Abdellah Karroum Editorial p. 3

Zoran Erić On Old Imaginative& Juan A. Gaitan And New Strategic Geographies p. 7

Khwezi Gule Ghettoes of Another Kind p. 13

Kostis Stafylakis Athens now: some unrecognized spatial continuums The space of castration / the space of indignation. p. 18

Karim Rafi “Agnaw” (Silence) p. 20

Raqs Media Collective Visual Essai p. 22

Ismail Bahri speaks to Barbara Sirieix Waiting for change? p. 32

Seamus Farrell Pre & Posthistory “Unnatural Horizons” p. 38

Natalia Valencia Ultramar, on Carolina Caycedo’s work p. 44

Olivier (Moana Paul) Marboeuf Journeys to the country of return p. 47

Groupe LMDP / Shagai L’autre moitié du paysage / The Other Half of the Landscape p. 52

Abdellah Taïa Fadwa’s Body p. 58

Contributors to the issue p. 64

Credits / Colophon p. 66

le journal de la triennale

#3

p. 2

Abdellah Karroum

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français anglais arabe

Le Journal de La Triennale#3

ÉditorialParler Monde

Les images de chaque localité de la terre, des côtes japonaises, des montagnes syriennes et de la Fosse des Mariannes parviennent au monde entier et au même moment. Si dramatiques, ou si heureuses soient-elles, elles agissent différemment de celles rapportées par les explorateurs d’autres siècles. Chaque image, poétique, critique ou politique, s’ajoute à la mémoire et cache la précédente. L’ensemble des calques se superpose sans jamais disparaître complètement. La proximité du savoir digitalisé et la distance des faits réels, par la rencontre physique et du langage qui en traduit le sens commun, réduit aussi les chances d’originalité des images, et par là même de la « qualité » de l’information qu’elles véhiculent. Au-delà de la connexion « informatique », au signal de plus en plus proche, comment lie-t-on ce qui se passe ailleurs à l’ici et au maintenant ? Comment ce qui se passe dans l’appartement voisin ou dans l’atelier d’un artiste dans l’arrière-cour d'un immeuble, ou encore dans la chambre de bonne d’un écrivain, est-il partagé, vu et lu quand les espaces de formulations semblent de plus en plus formatés, et les espaces de production et d’exposition de plus en plus privatisés ? Cette question de partage du savoir est liée à celle de l’apprentissage et de la production, dans l’espace où ces aspects de la culture coexistent ou du moins sont expérimentés.

Le contenu de ce Journal, comme celui du projet d’exposition « Intense Proximité » qu’il accompagne, est fait de contributions transcontinentales. Il témoigne indirectement du processus de recherche et des rencontres effectuées lors de nos déplacements vers les artistes. Nous proposons de rendre compte d’un certain nombre de pratiques qui parlent d’elles-mêmes, à travers plusieurs approches d’écriture autour d’une œuvre, d’un parcours, mais aussi d’inviter des auteurs et des artistes à expérimenter des essais visuels. L’édition textuelle et visuelle de ce Journal propose des formes de citations, des invitations qui expérimentent un « parler monde » tel qu’il est perçu, pensé, représenté.L’expression artistique parle du monde, invente des langages et provoque la circulation d’idées. Le

The Journal of The Triennial# 3

EditorialSpeaking World

The images of each locality of the earth, theJapanese coast, the Syrian mountains and theMariana Trench reach the world and at the sametime. So dramatic, or so happy they are, they actdifferently from those reported by other explorerscenturies. Each image, poetry, criticism or political,in addition to the memory and cache the previousone. All the layers are superimposed neverdisappear completely. The proximity of digitizedknowledge and the distance of the real facts, bymeeting physical and language that translates intocommon sense, also reduces the chances of originalimages, and thus the "quality" of information that'they convey. Beyond the connection "computer", thesignal closer and closer, how does one bind what ishappening elsewhere in the here and now? How thishappens in the next room or in the studio of an artistin the backyard of a building, or in the garret of awriter, is it shared, seen and read when the spaceformulations seem more formatted, and spaces ofproduction and exhibition of increasingly privatized?This issue of knowledge sharing is tied to thelearning and production, in the space where theseaspects of culture coexist or at least areexperienced.

