It was a detail that spoke to the concerns of an exhibition that had closed two months earlier at the Townhouse Gallery, Invisible Publics. It was notable for taking an informed stab at the issue of public engagement with the arts in Cairo and for its proposition of the art exhibition as a site where new publics might come into being. However, it did not provide the basis for new registers of public engagement or a site for the appearance of new, even ephemeral, publics, as intended.
One work eclipsed the larger exhibition, becoming something of a media sensation and the target of state security censure. An iteration of the ongoing Complaints Choir project initiated by Finnish artist duo Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta Kalleinen, the choir comprised some twenty members who had gathered regularly over a series of weeks to compose and rehearse lyrics and music.
Meanwhile, the populist orientation, the activist undertones, and the emphasis on collective authorship and performance resonate with contemporary art world concerns. While rehearsing, the choir-group had promised to restrict their complaints to issues covered by local newspapers as a way of keeping the gallery out of trouble, a compromise that left open a respectably wide, if not unlimited, range of subjects.
From the beginning, the Complaints Choir was the object of keen journalistic interest. Under pressure, the Townhouse cancelled planned choir performances and dissuaded further media coverage. This series of events seems to have been choreographed to demonstrate the principle that organized cultural activities in Egypt are tolerated to the extent that they remain irrelevant, that is, that they avoid acting as powerful catalysts for discussion through which new publics might actually emerge.
Works that threaten to act precisely in the terms held up for examination by Invisible Publics are often abstracted from their art-world contexts, transformed into spectacular vehicles for broader debates, and censured.
