Arkadia Mall

Arkadia Mall is on the Corniche el Nil, a mall right next door to these very fancy shiny towers that deceivingly masked the messy workshops of the Bulaq neighbourhood..  Chris had read about Arkadia Mall, from Mona Abaza’s articles written a few years back as an example of a trendy, new mall and an example of the growing mall culture in Cairo.

We had just jumped in a taxi from the Turgoman, the drive is short but there is a marked difference in life outside the malls and inside them.  Next to the dead mall at Turgoman, life is bustling outside on the streets.  Buildings are overflowing with activity, the streets are bustling with honking cars, delivery trucks, kiosks and vendors.  Despite its proximity to the Nile the neighbourhood we drive through, Bulaq, is quite rundown, chaotic and relatively ungentrified.  The streets are full of people and are lined with kiosks and workshops.  Large former factory type spaces are split into smaller sections, occupied by mechanics, butchers, small cafes and open doors leading to piles of industrial junk.

Entering Arkadia mall, it reminds me of some of the older malls in the Gulf, the types I used to go to when I was growing up in Bahrain in the 80s.  The design is similar, but I think that this mall was built more recently than that.  As you enter, there ramps spiralling upwards taking you to various floors of the mall.  The shops in the mall are a mix between a few international brands and more local shops and boutiques.  The mall itself is quite empty save for the workers in the stores and the cafe in the main atrium and several random men leaning on the railings at various floors of the mall.  Chris and I speculate; people watching perhaps?  Cairo’s human surveillance net?  Bored young men with nothing to do? Shop workers taking breaks?

We wander up the maze of ramps taking us through the mall.  Walking around there are a few screens; a couple of ATM machines, a strange life-size ‘Shrek’ statue stands near the entrance with a dead screen in its belly and a few in the atrium.

Most notably, suspended a few floors high is a huge screen, made up of 25 large flat screens hangs dormant.

Riding the glass elevator down to the cafe in the atrium, we are surrounded by business suit wearing crowd of men and women.  Perhaps the upper floors of the building are occupied by offices of some sort.

In the cafe, an upmarket cafe selling salads, sandwiches and cappuccinos, with bow-tied waiters, we order some lunch and notice a couple of screens next to each other on one side of the cafe.  Even the faux-Vienna coffee house surroundings still warrant a screen.  Echoing the theme of the mall, abandoned, passed sell by date, even this more lively part of the mall has a dead screen in it.  It is more markedly malfunctioning as the large broken screen sits just behind a functioning new LCD screen playing Melody TV an Arabic Music channel.

Talaat Harb Mall in Downtown is a much more successful shopping mall, if I were to judge by the number of visitors.

My main thought while in Arkadia was about maintenance.  Why so many broken screens?  Why not fix them or remove them?

(* Arkadia, we later discovered, was the scene of a sensational murder several years ago, a fight between two rich young men.  There was a lot of press coverage, which was obviously not great press for the mall and may have triggered the mall’s decline…)

Amal Khalaf

This morning we set off around 11 or so to do the audit of the Turgoman. First, we tried to take some pictures in the subway on the way. We got quite enough to illustrate that there are no moving image screens in the Cairo subway system, which is what I will need to write up an essay on Shanghai, with brief reference to Cairo and London. But we were also stopped pretty quickly and told we could not take photos down there.

Over at the Turgoman, the place seemed even more dead that yesterday. Even though it was already noon, the elevators that take you up to the mall levels were not turned on. When we asked a security man, we were told they would be turned on and the shops would open up in an hour or so. Given that people are traveling on the buses at all hours, this seems odd. But then, given that the elevators from the bus station basement only go to ground floor level, it seems they really see the bus station and the mall as very separate.

Anyway, in the face of this we decided not to audit yet, but to go over to the Arkadia Mall on the Nile for a bit. This mall is mentioned in one of Abaza’s articles as featuring big screens blasting out violent movie clips and very popular. But she wrote that about 8 years ago, and also noted that the average mall is only around for 18 months or 2 years. Plus Amal’s friend had told us yesterday that the Arkadia used to be hot but had really gone downhill. And, indeed, he was right. Architecturally, it felt like an odd mix of 1950s style circular ramps with po-mo metal decorations on the outside. There were not a lot of people inside, and most of them were
standing around on the various levels gazing into the atrium. In the atrium lobby, there were glass elevators going up to the 7th floor top level, and a cafe in the basement. The cafe had a large TV set (unused) and a smaller plasma flat screen playing Lebanese MTV clips (over the top “sexy” as far as I could see).

