participated in the MASS Alexandria study program 2010 – 2012, and assisted in its coordination. Her work is concerned with the exploration of moments of human vulnerability that examine identity.

False Awakening

False Awakening, 2012, video, colour, sound ,text, voice, 7’35”