Kareem Lotfy has emerged online as Dj Saudi Cables for his month-long web residency at Switzerland’s OSLO10.
Curated by “post-gender avatar” Agatha Valkyrie Ice, his Club Mirage online exhibition includes his BAŞ BAŞA mix in an embedded Soundcloud file and is supplemented by images on a Tumblr page: a dove and an olive branch, a G-Shock sports watch and a Milanese football club emblem. The images are still there, but the magic is in the music.
I remember the last we spoke a couple of years ago it already sounded like you were moving more and more into music.
Ever since 2008, I was drifting more into music. I think of myself more as a musician now. I’m interested in images and visuals on the side but I think my main practice now is music.
It seems there is a shift generally of multidisciplinary artists moving to sound. What is it about music that attracts you?
It’s very difficult to say precisely what it is. It’s a combination of a lot of reasons, but it makes more sense to me at the moment. I think sound as a phenomenon is more mysterious to me.
I guess with the digitization of the image it destroyed its market to a degree, similar to music in the ’90s. It’s interesting to see it sort of flip back again to being a rich source of inspiration.
The thing is, of course music evolved way faster than visual arts because of new media and digital tools. You can see that the whole industry was very affected by this long time ago. Visual arts were really affected by it as well, but it just took some time. It feels that music is younger and more flexible somehow. You can really see the essence of it now, and a lot of other things run through it.
