down with everything
Ziyad Hawwas
2022
Picture
Top right sign in Arabic: “down with the regime and the opposition” (from a banner made by the glorious people of the village of Kafr Nabl in Syria during the 2011 revolution).
Middle right picture (main background): musical toy that hung on my childhood’s bedroom wall, which later got stolen among other things from this house.
This toy is the source of the music in the audio file.*
Top middle graffiti: “down with anxiety” sprayed on a wall in downtown Beirut during the uprising in October 2019.
Middle left picture: Alaa Seif aka Alaa Abd el-Fattah (my childhood friend) one of the most prominent prisoners of speech in Egypt, who has been on partial hunger strike for 225 days,13 days of full hunger strike and 8 days of water strike (had a forced medical intervention by the Egyptian authorities as a response to the international pressure and solidarity with his unjust imprisonment in time of writing 13.11.22) to protest his absurd imprisonment for the past decade just because he exists! Below his picture is a quote from a tweet he wrote on the first day of his short release in 2019 saying:
“I am the poison, I am the remedy I am the medicine, I am the cause I’m the ghost of spring past”
https://freealaa.net
Top left sign: an Egyptian car license plate: “Egypt | Prison”Bottom left sign: “down with everything” & bottom middle sign in Arabic: “down with the
world” (from a banner made by the Kafr Nabl people in 2011).
Bottom middle left picture: “Beirut” (upside down) carved in metal on a sewage system
cover in downtown Beirut.
Bottom right sticker: definition of Apartheid in German.
Audio
Layer 1| The toy in the picture is the source of the music in the background of the audio.*
Layer 2 | On the 28th of January 2011 the police state collapsed in Egypt. What is heard in the audio was a recording of the police desperately asking each other for backup and support after the protesters literally made them prisoners of their own police stations, where they have previously arrested and tortured the people to death. One of them is heard saying (in repetition) “khalas elsha’ab rekeb keda” which means “it’s over, the people have taken over.”
Layer 3 | The voice of Alaa saying:
“We are only asked to insist on being victorious. We aren’t supposed to win while doing that, we aren’t supposed to be strong while doing that, we aren’t supposed to be ready while doing that. We have no good plan or no good organisation, the only thing required from us is to embody being victorious.”