Above, there was a huge multi-panel LCD screen. Maybe this is the one Abaza referred to. There was nothing playing when we were in there. When we asked the waiter in the coffee shop, he told us it had been broken for years. What I want to know is why not either repair it or remove it? But maybe they don’t even have the funds to remove it. Very strange. A huge sign of failed technology dominating the whole mall! I can well believe this place was the cutting edge not long ago, and now it seems so passe.

We have been in a number of malls now, corresponding to a range of different incomes and so on. City Stars, as the current hot mall, is getting more and more interesting.

After lunch, we went back to Turgoman, and audited the back part of the mall. We chose a couple of lampposts at ground level (why do they have lampposts inside the place? A question for the mall designers) and went through the place.

Turgoman Audit, from approximately 2-3 p.m.

We chose a pair of lampposts between the final set of elevators and the middle set, and decided to audit everything from there to the very back of the mall/bus station, starting at level 3 (the top).

Level 3 had 3 CCTV domes in the ceiling. These were located where the last set of elevators comes up, between the doors in from the car park on each side. There is only one booth/shop operating up here so far, and everything else is yet to be rented out.

Level 2 had 5 CCTV domes in the same area and no shops.

Level 1 had cars in the car park (first time we saw any), and 5 CCTV domes. There is also the Cinema, run by the Good New Group. It shows Arabic films only. There are 2 flat screens in the lobby, high up, one to the left and one to the right. We were told to go to City Stars or Downtown if we wanted to find English-language films. As yesterday, the screen on the left was showing a menu of MP3 music tracks, and the one on the right was turned off. (I wonder why they don’t show movie trailers).

On the Ground Floor, there were 5 CCTV domes in the usual place. To the back, it extends into a Food Court. I counted 6 more CCTV domes in here. Several of the restaurants are operating already. Walking into the Food Court, on the right, Cooker’s Cafe had 1 plasma flat screen TV with what looked like it might be a soap or similar drama playing. Turning round to the left, there was one LED arrivals screen (perhaps 2 m by 2 m) in the centre, facing the back exit, so to speak. So, if are sitting down eating you can see the details and then run downstairs to meet people, I guess. On the right as you are looking at it is a jet-ski video game with a 1 m x 1 m screen. Turning back again, opposite that is another game with a 1 x 1 screen, and then next to it a small “Emergency Ambulance Call” game with a somewhat smaller screen. Walking further in there was a cafe over the left called Doria World which had 1 wide-screen flat screen (Katron TV brank, Onyx series) about 1.2 m wide, by 0.75 m tall, showing satellite TV (with a “weak signal” warning).

Moving further in, there was a back exit, with the usual security gate and X ray tube to put your bag through as you come in. In this case, there was a woman officer on duty.

Moving out to the back patio area, we found 2 cafes. The one on the right was called Fine Dine. It had a sort of covered seating area, with 2 Caira brand flat screen TVs high up at each end, maybe 1 x 2 m. They were playing verses from the Koran. There was also a movie screen near the bar for projection. It would be interesting to find out what they use it for, when, etc. The other cafe, Transit Cafe and Restaurant, does not appear to have any screens in it (yet). Both looked very new and barely operating.

Going back in and downstairs to the bus station level, there is 1 flat computer screen per doorway. We estimated that meant 20 or 22 going back from where the 2 lampposts are above. The brand is Proview. Some had “Windows XP” on them, but most seemed to be turned off. Given that there is no departures board down here, this leaves you totally dependent on the announcements to find your bus and know where you are going. And the announcements are only in Arabic.

**

So this means we have done the walks and audits for 2 sites (the 6 October and the Turgoman). Afterwards, we went to talk to the General Manager. She was helpful and gave us permission to photograph whatever we want inside. She asked us to email her more about the project so she could get permission to give us whatever data we want — it turns out this is Cairo’s only government-owned mall (as well as bus station). So, that’s an interesting thing in itself. We wondered if there were plans to make it more successful than it is right now (!), and also if it is part of some sort of district regeneration programme (if such a thing exists in Cairo). This seems like a very drab neighborhood indeed — much like King’s Cross/St. Pancras in that sense. So, if urban renewal is on the agenda… Anyway, in the meantime while we’re waiting to find out if we can interview and so on, Amal needs to find a photographer and get in there while the going is hot.

This is another walk, and an audit, all rolled into one. . It’s an audit because we can say quickly and simply that the only two screens in there now are the regular movie screen in Hall 1, and the computer screen on which the photoshopping in the little booth was being done. The site is the 6 October Panorama, on the border between El Nasr City (a.k.a. Madinat Nasr) and Heliopolis. We decided right away that we have to make this one of our spaces. It’s too exciting – very distinctive and very strange.

First, when we were trying to find out how to get here, we noticed that this “attraction” doesn’t seem to be mentioned in many if any of the English-language guidebooks we had, and it’s not even featured very much on maps. Now, having been there, I wonder if it doesn’t fit the sort of globalized, Americanized image that Egypt probably prefers to present to Western tourists today.

We arrived at the 6 October Panorama in Nasr City at about 12.45 in the afternoon. The taxi driver tried to drop us off at the main gate on the main road, but the guard there told him that this was not where you got tickets to enter – that was round the back. The entrance to our hotel is similarly hidden round the back. I wonder what that’s all about? Round the back is the Cairo Stadium, and also a bowling alley. Across the main road opposite the front entrance, there’s a development of multistory apartments (quite old, I guess). So, I think this whole neighbourhood looks like it was planned and developed around the same time, maybe. Back then it was probably very cutting edge, but now it is a little curling at the edge.

When we got to the ticket office, there was no one much about. But the next show was scheduled for 1 p.m., and after various negotiations we bought our tickets and entered. Going round to the right, you pass through a phalanx of little shops. We didn’t want to miss the show so we pressed on and found ourselves in a large-ish crowd of people going in for the show. They do translation in numerous languages through radio headsets, but, although they gave out a number of English translation headsets (according to the usher we asked afterwards), I think I was the only one who really needed it. On our way in through the main door, we encountered an English-speaking usher, who later turned out to be a huge help.

Entering, the main hall is circular around the panorama itself. We quickly snapped some pictures of the mosaics and frescos, and then tramped up the stairs into the panorama itself – which was very, very dark! Everyone was getting excitable as they groped their way to seats. The ushers gave us headsets, then the lights went up (dramatic moment!), the martial music started, the central section we were sitting on began to turn, and the narration began. The panorama itself depicts the triumph over Israel and the retaking of Sinai in 1974. Everything was fully nationalistic, of course. Going by the crowd, it seems to be an all-the-family event. Sitting next to us was a couple with a little boy, who was braced against the railings to get a full dose of nationalist ideology as it went round. I also guess this is the last time Egypt had something nationalistic to celebrate, a bit like the English always go on and on about World War II, because, in terms of nationalistic narrative, everything has been less glorious since then. I did not time the viewing experience, but I would estimate it is less than half an hour.

The panorama itself was interesting for our project. I really like it as a site, even though it itself does not involve a screen or even projection. It speaks again to this whole idea of different generations of technology and different lineages. And even though it may not be cinema, it is very cinematic. We can’t pre-judge what’s in the big up-market malls before we get there, but those spaces invoke (as Mona Abaza has pointed out) a whole agenda of foreign culture, foreign capital, Egyptian developers, globalization etc etc, whereas this speaks to a lineage of socialism-in-one-country nationalism, but also international socialist cooperation (North Korean designed and constructed, like it’s sister in Damascus). In her article on the malls, Abaza notes that Appadurai’s ideas of scapes and disjunctures is helpful to understanding the way in which traditional markets are cheek-by-jowl with these new global capital malls. This socialist Nasserite heritage is another scape – and it’s a scape of international socialist brotherhood, rather than global capital.

On our way out we bumped into our friendly usher, who we got talking to. He is an architect who is at the 6 October Panorama doing his military service. He explained that there were in fact 3 Halls in the Panorama. The panorama itself is Hall 2. They weren’t that keen on letting VIPs and foreigners see the other two. We talked our way into them. Hall 1 shows a straightforward documentary on the preparations for the war — building up the armed forces and so on. Unfortunately, we were not able to see this documentary. He said we could buy an English-subtitled CD or DVD on the way out, but the place that sells them was closed when we got out at about 2.20. We’ll get that one day when we go back. I think the reason for keeping people away from Hall 1 is partly because the celluloid technology itself is considered too ordinary for such a grand project, and partly because there were some little models in front of the screen, but we were told they were supposed to do something but are broken and have been for a while now.

