Vom Nil

Amin Zouiten´s art project Grand Tour consists of two film works: the short film Vom Nil (on Lill-skärmen in the north corridor of the groundfloor) - shot on mobile phones along the Nile in Egypt - and Schibah, Nils, Katrine - a silent black and white film of a solitary camel living on Öland’s Alvar screened in the atrium. Both works draw from two historical points and examines depiction in relation to travel narratives.

In Vom Nil, the camera returns to the sites originally photographed by Queen Victoria of Baden (1862–1930), one of Sweden’s first amateur photographers, whose collection is archived in the Bernadotte Library. Named after the queen´s travelogue published in 1892, Vom Nil retraces these photographs from Port Said to Abu Simbel, following a route that parallels the emergence of mass tourism. Following the completion of the Suez Canal and the British occupation of Egypt, travel companies consolidated colonial routes, which in turn established the channels through which the site of ‘Egypt’ would be encountered in a Western imaginary. In the film, the periphery of these well-documented historical sites are reshot and reformulated for an estranged 21st century.

Queen Victoria of Sweden with her camera in Egypt in the 1890s.

Film Crew Vom Nil, Cinematographer: Christine Leuhusen, Sound Designer: David Gülich, Assistant of the Director: William Dalenson Oros, Colorist: Thamer Alzaidi, Sound Recordist: Emil Sandström, Producer: Victoria Wocalewski