The Ultras: Ronnie Close: Interviewed by Liam Devlin
Photoworks, 2012, pp. 48-53
An interview with artist Ronnie Close, whose 2012 video piece, The Ultras, introduces its audiences to a Cairo-based football club with political beginnings and a continued ability to organize efforts against oppressive governmental forces. Close discusses his use of text panels as a means of offering information, as well as a means of returning a voice to the Ultra club members, when text is then used to translate some of the football chanting. Close experiments with camera positions, so that viewers are able to connect to the physical space, at the same time that protesters reclaim public space. He suggests that the "film trailer" montage format of his video is constructed to resemble an "unmade film" in a way that Close believes represents the complexity of the 2011 political uprisings in Egypt.
ITEM 2012.089 – available for viewing in the Research Centre
Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited
Ultra Camp outside the Parliament (2012) – Ronnie Close