The content of this Journal, like the exhibition project"Intense Near" that accompanies it, is made ofcontributions transcontinental. It indirectly reflectsthe research process and the meetings they had onour visits to the artists. We propose to realize anumber of practices that speak for themselves,through several approaches to writing a workaround, a journey, but also to invite writers andartists to experiment visual essays. Editing text andvideo of this Journal provides citation forms,invitations to experience a "speaking world" as it isperceived, thought, represented.Artistic expression speaks of the world, inventslanguages !!and causes the circulation of ideas. Thework of the curator is similar to that of the editor inthe sense that it creates space for reading and ideasmeet. This is a process based on research thatshould lead to the production of a play to the actionof an exhibition. The invention in exposure is theproduction of knowledge and its sharing in theinteraction space, sources and limits which

anglais arabe français

Traduction TraduireSource : français Cible : anglais

Connexion

+Vous Recherche Images Maps Play NOUVEAU YouTube Actualités Gmail Documents Agenda Plus

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p. 5

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des langages et provoque la circulation d’idées. Le travail du curator s’apparente à celui de l’éditeur dans le sens où il crée l’espace de lecture et de rencontre des idées. Il s’agit d’un processus basé sur la recherche qui doit mener de la lecture d’une production à l’action d’une exposition. L’invention dans l’exposition consiste en la production d’un savoir et de son partage dans l’espace d’interaction, des sources et des limites où les langages nécessitent une traduction, un déplacement de sens. Parler Monde, c’est transporter des expressions immédiates dans les formes les plus proches de la relation à l’objet formulé, à la question posée. Il s’agit donc de questionner le support éditorial autant que l’espace d’exposition, tous deux

interaction space, sources and limits whichlanguages !!require translation, a shift in meaning.Speaking world, it is transported in immediateexpressions forms the closest relationship to theobject formulated, the question posed. It is thereforeto question the editorial support provided exhibitionspace, both revealing an expression that preexistsand adapts to new conditions of occurrence.Designing these conditions formatted as a platformto mount a more dramatic observation is a"montage" like its architecture, a suburb of Cairo orTangier, whose roofs are planted with strangemetallic bones which exceed, extension of thefundamental pillars, with the prospect of attaching afloor to come. Workers exceed manufacturersautomatically leave these bits of scrap metal withoutthe advice of the people, let alone architects.

The World is a spoken language which is based onmuch more than twenty-six letters and so manyaccents that are born every day meeting newpeople. Membership in a country of the world is onthe legacy, in the direction of education andmeetings, in culture between continuity and friction.Speaking world can not be learned on the benchesof the schools' royaubliques "national, let alone inthe books scheduled for passage of a few days ondisplay, directed to the nearest millimeter on displaylibraries of airports.

Enjoy!

A. K.

Nouveau ! Cliquez sur les termes ci-dessus pour voir d'autrestraductions. Ignorer

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Confidentialité Aide Envoyer des commentaires

“Bidoun” (Article 13: “All Citizens Have Equal Right of Education and Employment”) 2011 , outils de maçonnerie, 18 x 38 x 17 cm. Courtesy de l’artiste et L’appartement 22, Rabat.Mustapha Akrim

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p. 6 p. 7

On old imaginative

and new strategic geographies

A conversation between Zoran Erić and Juan A. Gaitan

The starting point for this conversation is the interest we share

in models from the recent past, models that belong to the period

of the Cold War, though we don’t conceive them primarily for

their coincidence with the Cold War. These models, the Non-

Aligned Movement and Third Worldism, provide us today, as

curators of contemporary art, with ideas on how to propose

different configurations, or something one might call strategic

geographies, within art, in order to continue to explore the world

and its configurations in its current, globalized and globalizing

tendencies, but without recurring to common themes. Perhaps

our aim is to propose these models as a way of thinking our way

out of common themes and produce new, surprising ones. This

is a concern that exceeds the regular notion of curatorial practice

today, and one that we hope provides an intellectual and tac-

tical ground on which to work as curators, as writers, and critics.

We would therefore like to revisit the basic principles behind

the Non-Aligned Movement that could be analyzed as one of

possible models for organizing complex political subjectivities

on a supra-national level. Our focus will be to compare two

different historical realities and to see what has happened with

NAM’s emancipatory and progressive potential from the period

of anti-colonial struggles and modernization of 1950s and

1960s, and whether this potential is still relevant and could have

import in today’s globalized art, urbanism, culture and politics.

Likewise, we are interested in how Third Worldism emerged as

an utopian attitude whose aesthetic component, though never

truly defined, promised to give a certain idea of intellectual and

political, if not ideological unity to a world of nations that were

economically disadvantaged but held the larger part of the

world’s natural resources.

Juan A. Gaitan: It seems to me that the Non-Aligned

Movement fits into a set of ideas that emerged out of the

Cold War (OPEC for example) not all of which were eman-

cipatory but which nonetheless were subjects of the idea

of emancipation. For instance, in my own world of historio-

graphical interests there is Third Worldism, which had an

emancipatory impulse but remained more at the level of an

idea or ideal and less at the level of a movement proper. In

the space of culture, Third Worldism (worth saying that this

is a retrospective term) included primarily cinema and litera-

ture, while art only came later with the important case of the

Havana Biennial, which was established in the mid-1980s

and remained for a long time a sort of belated experiment at

affirming the so-called Third World.

