The Video Diaries

Cairo-based Khaled Hafez’s latest work, The Video Diaries, is the artist’s response to the revolution that swept through Egypt in January and February 2011. This three-channel video has been adapted for Ibraaz into a single-channel work in which three windows display footage either shot by the artist or taken from social and international media. These moving images – showing policemen; protesters singing and praying; and people apparently being shot or attacked by water cannons – run simultaneously across the three screens, while clocks urgently count down the seconds of the work’s duration. A persistent, echoing beat; the sounds of a baying crowd; and a lachrymose guitar solo accompany the footage at different points.