The Culturist at House 9, 2013
Mixed Media Installation
The Culturist.com is an independent blog run by Hind Mezaina that offers a unique voice in the cultural sphere of Dubai and the region. It contains visually stimulating images, videos and sounds. It also aims to showcase creative talent and inspire its readers.
The Culturist is creating an offline experiential transformation of the blog in House 9 that will allow visitors to interact with the space and each other. House 9 will cover major themes from the blog such as films, music, travel, photography and the 1980s. During the 10 days of the fair, you can expect the following:
Room 1 - Screen
A selection of short films and featurettes, (that have been shared on this blog or clips I recently found online or through friends) will be screened in a dark room, where you can sit comfortably and switch off from everything else around you.
Room 2 - Travel
This room will feature ephemera that I've collected from my travels over the past few years.
Room 3 - Reminisce
This room will feature more ephemera, but this time, from Dubai. See a selection of posters, flyers, ticket stubs from events dating back to 2004. It's to showcase the cultural scene has been active for a while - even if it has been a slow moving scene at some times.
Commissioned by SIKKA 2013. Read more here.
Review by Kevin Jones for the SIKKA Blog
Although she blogs as The Culturist, Hind Mezaina is so well traveled in the world of the archive that she could pass as the Archivist. At Art Dubai in 2012, she presented highlights from the astounding VHS/Betamax collection of Aqeel Al Showab, who had amassed over 10,000 hours of Emirati TV from the 70s to the 90s. Al Showab’s private stash clearly outstripped feeble national efforts to document this early media production. The OCD freak in me reeled in horror as Hind described Al Showab’s dusty, helter-skelter archiving system, but this didn’t prevent me from grooving to a vintage clip of Boney M playing to a funkily-clad UAE studio audience back in the group’s hey-day.
Hind’s blog is a compendium of images, sounds and words that matter. She has the knowledge and aesthetic insight (oh, did I mention sense of humor?) to make her blog a magnet for smart people who don’t like leaving new cultural stones unturned.
Hind claims that House 9 is her blog turned into an offline, real-world experience. Personally, I sense something slightly deeper. She is opening her archive to us, much the way Mohammed Kazem let in the Brusselsprout. The walls are covered in vintage catalogues, movie and music paraphernalia, the printed trophies of off-the-beaten-track trips to far-flung cultural corners. These artifacts are tinged with emotion, while the space itself is warmly involving: it feels more like walking into her room than logging onto her site. Her craftily curated film programming bears the hallmarks of a sleepless old-school film junkie who sees everything, yet has the finesse to whittle it all down to the “best bits” (like Souad Hosni as Zuzu, a mutual favorite).
Exhibition:
2013, SIKKA, House 9, Al Fahidi Historic Neighbourhood, Dubai