Today, so many years later, one could say that the Non-Aligned

Movement, and Third Worldism, Pan-Arabism, and so on,

are being taken up as models for re-thinking a global condi-

tion, and in a way that is emancipatory too, but no longer an

emancipation of the “Third” vis-à-vis a “Second,” or a “First”

because of course that would render things anachronistic and

ineffectual. Thus the first question should be directed at this

emancipatory impulse, and the conditions that are motivating

it. What is it that is being attempted by resuscitating these

models and bringing them into a world in which they don’t

quite belong? In other words, What is the historiographical

interest in them, assuming of course that historiography is

now a way of reaching into the past for models that may bear

positively on issues that are urgent in the present?

Zoran Erić: I see your point in questioning where to locate

new emancipatory potentials, and how to relate the his-

torical principles and the role of NAM to what is happening

today when we don’t have a bipolar world order any longer,

but new types of hegemony and economic colonialism with

the neoliberal political economy of debt and consumption

are being felt throughout the globe.

In the historical period after WWII, for countries that ended

the anti-colonial struggles, belonging to NAM was both

emancipatory, making them subjects on new global political

map, and empowering by providing a stronger platform to

act within United Nations. The new global political constella-

tion, especially after the attacks on the World Trade Center and

the Pentagon on September 11th, have, according to Derek

Gregory, triggered a series of political and cultural responses

that were profoundly colonial in nature. We are now back into

the period of construction of “imaginative geographies” that

actually threaten and put into question the basic idea of sover-

eignty of several countries members of NAM.

I would therefore like to think that there is still a need for

revisiting and finding new articulations of basic motives for

formation of the Non-Aligned Movement. I see it less as a

kind of nostalgic lamentation on the minor influence of this

movement in the international politics of today, than an

p. 8 p. 9

attempt at conceptualizing a universalist political position

that doesn’t have its roots in any specific European tradition,

and which reveals the political in the very spot of exclusion

or abandoning of Eurocentric frameworks.

If we would agree that today it is very difficult if not impossible

to find such an impulse that will form supra-national constel-

lations with the emancipatory potential, for this reason exactly

I would emphasize the urge to “learn from history” and not

lose touch with the roots of our own modernity. In that respect

Michel Watts argued that there is a danger in failing to recog-

nize that modernity cannot be unproblematically located in the

West, and of not seeing development and its alternatives as

oppositions that contain the Other.11 The problem is that the

representations of the past are constantly being colonized by

the signifiers of the hegemonic discourses, which obscure our

views on the roots of our own modernity and the emancipatory

potential it had had.

J. A. G.: So we agree on this question: Whether such an

emancipatory impulse is possible today and what form

could and should it take, given, as you say, that we are no

longer subjects of the bipolar politics of the Cold War? What

are the global politics we are now under? In a wonderful talk

that he gave in Athens, Sarat Maharaj spoke of the European

Union as an imperialistic project, implying, I suppose, that

once the whole of Europe has been enveloped in this Union,

What would the next step be? Would the borders of Europe

be redrawn at this point, pushed further? This, of course,

is a question of the order of logics (the crypt-imperialist

logic of the EU in this case). But of course there are other

factors, some that are already receding, like the Venezuela

of Hugo Chavez, which as you know began as a bastard

child of these emancipatory ideas that we are speaking of

(NAM, Third Worldism, etc.); I say bastard child because it

was formulated on the rhetoric of emancipation, but at the

same time the method was purely capitalistic. Outwardly,

Chavez “managed” Venezuela as one would a transnational

corporation – buying interests all around the world, in oil

and other resources – and inwardly he was supposed to be

running a socialist country (much like the Netherlands, or

Norway). Of course, he has failed to deliver inwardly, and to

some the rest will be only a matter of time.

Z. E.: Yes, the European Union is another example of supra-

national constellation whose strong formative impulse came

exactly from common economic interest of six European

countries in 1957. Now in the situation of economic crises,

the basic motives for its foundation are being questioned

more than ever. I would agree with Sarat Maharaj and claim

1 M. Watts, 2003, “Alternative Modern – Development as Cultural Geography”, in: K. Anderson, M. Domosh, S. Pile and N. Thrift (eds.), Handbook of Cultural Geography, London, Thousand Oaks, and New Delhi: Sage Publications, p. 441.

further that already at this point we have “imperial” regard

of EU towards the Caucasus region or North Africa and this

might be visible both in political and cultural sphere. Living

in Serbia today, when the country finally got a red light from

EU to open up the process of negotiations for membership,

and growing up in Yugoslavia as one of the founding mem-

bers of NAM is tempting me to compare these historical

realities.

