Our preparations for Kinetica have been a very surreal experience for me as they started the same day that recent events in Egypt took off. I remember driving to Berlin with a couple of friends the night the wall came down. But this seems bigger.

 

I’ve been to Cairo but have no links or in depth knowledge of the history and culture. As I understand it this will be the first time in 5000 years of recorded history that this beautiful plot of land might experience freedom . (How free a western style democratic system actually is would be another topic) More surprisingly: they seem to have gotten to this point without any real leader. Enough people with the same ideas came together and didn’t back down. Will they manage to see it through? Will it spread to Algeria and even further?

 

I think people who live through such momentous changes are very lucky in spite of all the hardship that is going along with it. It brings life to your door steps and that’s the only place where most of us will bother to pick it up.

 

 

Which brings me back to Kinetica: It felt very odd to edit videos about the dread of middleclass routines in the UK with outbursts of anger and hope streaming continuously across my second monitor. It just seemed banal to make songs about the threat of cookery programs and academic art education; a search for meaning in an existence that doesn’t need to be spent on survival almost felt like a disadvantage.
There are thousands of Egyptians on Tahrir square who are shaping their own life in a way that I can never achieve with any number of songs or artworks. Still I won’t jump on the next plane to join them. I’m a doorstep man myself. I’ll keep watching on Youtube grateful that there is something alive out there.
Respect!