Egypt is represented in this year's Venice Biennale by the evocative artwork of the Egyptian Revolution created by Ahmed Bassiouni, who was killed on the Friday of Anger. Reham El-Adawi reports The Egyptian pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale 2011, the international art fair that runs throughout the summer until 27 November, proudly bears the slogan, "Egypt: the Change". This year, Egypt is represented by an interactive multimedia project by the late Egyptian artist and musician Ahmed Bassiouni, who was killed in Tahrir Square on 28 January, "the Friday of Anger" of the Egyptian Revolution. Bassiouni, who was a professor of art at the Faculty of Education Art, Helwan University, died of several gunshot wounds inflicted by government-backed snipers. Entitled " 30 Days of Running in the Place ", the work was first featured in the exhibition "Why Not?" held in January last year at the Palace of Arts in Cairo, where it was displayed in a specially-built room outside the Palace of Arts in the gardens of the Opera House. Aged just 32 when he died, Bassiouni was considered an emblem of hope to millions of Egyptians, a man who lived and died for his country; an artist honoured for his courage and spirit and accorded an air of mystique amongst his friends, colleagues, and students who were proud to learn from the lessons of his life -- even more so because of the cause for which it ended. The piece on view at the Venice Biennale will be a two-fold production of work by the artist; however it is intentionally designed to reflect a random set of incidents. "A year prior to the uprisings, Bassiouni worked on a project entitled " 30 Days of Running in the Place," says artist and Khan El-Maghraby Gallery manager Shaker El-Idressi, who was a close friend of Bassiouny and witnessed his short artistic life. Exhibited outside the Palace of Arts, across the Nile from Tahrir Square, the installation was composed of a square structure enclosed in transparent plastic sheets. The space was made for a digital and performance- based concept, whereby the artist was to wear a sensor-fused plastic suit he had designed that would calculate the levels of sweat produced and the number of steps taken while he jogged on the spot for an hour daily over a span of 30 days, a period that reflected the length of the exhibition. From the quantitative measurements explored while he was jogging, the data was wirelessly transferred on a large screen displaying a grid of colours that evolved with the changes noted from the function of everyday energy and consumption. The Supreme Council of Culture's Committee of Plastic Arts that included, among other artists, Adel El-Siwi, Hamdi Abul-Maati and Nagui Farid, agreed unanimously that Bassiouny's work should represent Egypt in Venice owing to the similarity between the work and the political conditions prevailing in Egypt. Running in one place for 30 days, where the murdered artist exerted much effort but with no return, was just what was happening to the Egyptian people, who were all running in vain on the same spot, getting nowhere, expecting no reward, but being negatively exploited for the sake of a corrupt ruling regime. According to Siwi there was a debate between the committee members, but in the end they all agreed that it was impossible to represent Egypt in the biennale with any work of art that did not reflect the Egyptian Revolution. "The similarity between the work and the revolution is also obvious in the use of the laptop and media technology, because Facebook was leading the revolution," Siwi said. He added that the work had a very significant political dimension above its artistic value. That an Egyptian artist should take part in the biennale was very important because he also represented other Egyptian artists who played a very crucial role in the 25 January Revolution. Siwi pointed out that the main theme of this year's biennale was "Illumi-nation", which stands for the contribution of nations in the process of illumination. Bassiouni's work is considered to have contributed to illuminating the art movement in Egypt because the work was avante-garde at the time it was created, being a so-called "trans-genre" work of art since it was an installation, a performance, video and media art all combined together in one composition. Celebrating Bassiouni's art and life, the American University of Cairo Press will publish his biography in the fall of 2012, complementing its series of publications documenting aspects of Egypt's revolution and the Arab Spring. The book will detail Bassiouni's conceptual process and will address his relation to the emergence of interactive multimedia art and open global movements across art and cultures. The book will publish articles written by some of the most important writers and art critics in Egypt and the rest of the Middle East.
