Real Fictions
Narratives for Cairo, Egypt
Concept, Exhibition at Venice Biennale ‘16 and ‘18
Status: Completed
The study of the real calls for a reinterpretation of how we perceive the world around us. This calls to our attention the facts and fiction we take on a daily basis. In this study, the real is more of an aesthetic reading of something. Nothing more than an objective view of the world through an artistic eye. The truth that surrounds us is based on social ideals and commonplace that are developed over time through human interaction. But if we created the real that we live in can we ever escape this anthropocentric view of the world?
Through an aesthetic and design reading of cities, we can begin to question and rewrite these truths behind already commonplace ideas. For instance, the use of infrastructure as the backbone of cities is common to all urban areas. To be urban is to be ever ensconced in the technotopia of today. What makes a city, for instance, Cairo, unique is the unrelenting use of infrastructure that seems to be played out as a patina on the city itself.
This study into the urban environment begins with the creation of a new aesthetic using an absolute truth in a unique or new way. The use of infrastructure in a new way begins to call into question what is real and what is fake, what is design and what is existing, and what is necessary and what is unnecessary. The overarching theme of theses tests was to study the landings of the Qasr al Nil bridge in Cairo, Egypt. Take the existing entities and elements, and turn them into prototypes for urban infrastructural spaces. The concept was to spark and inspire design intelligence through the use of the mundane and the urbane.