Not My Fault, 2010/2016
A chain of daily errors that may distort the context or become part of it. During one month of photographing the streets of Cairo and Alexandria in 2010, I used a corrupted memory card that randomly combined stored photographs into composite images without my intervention. The resulting images emerge from a failure in the process of digital memory and storage, producing unexpected collisions between places, moments and fragments of everyday life.
Corrupted texts are presented alongside the photographs. These texts were generated by verbally narrating stories inspired by each image and allowing my phone’s voice-to-text software to transcribe them. Errors in this automated translation transformed the original narrations into altered and sometimes incoherent versions of the stories.
The series consists of 23 glitchy prints paired with corrupted texts – stories that began as accounts of real events but, through automated processes of image and language distortion, shifted into inconsistent forms of fiction.
Installation shot for the work as part of the group exhibition ‘Less Than Important’ in Saad Zaghloul Culture Center, Cairo, 2016.
Photobook dummy contains 36 photos and 22 text pieces.
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