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I first started thinking about this project
while I was watching clips from old TV shows on YouTube
The internet created this space or opportunity
to watch and remember content we watched while growing up
As this period was followed by a sudden change
in the visual identity and the content
basically everything the media presented
This change came about in 2000
So I wanted to find the clips people recorded at home
The programs people recorded at the time on VHS tapes
I found those tapes by chance in the beginning
Then I decided to go to the Friday market and buy old VHS tapes
And of course I bought them in large numbers
I now have about 4000 VHS tapes
To me these tapes are very important
Even more than the originals I could have got from the state TV archives
I wanted to know how this industry worked at the time
How did it work?
What kind of technology did they use?
I was interested in these types of questions
So I decided to interview people who worked in state TV in the 1990s
and produce a documentary film
So I invited people to work with me
This is when the project began expanding
And I felt the need to invite other artists to work with me
Emad Maher made the documentary film
The book is another part of the project
It also works on archives in the same way
It was edited by Hassan Elhalwagy
And I recently developed an audio-visual performance with Rami Abadir
Rami's a musician. We experimented with the music and sounds on TV from that period
For the exhibition, I wanted to work directly on the archive I collected
I wanted to exhibit the archive
I made a selection which wasn't random
I would work on specific themes
which could show what Egyptian TV was like during that period
One TV set shows news clips
Another shows footage related to the music and music videos produced at the time
I showed some programs in their entirety
Like the one which shows an interview with Mubarak
I thought this interview that Moofeed Fawzy conducted in 1999 was important
It's important to show the complete interview
because it shows the political and social context during that period
Unlike other programs from which I only showed short clips
The technical aspects are reflected in two ways here
one that has to do more with me
and another related to television
The personal one came about because I was working with VHS tapes
This made not work on a computer
and to only deal with the tapes, TV sets, VCRs and analogue mixer
This is what made work only in analogue
And it made love working with the analogue image
The other technical aspect had to do with technologies producers used
They had started using digital technologies, but in a very primitive way
They mostly used VHS tapes and analogue technologies
So I had questions about the quality being presented
the technologies used, the graphics and the colors
These questions all had to do with the technologies used
so I asked people who worked in state TV
about the kind of equipment they used and how they worked with them