However, at this moment, our friend mentioned that this hall is probably going to be redeveloped in 2011 as an IMAX Theatre. Socialist heritage goes Hollywood! We hope to find a manager or designer to interview about this later.

Hall 3 has a number of glass cases with models of weaponry and then 3-4 rows of seats and another show. I’m not sure what to call this — a diorama perhaps. Behind glass there are a lot of model ships and airplanes on wires. The usher explained they were supposed to move, using very simple technology, but they are broken now and so it’s embarrassing. Clearly, there is something to say here about generations of technology.

Before we went out usher gave us the VIP tour, as he put it. Standing in front of a maquette of the building in a glass case, he explained that the project to build the panorama was launched by President Mubarak after he returned from a trip to North Korea. There, he had been shown a panorama of Korea’s fight against the Japanese colonizers. The whole thing took 5 years to build and was opened on 6 October 1989. Outside, there is a display of real Egyptian weaponry, with the guns pointed upwards to symbolize victory. Opposite, was a display of green-painted captured Israeli weaponry, guns pointed downwards to symbolize submission. The usher told us they get a lot of Israeli visitors, but he can’t figure out why. Some of them pretend to be happy, but some of them crying after seeing the panorama.

He also told us that usually it’s much busier today, especially because they get a lot of school trips. 3-4,000 people a day is not unusual.

At this point we returned to the little shops we had passed on the way in. One of them is a shop where you get your photo taken. Amal decided to go through with it. You can dress up in various costumes if you want – most of them tourist orientalist. However, there were no military uniform options. Amal missed out on the dress-up, but got herself photo-shopped into a “I meet President Nasser” photo. I documented the whole thing as best I can. This seemed to be a full-on anthropological moment, almost! On the outside of the little booth are all kinds of samples of the photos you can get done. As you step in, to the right is a tray of photos for sale – a few from the panorama, a lot of soccer stars and Lebanese pop stars. Then there’s an old photo developing machine in front of you, but that seems to have been abandoned now. To the left of that is a rack of costumes and a rack of equipment. Then further to the left of that, under the window out, is the computer and computer printer that has now taken over from the old photo-developing equipment. A young hoodie was doing the photo-shopping, although when we walked in he and another guy were playing a video game. The owner was talking with us, and two other guys were sitting on the floor to the left as we entered, the remains of lunch in front of them. So, here again we have generations of technology at work. Camera-shy chicken me opted to document the process rather get photo-shopped next to a sexy Lebanese singer or President Mubarak.

It would be tempting to say that you have strategy versus tactics here, or big technology versus small, but that that sort of resistance model seems too simple. Not least, that’s because Amal noticed the guys from this photo booth were inside the panorama offering to take souvenir shots of people as it went round!  But there are two different versions of identity at work here – one is the nation-as-state, centered round great events of war. The other is as much about Arab identity as it is about Egyptian identity, with pictures of all sorts of Arab leaders like Arafat and Assad in the booth as well as Egyptian leaders. And the absence of military stuff in the booth is striking. This seems to call for more thought, and maybe more discussion with men working in the booth?

**

In the early evening, we set out by subway to follow up on Kay’s walk around the Turgoman Bus Station (a.k.a. Cairo gateway). In the subway, we resolved to take some photos on another trip of this screen-free environment, to contrast with the Shanghai subway and the London Tube, perhaps.

Coming out of the subway at Orabi, we were excited to see our first big advertising LCD in Cairo, plus traffic CCTVs.

After negotiating our way to the Turgoman (tucked away a bit), we found it much as Kay has described. It seems like a forlorn place to us. Most of the shops on the mall levels are unoccupied, and there are very few customers. Some bits of it are unfinished, with rubble and wood lying around.

The bus station bit itself is down in the basement. There was a plasma screen above every doorway leading to a bus, but 90% were turned off. The ones that were on only showed the “Windows XP” logo. I guess they are only using the regular departure boards now. So, why bother to install the other screens in the first place?

The elevator leads from the basement level only up the Ground Floor. There are other elevators that take you from the Ground Floor to levels 1, 2 and 3. Not only do passengers not have to run the gauntlet of shops to and from departure points, but this actually discourages them from accessing the shops and the cinema even if they do want to. No one stopped us from taking photographs, except in the deserted cinema. There were two plasma screens in the lobby, one to the left and one to the right. The one to the right was turned off. The one to the left simply showed “MP3” to indicate the music playing in the lobby.

