Diary, Sept 21st

Hazem Mahdi
Diary, Sept. 21st
Senior Project

I went through various experiences the past week going through photos of my childhood trying to dig out as much memory as i can from the past that i had forgotten. At first i wasn't sure how helpful these photos would be, but i was really happy knowing my parents managed to pull of some shots of me and whoever i was at that time portrayed in their vision.

I felt like i was revisiting my lost childhood, it felt nice and warm at first. The more i realised there weren't enough photos of me like my brothers and sister the more i felt detached and frustrated that i can never know my self as well as they could. So i started off first by forcing my self in photos like a ghost, and that destroyed me completely. I was sort of creating my own memories but knowing they weren't true or not sure if they were true got to me really strong. I started to doubt if this project was going to end up right were i started or will it really help me explore at least 5 random years of my early life.

The visuals developed from how i would try to remember things on my own, i superimposed images on top of each other trying to depict how difficult it is to see through what was there, what wasn't and what could possible be there. I think it was a good approach to how my mind works, sometimes i can see so many clear things that are so trivial and the important things are just lost in layers of trivialities. I pushed for more and more responses as many as i could get in the time i had.

My next step was blowing my self out, since i don't remember being there at that moment in time, even though the photograph proves it but flash from the shots could have blown me out, or the strange lens flares so that person I'm trying to reach out for is lost forever. That wasn't enough though I blew up the images as big as i could and tried to interact with them, not sure my interaction was perfect but my shadow's interaction looked strange. Felt like how hard my mind worked to recap these moments, a big black hand reaching out for images projected on a wall, a wall i end up bashing through when frustration kicks in. Tried the same in video and got the same familiar frustrating feeling but in a different response. Due to certain turn of events the images ended up flashing really fast on the wall, trying to find certain images i had prepared for that slide show that never showed up. Which had the exact same impact on me when i always try to remember something that seems so far away, i know its there but its not showing up due to some technical difficulties or default settings.

I think the directions I'm taking are strong enough and can lead some where since they have that impact on me and the suffering i go through when i want to remember my past. I'm sure more experimentation will introduce different experiences which will hopefully wrap this whole project and my mind around it if i explore hard enough.

Phase Two

I've brain stormed like a mofo on this trying to pull out as many reponses as i could from my head, different ways of representing loss of memory and the frustration of trying to remember however my memory is only limited to the photographs my parents carelessly took.

So i looked up all the photos i could find with me in them, not so much compared to all the fame and glory my other siblings got before my god damned birth. I scanned them trying to make something out of the photos through digital darkroom alternative techniques (for non-photo people, as in doing things i could do in the darkroom on photoshop cuz i dont have the negatives). While i was doing that i came across an artist "Abelardo Morell" Cuban photographer who found escaped opression and moved to New York with his family. Enough about that, he did a lot of projections on walls of simple rooms using a camera obscura (first types of cameras that would project the view finder on a wall for the artists to trace, sharpness was off the hook, looks like a perfect projection only upside down at ur comfort). Some of his photos appeard to me like a dream, or perhaps in my situation trying to recall a certain memory. Here is his official website, trying to minimalize the number of photos i can post to save time...sorry crappy connection... :(



So i thought id give it a shot by projecting old photos of my self when i was young on a blank wall and try to interact with the images. The more i worked on that i realised flash was droping interesting shadows on the projection and thought id use my shadow to highlight certain parts of the image of me trying to be back in that moment and imagine what i would like to do then.




Oh the reason why im topless (suppose to be naked but debating how Dubai will take that) is this experience takes me back to when i was young and innocent and carefree, to act like a baby and dress like one or undress like one. I think clothes would not make sense being on me only for the fact that this is to do with how naked i feel by trying to reach out a part of me i lost that looked differet, ate different, had non-smoking or drinking friends,... you get the picture. Any reasons why i should be naked "Conceptually" please tell me, if nudity bothers you then we might have a problem getting along.

Moving on to the next take on this project...

One of my photos on my brothers birthday i was standing too close to the flash i was completely blown out, and thought it would be a new reponse to blow my self out in photos where im too white. That adds on to how i can never recall being there in these images at the zoo trying to poke a fully grown bear or standing next to a tiger munching on left overs of god knows what. I found it kind of strange i was interacting with such creatures or being around them so calmly that way, which blowing out to me makes me feel like i was never there, which i dont recall, cant even imagine how it must have been like at that moment.





Moving on....

I took a drawing workshop with Leo Duff last year in AUD, where she told me i have an imaginative memory. So while trying to play on that i layered up a few shots from once scene or of almost the same kind of photos on top of each other; where you can see a bit of everything but hardly anything is clear. Kind of like how when i try to remember certain things i feel a serious glare over the parts i want to remember or see as clear as other trivial memories but drives me mad that i cant make out the whole image. I must say it might look too photoshopped, but i think this can go a bit far, maybe less photos and if i can control the cross processing (a technique to shift colors and give photos a vintage/aged look other than boring sepia toners). Not sure how this one looks but theres a reason why i have this response, maybe if i tried to recreate some of them and have a diptych of the original and what i came up with. Might be something there, but id hate to put soo much into this and end up not getting something so bad i would regret wasting all that time on this idea. I want to be careful in choosing what which paths to lead, something with potential and has possiblity of growing like the projections for example. Anyways ill quite blabbering...