I find it therefore relevant to include another perspective on

the period of Cold War that could be understood through the

set of relations between North and South and not only on

the bipolar political East – West axis. In that respect, for the

NAM countries, the basic aim was not solely to dismantle

the old colonial system of political relations in the world,

but to initiate the change in the economic relations based

on dominance of rich and developed countries that through

“economic aid” tried to establish a new kind of hegemony

and colonization of underdeveloped newly formed countries.

These non-aligned countries have already at that point in the

1960s and 1970s put forward the ideas that there are difficul-

ties, if not barriers that cannot be bridged, in co-operation

between poor and developed countries and opted for lateral

relations of the member countries through the group G77. In

that respect, the position of the underdeveloped countries

has not changed much till today.“ The threat coming out of

the activities of transnational companies and the need to

protect permanently the sovereignty over natural resources

were introduced as major issues for NAM by Salvador Allende

when Chile had joined the movement shortly after Lusaka

conference in 1970. He regarded these issues as political

rather than economic which has proven to be a symptom so

clearly visible today and that is exactly answers the question

what kind of global politics we live under.

You are right that the politics of Hugo Chavez makes good a

argument for the current view on “socialist projects”. He is

loudly shouting against the imperialism of USA and on the

other side trying to establish lateral or South-South collabora-

tions with African countries to form an “anti-imperialist” move-

ment. Still, as you mention, his methods don’t fall out of the

capitalist system because after the global collapse of socialism

there was no other alternate mode of social production that

could match the new disjunctive, neoliberal, predatory capi-

talism of today, however you want to call it.

J. A. G.: This brings me to the question of the ‘zeitgeist’ (for lack

of a better word). During the historical period we are discussing

(roughly, 1960 to 1985), there were several realities that enabled

the emancipatory imagination to penetrate even the official

sectors of society. As you know, these movements weren’t just

ideological; there was an agro-industrial utopia (according

to which farmed goods were the insurance of the future of

humanity), while there was also an emergence of literature

from formerly marginal places (the case of the Latin American

boom is quite important in this picture) that gave it all a cultural

dimension, too. There were also other projects that came from

before (the Pan American Highway, for instance) which gained

renewed relevance because they promised stronger economic

links between neighboring nations, and this at a time when

many international free-trade treaties were being drafter around

the world.

Z. E.: A recent tragic story could tell how the historical context

(or “zeitgeist”, as you put it) has changed. In the turmoil of

recent events in Libya, several Serbian citizens are still being

held under arrest, as they allegedly came to the country to help

Gaddafi’s regime as sharp shooters. They defend themselves

by claiming that they are builders working in the construction

industry and that came to help rebuild the country suffering

from destructions. The truth is still to be found, but we should

remember how important a role Yugoslavia and its companies

like Energoprojekt (building damns, power stations, architec-

tural complexes like conference halls and fair grounds) have

played in the process of modernization of many NAM coun-

tries, and Libya is good example.

The solidarity, aid, and politics of friendship that Yugoslavia

developed while supporting different anti-colonial fights

have created a fruitful platform within NAM for collabora-

tions and exchanges in political and economic but also in

cultural and educational spheres. Interesting story is one

from Algiers, where Yugoslav experts were setting up the

logistics and passing knowledge in the production of news

reels and documentary films. The information service of

Yugoslavia produced the first LP record with the anthem and

battle songs of Algiers freedom fighters and a documentary

film on the war in this country. Another documentary film

about the fight for liberation of Mozambique was as well

produced by Yugoslav filmmakers. It is called Venseremos

which in Portuguese means We Will Win and it was just

recently rediscovered and acquired by Mozambique authori-

ties from Belgrade archives. The cultural exchanges with

NAM countries were even put to the official institutional

level as there existed in former Titograd, now Podgorica, in

Montenegro, a Gallery of Non-Aligned Countries.

J. A. G.: The Battle of Algiers and The Battle of Chile, though

roughly ten years apart, are two films that established a sense

that there was something like a Third Worldism, a mixture

of aesthetics and ideology that now seems largely obsolete.

But what was interesting was that these films and others that

were produced in different places around the so-called Third

World were making the point that an emancipatory movement

had to be effected from the point of view of the conditions in

which people and populations lived in these regions, due to

the effects of capitalist colonialism. So now that we’ve moved

into the space of the aesthetic, I think it important that we find

the place of curatorial practices within these interests. For me,

having worked as an art historian, writer and curator mostly in

North America and Europe, though with a close relationship

with Latin America – especially Colombia, where I grew up – it

has been important to find ways to disentangle one’s nation-

ality from one’s practice. In this respect I remember an essay

that the Brazilian literary critic Roberto Scwartz wrote titled “Is

There a Third World Aesthetic?” Of course the answer was no,

but the point was that it was the question that was important,

as an open question, which is to say, as an avenue that could

be taken and which, in true utopianist fashion, had to remain a

possibility more than a fact.

