The Norient Special «DisOrient – Welcome to the Hall of Mirrors» presents contemporary music videos from the Middle East as well as Central and South Asia, that challenge Orientalist stereotypes. Dara Shikoh Channa and Theresa Beyer, who designed and coordinated the project, know this is a sensitive topic.

What does a Punjabi singer do in a Tulipan field? Does Mozart’s «Turkish March» make for a good rap-beat? What do the majestic, abandoned, and nostalgic opera houses of Algier, Beirut, and Muscat echo? And how do Russian nationalists imagine Central Asia? These are the questions posed by the music videos presented in the Norient Special, «DisOrient – Welcome to the Hall of Mirrors». The videos have been produced in Türkiye, Lebanon, Saudi-Arabia, Iran, Tajikistan, and India, among other countries, each showing how musicians and video artists from these regions oppose one-dimensional Orientalist ideas.

Following Edward Said, we see «Orientalism» among others, as a «Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient» (Said 1978, 2). Also in Western music, the «Orient» was (and is) a projection field for the exoticized, essentialized, and de-historicized «Other», which had (and has) to serve as radical antithesis to the West. One example is Mozart’s opera The Abduction from the Seraglio from 1782, which is, according to the musicologist Susanne Binas-Preisendörfer, «a melting pot for everything exotic» (Binas-Preisendörfer 2012). As audio-visual artworks, music videos are akin to opera; both rely on Orientalist imagery to convey the metaphor of the «Other», the «martial», the «traditional», and the «wicked» (see interview with Marcus Henrik Wyrwich about Orientalism in pop music.) Just watch Sting’s «Desert Rose» (1999), Beyoncé’s and Shakira’s «Liar» (2006), or Coldplays «Hymn for the Weekend» (2015). However, the good news is that the music video can also satirize these tropes and turn the concept of Orientalism on its head. That’s why this global form of expression is at the center of this Norient Special.

Transcultural Perspectives

The goal of the Mannheimer Sommer festival 2020 was to deconstruct Orientalist ideas in music, as the subtitle «Beyond the Seraglio» implies. The biennial festival, which puts Mozart operas in a contemporary context, commissioned Norient to curate a multimedia-exhibition. The videos should have been presented on huge screens in a dark, tunnel-like bunker under the National Theater Mannheim, but because of the Corona pandemic the festival has been cancelled. However, thanks to the designers from Rugwind, the exhibition could move to the Internet and is accessible until summer 2021: www.norient-disorient.com.

For the curation of the virtual exhibition and the writing of the texts for the Norient Special, seven international curators and authors from the Norient network came together. They are active between pop culture, visual arts, academia, and music, each with transcultural biographies: The cultural anthropologist Daniyal Ahmed lives in Karachi, but has studied in Heidelberg (Germany). Basak Senova is a curator and designer from Istanbul and currently holds a guest professorship in Vienna. Curator Neil van der Linden from Amsterdam specializes on the cultural exchange with Europe and the Gulf-states. Artist and activist Georgy Mamedow looks from Bishkek (Kirgystan) on the subject. Ali Sayah from Teheran lives in Berlin, and author Nermin Abbassi from Tunesia lives in Freiburg (Germany), while curator Berit Schuck from Berlin, for a long period, was active in Alexandria.

Overcoming Pitfalls

The Norient Special discusses Orientalism by introducing six selections with music videos from specific regions – we believe that in order to start a profound discourse, we need a critical amount of material. The «DisOrient» Special also decodes specific music videos and dares to talk about the complex phenomenon of «self-Orientalization». Norient reflects on the topic also via a pure artistic approach: sound artist Rehab Hazgui has exclusively composed a track in which she uses the Orientalist midi-melodies of the computer game Prince of Persia and turns them into a surrealist soundtrack.

Despite the multi-local and multi-perspective design of the project, we encountered some complex ethical questions along the way.

1) The project is based on the initial assumption that musicians and music video directors in the Middle East (and beyond) are actually engaging with the topic of Orientalism. Do we nourish the Western construction of the «Orient» with such an assumption, or possibly even make it more meaningful? Is the topic of de-Orientalization as relevant as we think outside Europe and the U.S.?

2) We have asked our curators to research music videos that criticize Orientalism. Does this task direct the research implicitly towards traditional and «local» sounds? That’s something Norient tries to avoid since it has been founded in 2002.

3) Can we escape the power of the imageries and musical norms at all? If a music video deconstructs or parodies stereotypes of the «Orient», does the same video affirm and reproduce them at the same time?

A Disorienting Experience

Yes, Orientalism and its counter-narratives is a tricky topic indeed. And that’s why, when approaching it, contextualization, subjectivity, transparency, and differentiation are extremely important. The team behind this Norient Special followed these values: in the six-part series «Challenging Orientalism», every selected clip is accompanied by commentary from the curator, some of whom even make appearances in personal video statements.

During the research process, every curator and author followed their own definition of which artistic strategies actually lead to the critique of Orientalism – or which can be read as such. The presented music videos are pleas for dissolving the (supposed) static poles of East vs. West. They parody the accusation of backwardness and relieve themselves from the power of Western interpretation. They unmask Orientalist stereotypes as empty or exaggerate them into subversive kitsch, or they turn the tables by Orientalizing the West.

By following these very different and very new perspectives, we suddenly find ourselves in the middle of a hall of mirrors. The powerful, sophisticated, and humorous artistic self-representations – and their distinct and endless interpretations – hold a mirror up to ourselves. They distort our self-images, let us feel dizzy until we are surprised about ourseves. And that’s the goal of this Norient Special: When we lose orientation, the focus will be sharpened.