Amira El-Noshokaty reviews efforts to document the Egyptian revolution There is no doubt that last year's 25 January Revolution has seen an almost unprecedented effort at documentation. From prestigious cultural institutions, such as the Centre for the Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage to the already nearly countless books and hours of video and mobile-phone footage, the Egyptian revolution has already generated vast quantities of material for future historians. The testimonies of eyewitnesses of the revolution have been carefully documented by human rights groups, field hospital doctors and artists, and a comprehensive plan to document the 25 January Revolution in all its aspects have got underway by former minister of culture Emad Abu Ghazi, who set up an independent committee to document the revolution in collaboration with the Egyptian National Archives. This committee, the Committee for the Documentation of the 25 January Revolution, has been placed under the umbrella of the Ministry of Culture and includes Khaled Fahmi, chair of the history department at the AUC, and Zein Abdel-Hadi, head of the National Archives, among others. "We have started collecting data from 15 January 2011, the date that saw the toppling of former Tunisian president Zein Al-Abidine bin Ali, and are aiming to continue with data up to the end of March 2011 under phase one of the project," explained Maher Abdel-Rahman, project coordinator. Meanwhile, members of the committee have been travelling the length and breadth of Egypt, aiming to document the ways in which the revolution was experienced in firsthand form and thereby building up an archive of materials that will be of the greatest use to future researchers and historians. The archive will contain video material, eyewitness testimony, items from the newspapers at the time, the memories of community leaders, correspondence between the political parties and the former regime, and official papers related to the revolution. "We are aiming to launch a website hosting some of the fruits of this research on 25 January 2012, where members of the public will be able to access this archival material," Abdel-Rahman said. The site will also be linked to other web resources documenting the revolution, making it a valuable aggregator and portal for other archives. Historians have not been the only ones documenting the revolution. Artists have also been working hard to produce materials relating to the revolution, including various theatre performances, such as those directed by Laila Suleiman, to documentary films commemorating the first year of the revolution. Among the theatre pieces, one performance piece, Tahrir Monologues, perhaps stands out. This story-telling event is the brainchild of 25- year-old Sondos Shabayek, who said that the stories collected in the piece, mostly relating to the 18 days of the revolution itself, were "collected from people who had been in Tahrir Square, with the first performances of the related play held in May." Since then, performances of Tahrir Monologues have been held on a monthly basis, with part of the piece's success, Shabayek believes, coming from the fact that the story-tellers themselves are ordinary people telling their experiences and how they were caught up in extraordinary events. "We are now working on phase two of the Monologues, where we are trying to collect stories about what is happening regarding the revolution today," she added. Another theatre piece aiming to document the revolution is the work of the Al-Warsha's theatre troupe, a long-established company that specialises in preserving and reviving the country's folk heritage. Founded and headed by director Hassan El-Geretli, Al-Warsha's take on the revolution uses testimonies from the parents of young people who died in the events. "We are currently organising a conference with Hakaya, a Mediterranean programme connecting organisations, groups, and individuals who believe in the centrality of stories to individual development and cultural growth," El-Geretli explained. "The conference will be held in Alexandria in March, and its theme is revolution and memory and how this can be documented using alternative history produced by the people and the role of art in that."