So the point I want to make is that, as a model, Third

Worldism, which was never a movement proper, has the

historical advantage of providing us with a ground for an

aesthetic, intellectual, and political project that emerges

from a concern and dissatisfaction with the current human

condition in zones and regions (one cannot speak only of

nations anymore) struck by violence, displacement, poverty,

poor working conditions, inequality, and so on.

Z. E.: When it comes to curatorial practice, my concern is that

we are often witnessing how the politically biased geography

in conjunction with the priorities of funding bodies are deter-

mining the very content and structure of many projects. The

curators frequently find themselves trapped in the “imposed”

geographical frameworks, particularly the ones underlined by

the crises or wars that are triggering their interest as an urgent

spotlight for reflection and action.

I am very keen on using spatial metaphors in the analysis

of global interactions of today with the aim of detecting and

defining interrelation between cultural homogenization and

cultural heterogenization in a multifaceted, disjunctive order

of a new global art space. Henceforth, I find it relevant to

investigate the historical examples of “geographical” con-

stellations and the possibility for new constructions of such

constellations that do not have economic or military interest

as their common denominator, but on the other hand had,

or could have, emancipatory drive in its formation.

Finally, as a curator based in Belgrade, throughout my career

I have tried to transgress the “stigmatization” of being recog-

nized solely as a “curator from the Balkans” and I hardly ever

considered projects dealing with “national” representations

in art and thematization of the Balkan region in the format

of an art exhibition. While assuming more active relations to

research on geo-political context that has framed the socio-

political context I live in, I have realized that belonging to NAM

produced a social space in Yugoslavia that was cosmopolitan

in nature, open to other cultures, nations and races, unlike the

xenophobic reality of Serbia today.

A conversation between Zoran Erić and Juan A. GaitanA conversation between Zoran Erić and Juan A. Gaitan On old imaginative and new strategic geographiesOn old imaginative and new strategic geographies

p. 12 p. 13

In the 80’s and early 90’s most of us that lived in the town-

ships and various kinds of Black settlements got used to

the idea of no-go areas. During this time a persistent and

intermittent war was going on. We also got use to terms that

were associated with this war such as: “black-on-black vio-

lence”, “low-intensity civil war” and “uneasy calm”. During

that time a lot f people were displaced from their homes

because their homes had been destroyed or they had been

identified as members of the ANC or IFP in an area that was

controlled by the opposing political formation. The Inkatha

Freedom Party (IFP) and the African National Congress

(ANC) were the main protagonists in this conflict. However,

there were also other players including SASCO (the South

African Student Congress) and an affiliate of the ANC, the

Pan-Africanist Students Organisation (PASO) which was

the student wing of the anti-Apartheid organisation the PAC

(Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania and the student organi-

sation of the other anti-Apartheid organisation the Azanian

Peoples’ Organisation’s (AZAPO) which went by the name

AZASM (Azanina Students Movement).

In those days township residents lived in fear of attacks from

the opposing groups and from the infamous death squads

that were funded and armed by the Apartheid state. Many

people like me who were not politically active had to learn

the codes of the places we visited that could identify us

as one with that community. Groups of men would patrol

the streets, partly in self-defence but also to identify stran-

gers that did not belong to the desired political formation.

Otherwise one had to enter those areas in the company of

people who knew and understood these codes.

If you visited an area that was controlled by another group

self-appointed Self Defence Units (SDU’s), Self Defence

Units (SPU’s) and other types vigilantes would make you

recite slogans of the organisation or certain songs and if

you were found wanting the consequences could range from

public humiliation, beatings and killing. In 1986 a neighbour

of ours was visiting his girlfriend in another township that

was known as an IFP stronghold wearing an AZAPO t-shirt

and came across a mob of IFP supporter who gave chase

and eventually caught up with him and beat him to death.

In other areas the divisions were not structured solely on the

basis of political affiliation but also on the basis of ethnicity

and other associations. For instance men who lived in the

single-sex hostels that were created by the Apartheid govern-

ment for mine workers were generally thought of to be Zulu

and therefore members of the IFP. So in the townships of

Johannesburg it did not matter that you were an ANC sup-

porter and of Sotho extraction by the mere fact that you were

an isiZulu speaker made you an IFP supporter by associa-

tion and a target of violence. The same applied for township

residents who happened to stray into the path of the men’s

hostels.

How exactly that hostels came to be regarded as Zulu

enclaves and no-go areas is not clear. Prior to the violence

of the 1980’s hostels used to be places of entertainment

on Sundays for many township residents because of the

weekly traditional dance competitions that were held there.

Spectators could be treated to various kinds of traditional

dances from Sotho, Pedi, Zulu, Xhosa and others ethnic

groups. In other words there was a lot of peaceful inter-

actions between the township residents and the hostel

dwellers.