Another response to this was forcing my self in shots that i wasnt there. Such as in my brothers birthday for instance, i dont know why but i felt like i was trying soo hard to fit in that party. I was the annoying young brother trying to enjoy something different that doesnt happen that often, and my brother and his friends were trying to enjoy their time away from me. By the by there my brother was really jealous of me when i was young cause i stole his thunder when i was born, so this couldve showed even more that night, or maybe i forcing my self down that line of thought since i cant remember.

So i forced my self in as subtle as i could, i went all out in some images cause i thought i was a bit too subtle. But i wont mention to anyone where i am i guess ill keep it a mystery and see if people can find that out on their own.





FINALLY....
my last response for this idea so far is i shot a video of the projections but with more interaction. Not sure how great the interactions were i was really clueless and didnt know what to do at first. Basically, i put all the images i scanned on a slideshow and played them one after the other after the other, so kindda like the first reponse but with motion so you can imagine. At first i had almost the same interaction as the photographs, but i was trying out something and had to skip through the images fast to check if they were playing randomly or repeating and thought id shoot how mind wrecking it was trying to find certain photos i was looking for when everything else kept playing really fast and i didnt get what i was looking for. It hurt my eyes, it gave me a headache, i kindda over did it with the performance that i couldnt take this anymore but words cant describe this video; not cause its perfect but im sure someone else can describe it better than my self, i can only say how i felt. Not sure i can post up the video on here its almost 2 gigs soo if you really wanna see it come by my crit. today i guess ... till i can reduce the size of the video...but the quality will be horrible...so i dont know wat to do for this one let me know.

Thank you for going through this boring post, i hope it was informative which is what i was aiming for...spilling all my thoughts, feelings and really bad photos of me when i was young so thank you for enduring this pain...cant wait for the comments...

Hazem Mahdi

Phase One

In my first presentation i had a rough sketch of a video where cars on the street disappear into thin air. Which is related to my concept of memory, not sure this response was the best one at first but i was experimenting; and considering i haven't done much video work i thought i could pull off a video for my senior project.






I was inspired by Paul Pfeiffer, a "video/photoshop" artist i suppose who photoshopped wrestlers out of the fight and instead one would see them camouflaged by the background (the audience in this case). He had other works as well but this was the best one i guess that wraps up where the inspiration came from. However his concept was completely different from mine, he would remove important factors that would make a fight or a game whole out of context and the result studying the impact of these figures in their environment or how some certain things they can do might not make sense out of context.



Above is a link of his profile on Art:21 has some of his photographs and video work, its a must see.

Back to my story...the video showing the technique was insufficient considering it didn't really show a direct head start into the actual concept of this project, and was strongly advised or i guess threatened to get to the point soon instead of taking the course again...kick ass motivation i must say... :S

So hopefully by phase 2 ill have better stuff to show and more and colorful and hopefully disturbing cuz that's how i roll...

P.S I can upload the video but i guess the photos are more than enough however if its important to waste my time on it kindly lemme know n ill do it nicely...

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Intro

Hello all,

Here is a short intro to what I'm working on in senior project. Keep in mind it took me ages to work this thing, so if this post ends up some place else lemme know, i would also like to know where it ends up going n look forward for your comments. Ive been having a few problems with Microsoft Office, so once i get a hold of that program ill mange to upload my artist statement, biography, images and diaries. Sorry for the inconvenience, just wanted to give this a head start.

Biography

Hazem Mahdi, born in the cultural city of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates - 1986, is an Egyptian artist. It was in Sharjah where he attended, studied and moved from many schools to stay with his brother Khalid. After spending a few summers with his aunt who taught art in kindergarten school in Cairo, he was strongly influenced to carry on what she taught him. He always carried a sketch book with him that he filled up by drawing his favorite cartoon characters and scenes he has visited in Egypt.

He joined the American University in Dubai (AUD), where he had in mind to study Graphic Design since it was the closest thing he found related to art to study. In the summer of 2006, Hazem took a digital photography course where it opened his mind up to another light in art, it was at a time where his photographs were greatly appreciated by many and made him feel like he should make another drastic change in his life. A few months after he changed his major from Graphic Design to Fine Art Photography; he was assured he did the right thing when he got so many good responses on a work of art he submitted to an exhibition promoting young artists. His chances on getting accepted in that exhibition were very slim, since his art work was purely political and Anti-American, a very sensitive subject that can hardly be discussed in the Middle East with out getting in trouble. The artist now challenges to create thought-provoking images, regarding various aspects in life that he wants to talk about in a non-sensational and non-literal manner.

Artist Statement

In the last couple of years I realized that my memory is fading away. Starting from cartoons from my childhood, or how I even looked like or what I did when I was young, how life was back then and so on. Having conversations with friends about certain things that all kids had in common when they were young and I would always feel left out since I cant recall anything relevant. I guess there were so many reasons behind it; maybe my parents were too occupied with 3 other raging teenagers in the house so they couldn’t have enough time to snap photos of my childhood or pay enough attention I wouldn’t know.

This feeling has advanced to a point where so many times while I’m having conversations or presenting something I would forget what I’m talking about completely. Sometimes it doesn’t bother me as much because there are a lot of thing I feel better without knowing they ever existed, such as horrible experiences in my past or what not, but I feel more and more lost.

Finally, being raised in this country that has rapidly blossomed over the past 10 years made it even harder for me to recall how a road was laid out a few days ago before it was torn down to become a bridge or tunnel … etc. I can understand how something like this is normal, and I agree with the fact that it is. But being convinced about watching movies I haven’t or played games I didn’t, starts to make me worry a bit. This project will discuss my “in my opinion” memory loss, how my mind might remember certain things being there if they weren’t and vice versa.