On the Ground Floor the one place that did seem to be attracting customers was the Africano cafe. It had by far the largest screen in the place, onto which was being projected Erin Brockovic (sp?). It was also very loud, and the whole place was decked out in a jungle of fake flora and fauna. We sat in there for a while. There were other screens inside, a fish tank, Xmas decorations, and more noise. Where the regular cafes are for men only, this was clearly a place where couples were comfortable, and there were lots of them.

Amal and I spoke about failed technologies and poorly designed environments, and how malls haunted by missing customers are scary places. We also decided that this odd place, that at a minimum must be said to have not yet realized its potential, is interesting. We’re trying to figure out which bit to audit and when and how.

We were trying to meet up with a friend of Amal’s. At first he was going to come and meet us at the Africano, but eventually we decided to meet midway at City Stars Mall in El Nasr City. This claims itself to be the biggest mall in the Middle East (as I suspect does every big new mall!) The drive out took a long, long time, making you realize how bad Cairo traffic is and just how big a city it is.

My reaction to City Stars was to see it as a big American-style mall. Amal’s reaction was to see it as Gulf-like, and no doubt many of its denizens are Egyptians who work in or have worked in the Gulf and picked up the mall habit there. My first reaction was to hate this island of global brands in the middle of Cairo’s chaos. But of course it is necessary to suspect one’s immediate reactions. After the obligatory security screening on entrance (I would hate to be in a place like this if a fire broke out, because there seem to be so few entrances and exits), we noticed that throughout the “boulevards” or corridors there were pairs of screens everywhere. These were all showing the same stuff, which was advertising the mall itself and the upcoming events at it. This high level of coordination and control struck me as unusual. In addition, we noticed that in individual cafes there were TV sets playing, as usual, TV channels and so on. So, again, the dominant seems to be narrative entertainment rather than or at least as much as advertising, as far as these screens are concerned. There were also lots of signs advising us that CCTV was in operation.

When Amal’s turned up, we went up to a terrace on a restaurant. He said he came here occasionally to shop or to eat. We had a conversation about the effort of the rich to flee downtown Cairo and how rarely they would probably go in there. Amal’s friend also questioned if this was really Egypt. Well, I know what he means, but it is really Egypt – only it’s upper crust Egypt. He also talked about people trying to be someone else. Well, of course, the Egyptian upper crust has aspired to be French, to be British, and there’s a long heritage of that kind of behaviour. So, that’s also something to consider in relation to these aspirational screens.

We did not take photos in the City Stars, and I guess I need to talk to Amal more about whether we want to make it a site. Maybe we should do a walk around there, try to take some photos, and see if we run into Brent Cross style problems of security, or not? In one day, we might have visited our 3 venues – the 6 October, the Turgoman, and the City Stars. We will see…

In the evening, Amal and I wandered to the Talaat Harb Street area. Although screens are still few and far between, we noticed one or two stores with flat screens – something I don’t remember from our previous visit a couple of years ago. Amal and I had a discussion about what we saw on the screens. In what we took to be chain stores (including a pharmacy), the screens were advertising products to be found inside the store. The screens were in the window. In the case of a cafe and a menswear store inside the Taalat Harb Mall, we saw screens inside, playing TV programming or DVDs of TV dramas. Was this because these were independent stores, and the programming was chosen by the employees to amuse themselves? Or because it is chosen by the owners as part of the social experience of shopping and for the mutual benefit of himself, his employees, and his customers?

We also stumbled across an amazing old 1930s Deco movie theater on Talaat Harb called the Metro. That made us think about how important the movies and Cairo as maker and site of moving image narratives is for understanding screens and their usage in Cairo. If it’s blackboards in Shanghai, maybe it’s the movies in Cairo?

Finally, the Talaat Harb Mall was our first mall. Pretty much as Mona Abaza discusses it. It’s circular, about 7or 8 levels, with escalators up and down, and lots of little stores (mostly clothing) on every level. Very noisy, lots of young people hanging out. Aside from their mobile screens and the screen in a cafe and a menswear store mentioned above, nothing else. We found another smaller mall before that, even more down-market, called Chemla. Very small – a rabbit warren of little shops, more like an enclosed souk than an American style mall. No screens there.