WMD

Mehdi Mistiri, known by his stage name WMD, is a writer and rapper. Professionally, he has worked for nearly ten years as a copywriter in one of Tunisia’s leading marketing agencies. He has worked on dozens of advertising campaigns and videos. Born in 1981, Mistiri drew attention in the beginning of 2000s for his ability to rap in English and his authentic style inspired by New York rap. In 2009, he came out with his first album « New Species » with the group Afrock. One of the clips from the album was included on the MTV Arabia playlist and earned him several invitations to participate in international compilations like « The Middle East Invasion Vol. 2/A Nation Unseen ». After coming out with several singles as he pursued a solo career, he collaborated with Dj Lethal Skillz on the album Karmageddon, a project that brought together some of the most popular Arab hip hop artists including The Narcysist and Shadia Mansour. In 2012, he signed his album « Pillars » in collaboration with beatmaker Ahmed Galai. The album featured prominent rappers from the American underground scene like Ruste Juxx and John Robinson. He has since continued to collaborate with different artists and has gained the respect and esteem of Tunisian hip hop purists within the country and across the region. He is currently working on a new solo album while he continues on the Bab El Beat adventure.

EMP1RE

Belhassen Kekli, artistically known as EMP1RE, is one of the Tunisian hip hop scene’s most widely followed rappers. Kekli, whose style remains loyal to an authentic urban esthetic, began his career at the age of 18 when he co-founded the group Empire in 2008. Throughout 2010, the group performed in cities the country. A fixture on the stage like his Bab El Beat peers, Kekli signed his first popular success in 2011 with his single « No Exit ». The artist’s lyrics which combine coarse language and poetic metaphors have shaped his unique identity. Since 2011, he has continued to create music and come out with the album « Inti w Mokhek » which affirmed his artistic maturity and potential as an incomparable rhymer.

WMD Feat. EMP1RE [Bab El Beat]

« Gloub Faydha », a rap song created within the Bab El Beat project, is a cry of revolt against the established political class and a call for resistance against police repression. The clip alternates between the fictional universe reflected in the song’s lyrics and Nawaat’s video coverage of protests. In form, these videos match the music’s accelerated tempo and hard core percussions. In substance, they illustrate the song’s theme and lyrics.

Nawaat has a rich stock of audiovisual archives that could be used in this video clip. Such images could serve not only as a visual support but also as a link between the country’s political reality and song’s imagined universe. These archives constitute an ideal visual support in the artist’s efforts to bring together an artistic practice that is rooted in the urban arts—which is so familiar to young protesters—and a media outlet which covers the topics that interest them and denounce the injustices they face.

Nuts

« Nuts », Rym Amami & Ghazi Frini, are two oleaginous adventurers who spent years of their lives in vitro, inside jars belonging to Arbi the « 7ammas » [corner store owner]. As they carefully planned their escape, the two nuts made themselves very tiny in order to avoid being snatched up, and spent hours smoking Camel cigarettes and digging a tunnel with the help of a wooden spoon borrowed from a « President » ice cream.

When the hour of salvation struck, they were nearly captured by the army of newspapers ready to swallow them up inside a « 9ortas » [paper cone for holding nuts] with a handful of cashews, but somehow they managed to escape.

In the haste of their evasion, the two were separated.

Peanut snuck onto an illegal immigration boat headed for the Old Continent where he would sow his seed while Almond preferred to remain, incognito, on the street corner of the old 7ammas where she would write her memoires.

It wasn’t until the celebration-in-confinement of the 10th anniversary of the Revolution that the two were finally reunited on the same plate of Kamia [snacks served with drinks]. They decided, naturally, to conquer the world.

A digital collage series recombining fragments of image and text

The world of « Fantasia 907 B » exists in an imaginary, satirical spatio-temporal context which serves as a metaphor for Tunisia’s social, political and cultural landscape over the past ten years, with direct references to American and Japanese geek culture.

Over the years, an infinite number of photos and videos have captured fleeting moments that remain engraved in our memories. The incessant flood of information everyday has scattered these memories. Some, many of whom are older than « Nuts », have not experienced these surreal moments, anecdotes and absurdities. And yet existing archives and sources of information are directed towards a very specific public.

