Horror is Universal (The End)

Raed Yassin has been undergoing a lifetime project of deconstructing Arab popular culture, by sampling audio and visual material from TV, radio, pop songs and feature films. This work titled "Horror is Universal" (The End) is a multimedia saga performed live by the artist, as it involves mixing and rearranging video extracts from dozens of 80s Egyptian B-movies on screen, while spinning vintage LPs of popular Arabic music, electronics, and even singing on the microphone to create a unique yet disturbing soundtrack progressing towards a chilling finale. In essence, it is an attempt at fabricating a non-existent genre in 20th century Egyptian cinema - horror - by splicing together the viewers' collective memory of those all too familiar 'scary moments' reenacted by the cheap cinematic production of yesteryear. Although the piece is pre-assembled, it requires the artist's presence and energy for the multiple layers of information to blend in and interact, as he twists every sample into something other-worldly, giving it a life of its own.
The work reinvents the plunder approach to all the mass media that has shaped the minds of Arab youth today.

Exhibition views - Performance documentation, Irtijal Festival Beirut 2009 - photos by Tanya Traboulsi