![]() The population votes via a network connected to an artificial intelligence that offers advice on policies and laws. Martian society is a direct democracy where there is no president or parliament. “I don’t think it would be wise to risk going back unless I’m willing to change my position and say I support Sisi and I think he’s the best.”įuture chapters of The Solar Grid see the story move to Mars, where much of Earth’s population resettle in the wake of the flood. “Things now are incredibly messed up with Sisi in power – people being stopped in airports and taken away without knowing whether they have done anything wrong or not, walking on the streets and being snatched,” he says. Although his departure to New York was planned, Ganzeer has not returned home since. In the last two years, similar accusations have been made against activists and journalists across Egypt, leading to multiple prosecutions and prison sentences. “I didn’t know if I was on an official list.” “To some extent the character’s fleeing process in the first chapter, of going through the airport and not knowing whether or not he’s going to be caught or whether his identity is going to be revealed or not was something of a personal experience of mine,” he says. This image, since removed from his website, showed what looked like Sisi in his army uniform but with a TV screen displaying a picture of a nervous rabbit instead of a face, with the caption: “Who’s afraid of art?” Underneath, the artist, whose most famous mural featured a cyclist facing down a tank, wrote that Sisi would turn Egypt into a police state. The allegation, which Ganzeer denies, came after he published a cartoon satirising Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who became president of Egypt the following month. ![]() Ganzeer fled Egypt for the US two days later. Displaying a familiar name of Ganzeer’s used by his friends, and his photo on screen, the presenter denounced him as a “recruit of the Muslim Brotherhood”, which had been declared a terrorist organisation five months earlier, and demanded that the government take action against him. In May 2014, he was denounced by a television broadcaster, Osama Kamal, on the programme Al-Raees Wel Nas (The President and the People). The storyline also draws on Ganzeer’s own flight from Egypt. Snowden was already in Hong Kong when authorities began looking for him, whereas Ganzeer makes his whistleblower flee “quite close to when the leak happens”.Ī journalist and whistleblower speak in the first issue of The Solar Grid. I can relate to someone who feels morally compelled to ‘do the right thing’ with complete disregard to the possible dangers that the self, or loved ones would be put in.” There are small deviations from reality. Teddy Taplin, the whistleblower, attempts to flee the US to China as the authorities detain a reporter at the Global Guardian and pressure him to reveal his source – not far from the real story of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and his relationship with the Guardian. A newspaper is sent a huge data leak about the true intentions of Al Gebri, the billionaire owner of the company behind the water towers, Skyquench. In a subplot set 475 years earlier, a whistleblower attempts to expose the corruption behind the industrialisation of the planet’s natural resources. As the sun sets, the solar grid automatically turns on and turns off as soon as the sun rises again.” That’s what we see in the future with the two kids. ![]() I figured if I was to apply it to the whole planet, that resource is obviously the sun. “The concept of the Aswan dam is controlling a central natural resource. “I felt I wanted to do something more universal,” he says of his decision to make the boys’ target the fictional solar array. The story would be their journey to achieve that and how it would change the country for ever.”įrom that idea evolved the main plot of The Solar Grid, which follows two boys, Kameen and Mehret, scraping a living amid the scrapheaps of Cairo under the glare of the artificial sunlight. “I found myself daydreaming about two kids from Cairo blowing it up. “The dam has basically eliminated the natural seasonal flooding and drought that the country survived on for thousands of years,” Ganzeer says, whose name translates from Egyptian Arabic as ‘bicycle chain’, his analogy for the role designers and artists play in driving societal progress. Photograph: GanzeerĮgypt is currently suffering a serious water crisis, with the United Nations predicting the drop in supply will hit crisis point within a decade.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |