"What Do You Think about the West?"

​​You asked people living in Dubai the question "What do you think about the West." In the end, you collected all the material and your wrote the texts for the exhibition while Bärbel Möllman provided the photographs. Now, what does the notion of the "West" mean here?

Julia Gerlach: Almost all of our interview partners were asked the same question: What do you mean by "the West"? We intentionally formulated a very open question. "The West" is a term that evokes associations for everyone. For some it is a political system, others think first of the war in Iraq, and yet for others it is the greasy smell of MacDonald's.

We left it to our respondents to decide if they wanted to define the West politically, culturally, or geographically. "If we assume that we here in the Arab world are the center, then with 'the West' I mean everything that lies northwest of here!", said one of the interviewees, for example. The world map looks quite different from a Dubai perspective.

Did you ask the question precisely like this: What do you think about the West?

Gerlach: At first we asked those portrayed to introduce themselves and tell us how they live and what their dreams are for the future. Of course, we also wanted to know what brought them to Dubai and what their life is like here. Then we quite directly popped the question "What do you think about the West?" Some of them had already thought about their answer; others responded more in a dialog, by asking their own question: "What do you mean?"

​​We then had another list of questions that we asked them. "In the West many people think that Arabs hate the West. What would you tell these people?" was one of our questions, for example. We asked all of them to speak English during the interview. For some this was no problem at all. They speak English with many of their friends. For others it was a real challenge. Of course, they could have spoken more fluently and perhaps more openly if they had spoken in Arabic.

But we think that it is important for the presentation in the exhibition in Germany that visitors hear the young people speaking for themselves, in their own words and with their own voices. Some of them answered our questions first in Arabic and then translated themselves.

Why did you choose precisely these people? Do you feel they are representative?

Gerlach: We chose Dubai because the city – similar to New York City – attracts young people from the whole region. Here they hope to find jobs, happiness, and wealth. This made it possible for us to find interview partners from different countries. There was an Iraqi, several Egyptians, an Syrian, and also several from the Gulf states. Of course they are a very special group, for they all want to make something out of their lives. That's why they came to Dubai.

​​So they differ from their age peers in Gaza, Upper Egypt, and elsewhere in their attitude toward life and naturally their views as well. Young people in Dubai also know the West apart from television – let's say, they know a part of the West: brand products, foreign experts, and Western educational systems. So they know what they are talking about when they talk about "the West." We tried to cover as broad a spectrum as possible when selecting our interview partners: young and older, women and men, rich and poor, and as many different nationalities as possible.

Of course it is not representative. We only show an excerpt, letting a few tell their story so that people in Germany can get to know them a little.

What would you and your colleague like to convey to visitors to the exhibition?

Gerlach: We have built installations consisting of a photo, headphones, and a short text. The photos were taken with a pinhole camera. So viewers have to look a bit more closely in order to make out the person in the fuzziness of the photo – to get to know him. At the same time they listen to the voice of the person in front of them through the headphones, learn what he thinks about the West, about them. It creates the illusion of an encounter.

This is what we wanted to achieve. It's about listening to a person in order to get to know him a little "It's hard to hate someone when you meet him," said one of our interview partners. And so we hope – as good idealists – to contribute a little toward improving relations between the East and West.

How do you think visitors to the exhibition will respond to the photos and texts?

"Oh, he's cute!" was the reaction of one female visitor to the exhibition opening in Glückstadt a few weeks ago. "And this one's nuts!", she said after looking at the next photo and listening to the interview.

We hope that the audiovisual installations can create precisely this illusion: of meeting a person. Most of our interview partners said that they would like to know how people in the West react to their statements and what they really think about them. We want to ask visitors to the exhibition to write down their comments, and we are also planning to shoot a short video about the reactions of the visitors.

Perhaps someone can explain to Ahmad why he finds it so difficult to find a girlfriend from the West, or would like to contradict Junior, who does not believe democracy can work in the Arab world. That would make us happy.

What would you think about a reverse exhibition: asking young people in Frankfurt/Oder, Berlin, or Weinheim "What do you think about the Middle East?" The word "East" is defined differently here.

Gerlach: We thought about that after our interview partners repeatedly said that they would like to know what we in the West think about them, and when museums in the United Arab Emirates expressed an interest in showing our work – together with the reactions of visitors in Germany.

But we ourselves could not carry out such a project with German youth. The interviews in Dubai showed that it was important for the interview and the way they formulated their views that we came from the West. They might have expressed their views differently if we had been Arab.

Without the situation of "I'm meeting the 'other' and telling him what I think about him," our project would have been much different. An artist from the Arab world would have to ask the question "What do you think about Arabs?"

That's why we have decided to document the reactions to our exhibition in commentary books and a video. These elements will then become a part of the exhibition when they return to the Gulf region.

There are a number of Arab artists who – in a different form – are dealing with the same topic, and we hope to be able to organize an exhibition together with them.

Interview: Lennart Lehmann

© Qantara.de 2005

Translation from German: Nancy Joyce

Qantara.de

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