Half-way between then and the present large numbers of

Black people moved from rural areas into the cities and

significant numbers of Black township residents moved into

what had previously been exclusively white suburbs. In the

case of Johannesburg many new-comers to the city landed

in squatter settlements also known by the more politically

correct term informal settlements.

Township residents and people from other parts of South

Africa who could afford to do so moved into areas that had

been previously reserved for whites. B the late 1980’s it was

clear that Apartheid was beginning to unravel and some

of landlords in the city had begun to lease apartments to

Black people. This process accelerated in the early 1990’s.

By the time of the first democratic elections in 1994 certain

formerly “white” areas such as Hillbrow in Johannesburg

had become ostensibly Black areas. Towards the mid-to-late

1990’s there was an influx of foreign nationals as well.

It was primarily Nigerians that spearheaded this move

and with them came accusations that Nigerians were

drug dealers and the purveyors of crime in South Africa.

Nigerians and other African immigrants were regarded at

first with suspicion by South Africans and then later on

Ghettoes of Another Kind

Khwezi Gule

p. 14 p. 15

with contempt that finally exploded in 2008 in the attacks

on foreigners. Its not that there had not been attacks on

foreigners before 2008 nor did they stop after that. There

have often been and there still are reports of violence against

Pakistanis, Somalis, Zimbabweans, Mozambicans and other

people whose complexion is regarded as either too dark to

be South African or whose language is Shangaan (an ethnic

group that is found both in Mozambique and South Africa).

This pattern repeated itself in many parts of South Africa.

However with this change of occupancy many of the white

residents fearing a number of things including the declining

state of the buildings and increasing criminality, moved to

other suburbs and in many cases new settlements sprung

where there was once farm lands. The phenomenon of

cluster housing was thus born. Increasingly Black people

also moved into these cluster homes for security reasons

because often these housing developments would have high

walls and electric fencing.

Many areas of the city of Johannesburg came to be regarded

by the wealthy sectors of our society as no-go areas because

of perceptions of rising crime, declining property values,

degenerating state of upkeep of the buildings. It all became

a self-fulfilling prophesy. Landlords greedy for rentals at any

cost subdivided their buildings into smaller units where as

many as 20 people could lived one room. Services declined

and buildings fell into disrepair and garbage was not col-

lected. In many instances banks refused to give home loans

into certain areas such as Hillbrow and Yeoville and the

inner city. In some instances landlords did not pay their

water and electricity bills and these were turned off. Once

beautiful buildings became slums. Some landlords simply

abandoned their buildings.

There was another trend though. Many residents of these

buildings took control of the buildings, paid the munici-

pality the huge accumulated rates, electricity and water

bills, cleared the garbage and made sure the buildings were

painted and kept in a good state. And then some of these

revived buildings once the residents had fixed them the

landlords sold the buildings so that they could be converted

to upmarket apartments which meant that the residents

who had made those buildings liveable had to move out

because they could no longer afford the rents.

Old suburbs that wanted to protect themselves from the

upsurge in crime fenced off themselves into gated com-

munities. These shifts in the residential patterns obviously

have racial motivations behind them. Many of the residents

of the formerly white areas just did not want to live next to

Black people. After all just because Apartheid was no longer

in the statute books it did not mean that it disappeared from

people’s consciousness altogether.

There was another element however and that was class.

Many Black people who could afford to more into the more

affluent areas did so. In part this was motivated by status

associated with certain upmarket areas of the city and in

many other instances to be close to work and other ameni-

ties such as schools that offered a better education that

township schools.

In the mid to late 2000’s the municipality of the city of

Johannesburg embarked on an ambitious project of urban

re-generation. The big money that had f led the city in

the 1990’s was encouraged though various mechanisms

including tax breaks to revive old buildings and re-purpose

some o them. Office blocks became new luxury apartments.

Public facilities such as parks were redeveloped and public

sculptures commissioned.

In the process many people who had made those marginal

spaces their homes were moved out of those buildings.

The infamous ‘red ants’ forcibly removed people from their

homes. The red ants were workers of a private firm that

wore red overalls. The firm had been appointed by the city

of Johannesburg to remove squatters from buildings and

informal settlements.

In the present it is quite evident that there are no-go areas

operating throughout the various cities in South Africa.

Johannesburg, simply due to its size both in terms of spatial

size and population size provides very striking illustrations of

these redefinition of city spaces and the emergence of eco-

nomic, psychic and social ghettoes everywhere. This trend o

keeping the undesirables away and “protecting” certain areas,

the trend to demarcate spaces of living, work and entertain-

ment echoes a lot of the trends that Apartheid had fashioned.

It is a trend that is informed by the tendency to look at African

cities as being in decline rather than as points of growth and

fixing the gaze on what has been lost in terms of prestige and

outward appearances and forgetting what has been gained by

way of new cultural influences such as cuisine from different

African countries and different forms of music that have left

an indelible mark on South African popular culture as well as

literature. People from other African countries many of whom

have not come as political or economic refugees but as traders,

business people and various kinds of intellectuals have added

significantly to South African, literature, scholarly output, art

and many other disciplines.

