The World is Watching Musalsalat, Media Majlis, Qatar

I developed the interpretation strategy and wrote digital scripts for this fascinating exhibition about serial dramas in the Arabic speaking world, known as musalsalat. During the process I found out much about the development and production of this wildly popular form of art and entertainment, as well as how the shows sometimes project influence and ideas across the World. Musalsalat share visual references, tropes and formats that together differentiate them from many other global dramas. Despite the similarities that unite musalsalat, they are made in widely varying genres, from historical and contemporary dramas to fantasy and scifi thrillers, crime dramas, melodrama and comedy.

Musalsalat evolved in the 1970s as serial dramas aired nightly as family viewing during Ramadan. The exhibition covered classic early musalsalat of the 1980s and the impact on the shows of new technologies such as satellite, cable TV and steaming. Visitors explored how regional origins and collaborations, as well as advertisers and funders influenced the form and content of series, that could be blockbuster smash hits or quirky shows for a niche audience. Some non Arabic language TV shows share common themes, character types and tropes with musalsalat. Shows from Turkey, Korea and South America have been dubbed, subtitled and sometimes re-edited to make them appeal in musalsalat programming slots. The exhibition covered audience opinion and reactions down the years, once gossip in the home and street, now happening online, shading into the amateur production of dramas purely for a social media audience.

On The World is Watching Musalsalat, I worked with curator Hadeel Eltayeb at Media Majlis, Northwestern University, Qatar, Studio Safar based in Beirut providing art direction, and Cognitive who realised the digital animation pieces. In addition, a major part of my work involved developing content for templates which form part of Media Majlis’s sophisticated digital infrastructure.