Walls as Interstitial Combinations

Security Infrastructure and Practices in Revolutionary and Post-Revolutionary Downtown, Cairo

Resumo

This article questions the notion of interstice through the analysis of spaces in downtown Cairo and their evolutions between 2011 and 2021. This article will focus on the walls as security infrastructure. In fact, during the Egyptian revolution between 2011 and 2013, walls were built in downtown Cairo, to create frontlines between security forces and revolutionaries. They created a geography of dichotomy, composed of a policy of zoning and a policy of emptying. However, practices of revolutionaries and residents and workers redefined the uses and the meanings of these walls, creating interstitial combinations. Walls became interstitial infrastructure between security control and political resistance, between material signs of control and memorial spaces of the revolution. This article will take the examples of graffiti and informal activities, which have already an interstitial dimension between resistance and adaptation, formal and informal. The article concludes on the evolution of the walls, which were reintegrated into a spatial manifestation of power through their beautification and their staging by an authoritarian regime in 2020 and 2021.