In some ways it is a re-articulation of the primary fear during

Apartheid which was “die swart gevaar” which means the

Black threat. It is a mentality that promotes the idea that

Africans have nothing to offer they only take (our jobs and

our women and our houses) and that they cause crime, they

push drugs, they are counterfeiters, they spread corruption

etc. The same categories of thinking that were applied to

Blacks during the time of Apartheid. What is sad however is

to see other Black people participating in these forms of dis-

crimination. For as long as discrimination exists there will

always be no-go areas both tangible and intangible.

Khwezi Gule Khwezi GuleGhettoes of Another Kind Ghettoes of Another Kind

“China Town”, 2011. Courtesy of the artistKutlwano Moagi

p. 16 p. 17

“Fifth Floor”, 2011. Courtesy of the artistKutlwano Moagi

Khwezi GuleGhettoes of Another Kind

“En Route no5”, 2011. Courtesy of the artistKutlwano Moagi

Khwezi GuleGhettoes of Another Kind

p. 18 p. 19

The prognosis of a crisis, an apocalypse with indefinite

duration – without a Messiah to compensate for the lack of

historical meaning affected major changes on the psycho-

geography of Athens. Prior to giving the crisis the form of a

“debt crisis” and supposedly “targeting” the problem, the

“crisis” was manifested in spatial relations. The uprisings

of December 2008 against the right wing government of

Kostas Karamanlis fostered new spatial dialectics between

public revolt and quotidian use of space.

The uprising was triggered by the murder of a youngster by

a police officer but was soon developed into a massive wave

of disdain against a conservative political regime. The street-

fights lasted for three weeks and resembled the Parisian

suburbs’ uprisings though action was situated in the center

of the city. The youth was the protagonist. The most spec-

tacular moment was perhaps the burning of the phallic tall

Christmas tree in the center of the Constitution Square (the

Syntagma square) in front of the Greek parliament. The

most standard analysis addresses the split between the

rioters and the conformists, the split between the urban

spaces re-conquered by social groups and the private space

of passive spectatorship filtered through the lenses of the

Mass Media.

Of course this assessment ignores numerous overlappings

among the aforementioned camps. The space of the uprising

was heavily designed by the mass media that endlessly moni-

tored its activity, expressed their concern in the vulnerability

of the precarious youth and also embraced the youth’s

divine wrath against a corrupted old regime (that ironically

included the media). On the other side, conformism was

formulated as ideological resentment against the state and

the “incapacity” of state control – therefore, unconsciously

converging with and participating to the wrath of the rioters.

This inner dialectic between the rioter and the conformist

is unspoken, suppressed, silenced. Contrary to a common

view, the space of rioting and the space of social normality

is immanent.

Modern Greek society was networked in ways of feudalist

mutual legitimization of spaces, mutual recognition and

omerta - concentric cycles based on constellated relations

between “access” and “exclusion”, poverty and wealth,

public and private. In this sense, the private sector was

always a continuation of the state -patronized by the

public sector and patronizing the state simultaneously by

demanding and achieving monopoly. The authoritarian

moralism, anti-parliamentarism and anti-corruptionism of

the December 2008 movement, or of more recent outbursts

of the Greek indignados, have to be understood in the light

of this failure to break the cycle of repetition and reproduc-

tion of embedded social patterns of traditional clientalism

and economic feudalism. This incestuous formation (not

contrary to the syncretist spirit of late capitalism) was not

challenged in the years of metapolitefsi (the end of the mili-

tary junta in 1974 onwards) but continued to define, through

the 90s’ ambiguous economic growth and modernization,

an emerging middle class striving for social recognition

and economic prosperity. The burning of the luxurious

Christmas tree in the very center of the Constitution Square

is thus exactly how the Real returns to the same place through

a totally necessary act of partition and breaking with the

regime of the socially meaningful: this item-symbol of eco-

nomic ascendance and also affirmation of a traditionalist

-family based- society was burned in a castrating act of

incision in space – an action that could have not been sub-

stituted by words, protest slogans or revolutionary discourse

. The 2011 Greek indignados lacked the pace to proceed to

such a castrating act as that of the “Decemberists”. Instead,

they kept on lamenting a regime that nourished them.

Kostis Stafylakis

Athens now:

some unrecognized spatial continuums.

The space of castration /

the space of indignation.

Christoforos Doulgeris, “METADATA1_1”,

2011 / Archival inkjet print on aluminium /

Courtesy of the artist.

p. 20 p. 21

Karim Rafi

“Agnaw” (Silence)

In their long march from the African steppes to the North

African plains, Gnawas sang exile, deprivation and slavery.

