MFA Advising 2016: Hadeer Omar

EGYPTIANIZATION: CULTURE HACKING AS A METHOD

by Hadeer Omar

Main Advisor: Simone Muscolino

Associate Advisors: Basma Hamdy, Diane Derr

Reader: Ryan Browning

In a broad sense, cultures undergo a metamorphosis due to the external influences and systems impacting the evolution of internal identities. Conversely, Individuals within a culture react to those external influences and systems. The act of hacking a culture is an opportunity to challenge an existing or imported system in order to bring about change and improvement. An aspect of culture hacking is to create messages of satire or irony in order to criticize, or completely reject established systems within cultures. Post Arab spring, Egyptians practiced culture hacking by applying their cultural tools to external systems and influences, producing a process of ‘Egyptianization’. This investigation examines the MFA program’s culture at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar as a case study, and adapts those Egyptianized tools to hack the culture. The program has its own values, rituals, traditions, imported systems, influences and dominant symbols. The aim of this thesis is to generate customized hacking methodologies that identify cracks within this culture and develop an innovative framework to critically analyze them through visual representation. Check out Hadeer’s website!