The two authors of this project, Rym Amami & Ghazi Frini, have set out to freeze time using the technique of collage. Each text, which refers to one year of the past decade, will be accompanied by a digital and manual assembly of photos taken from video captures, newspapers, photographs, caricatures, memes, etc.

« Fantasia 907 B », Frankenstein of a memory archived at the morgue, has come to life thanks to the surgical skills of « Nuts », and set out in search of an audience that will praise him with laughter or screams.

-Z-

-Z- is a cyber activist-cartoonist. He became known through his blog debatunisie.com, where he has been reviewing and commenting on Tunisian news since 2007. Thanks to his anonymity, -Z- eloquently attacked the Ben Ali regime. His drawings and texts circulated on the net in spite of censorship. Tunisia’s revolution allowed the blogger to publish his first album in Tunisia and to publicize his work in the national and foreign press. Even today, -Z- preserves his anonymity and maintains his blog where he continues to attack Tunisia’s raging corruption and “Capitallahisme”—a neologism he created to stigmatize the marriage between power, money and religion.

Exhibition and animated Psycaricatures

-Z- has collaborated with Nawaat since 2018 through his caricatures of political personalities which he aptly calls “psycarciatures”. The drawings serve as a psychoanalysis which reveals the hidden side of the individuals in question. Nawaat’s editorial staff propose the public figure who -Z- subsequently analyzes using this news-based process.

The fruit of this rich collaboration is an exhibition in Tunis that will be organized by -Z- and Nawaat to the end of translating this collection of portraits of political figures into a large format. Through these “psycaricatures”, we offer a glimpse into Tunisian news over the past two years. The individuals presented are always controversial personalities who have sparked politicized debates in the media. Through this exhibition, we will fulfill a dream held since the dictatorship of Ben Ali: to expose and mock, in full freedom, the dark side of those who govern us. -Z- is excited to put this work on display in collaboration with Nawaat, with whom he has maintained a strong friendship even prior to the revolution owing to the common struggle for freedom of expression.

Finally, the exhibition will not only include the restitution of old psycaricatures, but feature new drawings as well. With the help of animator-director XY, we will produce an animation of 2 or 3 portraits which will be available online and serve as web comm announcing the exhibition.

Selim Harbi

Transmedia storyteller & journalist, award-winning director, TEDx Speaker and World Press Photo grantee. Based between Tunis and Berlin, Selim holds a BA in screen-based and audiovisual media. As a beauty hunter, world connector and passionate traveler, he loves to redefine things, and is particularly interested in contemporary African and diaspora issues. With a special flair for tech-trends and experimentation, he designs cutting-edge projects with new media tools. He is always looking for new challenges and to make a positive impact.

Immersion into Tunis most disadvantaged neighborhoods

This project is a deep dive into the unseen Tunis. A unique introspection into marginal spaces in Tunisia today, 10 years after the revolution. Based on meticulous journalistic research and character-driven narratives, this project will immerse us within the social-economic issues facing disadvantaged communities and neighborhoods surrounding Tunisia’s capital. Poor infrastructure, lack of urban planning, absence of green and cultural spaces, degraded public services such as schools, hospitals and transportation, marginalized unemployed youth—daily life in the city’s impoverished outskirts that is home to a hundred thousand abandoned individuals will be the target of this project. We will use VR and 360° videos as tools to access forgotten spaces and to engage with the neglected communities that live there. We will experiment with immersive journalism in order to stretch the boundaries of storytelling to enrich Tunisia’s media landscape and engage new audiences regarding important issues.

We will focus on the disastrous environment in which these communities are living, and also give voice to the citizens who are doing their best to improve their neighborhoods. Combining innovative journalism with socio-economic reporting, each story will confront our audience with the real lives of those living in these impoverished neighborhoods hidden behind the highways of Tunis. We will go to three Tunisian favelas : Hay Hlel, Djebel Jelloud and Sidi Hassine. In each neighborhood, we will meet one or two residents with compelling stories, take videos, and put it all together in a well-designed web VR platform7OUMA VR project wants to engage local audience in a fully different way :

• designing the stories as stand-alone App downloadable for VR headset users.
• integrating it in the on-going Nawaat interactive Web-doc “Mapping the disadvantaged“.
• producing a fully spatialized audio-podcast out of the stories.

We will organize a VR workshop to empower local journalists with new skills.

* Pronounced Hūma: neighbourhood in Tunisian dialect.