Tarek Fahmy: Cultural Critic

I love social networking sites. They allow the end-users to network easily and efficiently from the comfort of their ‘laptops’. Social networking sites have boomed lately and you could say that Facebook, numbers wise, has the third largest global population; behind China and India respectively.

The Facebook model is flexible and malleable. It could be used in a number of different ways depending on the end-user’s needs. That’s one of the reasons why Facebook is so popular and has replaced a number of other specialized sites or forced the previously popular social networking sites (myspace) to specialize.

Facebook can be used solely as a dating site, a business marketing site, a portfolio site, a blog, a school reunion site, a family reunion site, an email application, an instant messaging application, or an all-encompassing website that wears many different digital hats.

It is also starting to serve as a digital networking hub, partnering with many other sites and allowing the end-users to share their activities with their already established Facebook networks.

Facebook, as of now, is the nucleus of my online universe. I am guessing that a good number of the 500 million+ Facebook users also have that same exact nucleus (Facebook) occupying and thriving in the center of their online digital hubs.

Personally, I use Facebook as a blog, a marketing tool, and a social networking venue. During the past year and a half I have uploaded hundreds of photographs and created a large number of posters, montages, profile images for friends, info-graphics, and a number of other original artwork that is worthy of a blog entry and an interesting hybrid gallery exhibition (contact me for details).

Some of the work is political in nature while other pieces are purely historical, and a number are just for fun. All of the images were created quickly and efficiently; these pieces were not labored over for days or weeks, just created in a couple of hours max. Some are also what I call reactionarry pieces, created after watching a movie, a documentary, or after reading an article.

The following images were all created for Facebook or uploaded first on Facebook. Welcome to this Facebook-centric online exhibition.

The Book of Eli Quick Reaction Poster

WWII Documentary Quick Reaction Poster

A Reaction And a Critique Of Two Magazine Covers

An Advert For A Trainer

An Homage To Jeff Bridges After The Oscars

The Dunk: John Starks

A Joke

Before & After

A Reaction Against Bigotry & Profiling

Montage: Gay parade 2010 NYC

Profile Picture Created For A Friend - 1

Profile Picture Created For A Friend - 2

Profile Picture Created For A Friend - 3

Profile Picture Created For A Friend - 4

Profile Picture Created For A Friend - 5

Profile Picture Created For A Friend - 6

An Homage To Football - 1

An Homage To Football - 2

Self Portrait: Anima Vs. Animus

Photograph - 1

Photograph - 2

Being purely selfless is impossible. A couple of infamous people who advertised themselves as selfless lived in Waco Texas (David Koresh) and Jones Town (Jim Jones) and were responsible for many deaths. I have a general distrust of self advertised ’selfless’ people because I think that they have a healthy ego below that altruistic veneer.

On the other hand, being egocentric is misunderstood and has a bad reputation. Egocentric means that your ego is your center and is centered, which usually means that you are a balanced and healthy human being.

Some artists use themselves as the starting point in their work to understand the world around them. They believe that this inside-outside process is the most efficient way of questioning and potentially understanding. The self is naturally a product of that given world and by dissecting it that given world will also be under the knife by default.

Who knows yourself better then you so why not use that as the starting point for your inquiries; philosophical, artistic, and otherwise. By truly knowing yourself you might begin to trully understand this amazing world that gave birth to you.

Some artists that quickly come to mind that were termed egocentric, narcissistic, and self indulgent are:

• Lucas Samaras
• Cindy Sherman
• Philip Glass
• Lars Von Trier

My Facebook profile image has become a digital canvas of sorts. My profile pictures are almost always doctored in photoshop. At times it’s just a traditional self portrait. In some instances I created a digital montage instead of the traditional self portrait.

Cindy Sherman and Lucas Samaras come to mind while looking at these portraits. They both utilized their own visage in their work. Cindy’s work was more of a cultural critique concerning women’s role in society and Lucas was more of an introspective artist, looking inside himself to explain existence in a sense.

I have a history of drawing and painting portraiture so this comes naturally to me. Below is a selected few of my ‘Facebook Profile Portraits’.

The following semi-doctored and color corrected screenshots are of the World Cup finals that took place yesterday in South Africa (07.11.2010) between the Netherlands & España.

The selected images were carefully chosen to tell my narrative of the match; the side that believes that the Dutch played borderline aggressive/dirty the entire match and were lucky they weren’t given more red cards (disqualifications) throughout play.

This continues my blog series entitled ‘Postmodern: I Take Pictures of Pictures‘. This time i chose the world cup finals match using ESPN’s highlight video footage.

The Red Card (The Ejection)

THE GOAL

This time it’s Fiona Apple’s old school video for the song Limp. I find her so captivating because of her physical beauty combined with her musical and lyrical talents. It’s too bad that she dropped out of the music world for whatever reason(s). Maybe her ‘James Dean syndrome’* got in the way.

* James Dean syndrome is how I personally describe this state of mind that generally afflicts adolescent folks that is characterized by a brooding, pseudo depressing, and an anti authoritarian sensibility.

Some grow out of it after they go to college while others seem to be stuck in it for life. Maybe Fiona fits the latter but I really did not research her story and why she dropped out of the music world.

The following doctored, color corrected, and manipulated screen-shots are from her video for the song Limp. Afterwards I will also provide the link for this pretty decent and off-course pseudo angry tune.