From the walk of the camels and the banging of chains, they

forged their own rythm and shaped their world inhabited by

primitive spirits. Deported from their distant forest to the

palaces of sultans, from their encounter with the Sufi broth-

erhoods of the North, they crossbred their belief with Islamic

mystical practices, giving rise to hybrid ceremonies where the

sacred meets the profane.

A touristic and cultural economy has emerged from this

musical-anthropological literature inherited from a scholary

colonialism, erected in absolute truth. From this romantic

and dubious theory, responding to the specifications of the

colonial project and its willingness to reshape the world as

its physical and metaphysical boundaries, the Academy and

other institutions have made the subjectivity of the pioneers

an objectivity almost sacred. The mystification of the first

theorists and the laziness of other specialists “loaded with

books “only rarely leaving their “chair”, and always regur-

gitating and making the same formulas and synthesis on

things and their meanings, have made a misunderstanding a

well understood evil.

The mythical hypothesis on the Sub-Saharan origins of the

word Gnawa (because of their resemblance, Gnawa comes

from the word Ghana, from the Kingdom of Ghana…)

became a one-way historical truth and its contrary is incon-

ceivable and despite the use of this word by the North African

and its correspondence with the mystical and magical beliefs

and practices so-called Arabo-Berbers.

Without conclusive testimonies that would call into question,

the veracity of the theory of foreign origins (Sub-Saharan) or

confirm the idea of a local origin (North African) or probably

common (Pan-African), only documents written by the first

European researchers constitute conclusive evidence. The

other autochthon forms of transfer not recorded in writting

don’t have a great historical value, and despite the progress

and the relative open mind of Science so-called Social

(Science), orality still remains silent and marginalized…

If orality suffers from so much exclusion what can we say

about this mode of transfer even more complex which is

silence, and yet it is this mode of transfer that makes the

North African Man as its projections (culture, language,

belief and cosmogony...) and this is because of this silent

nature that he is condemned to muteness by History and this

is indeed the misunderstanding.

Agnaw / Silence

Silence as a never trodden space or a “no place” (Utopia)

is: Agnaw1 in Tamazight2, it means also the dumb, its plural

Ignawen3 designates the sages and the musicians who prac-

tice Tagnaouite4 which is a therapeutic and a mystic practice

where the subject wanders in his Being in an elliptic and

circular movement similar to the pilgrim who walks into a

sanctuary, the senses are the chains that the passenger has

to break to free itself from the meaning and its hindrances,

going back up to the silence which is nothing but the primor-

dial state of everything, and this is how Man is regenerated.

In this same order of ideas, other words such as Iguenna5 or

Iguenwane6 evoke always this same mystic and spiritual uni-

verse, that man has built in order to escape from the social

trap (global) and its chains. Other words from this same root

“Gn”evoke the sleep, the dream, the emptiness...

This is through the word Gnawa that the field of the Being

is evoked, the silence as an indefinite metaphysic space is a

metaphor of the desert in which the sage walks towards its

source (self), “vacua et libera mente” (with a free mind not

cluttered), such as the nomad walking towards horizon, this

is how he metamorphoses himself in silence, that is to say

that he is accomplished.

The wandering of the body is a quest for the spirit.

Fitra7, silence, movement, empirical experience and reminis-

cence are at the heart of the African philosophy of life and its

mystic, where Gnawa and Ghana represent only one and a

same thing seen from different angles and expressed in dif-

ferent languages and dialects, and this is indeed the multiple

aspect of this unseizable geo-psychologic space which is

Africa. A space where the climate has shaped men to make

them a multicolored palette forming a rainbow of cultures

where difference is sublimated in metaphysic territories, in

which man by his movement “Amouddou”8 transforms the

salt into gold and thus makes the world “Amadal”9 an open

air alchimic laboratory and the being its philosopher’s stone.

From a few grains of memory sown in a field of silence.

Karim Rafi“Agnaw” (Silence)

1 Agnaw: tamazight or berber word for silence, dumb.2 Tamazigh or Berber languages are a group of Hamito-Semitic languages. Languages spoken from Morocco to Egypt, passing through Algeria, Tunisia, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso... Tamazight has its own writing system called Tifinagh.3 Ignawen: tamazight word which designates the sages and the musicians who practice Tagnaouite.4 Tagnaouite: tamazight word for trance.5/6 Iguenna (plur) Iguenwane: tamazight word for skie, (plur) skies.7 Fitra: Arabic word. Original and natural state of the humant being and the natural attitude in which he walks toward the Being and to God.8 Amouddou: tamazight word for movement.9 Amadal: tamazight word for world, planet earth.

Karim Rafi,

“Ça / Nit”, photograph, 2012.

p. 22 p. 23

Raqs Media Collective

“Grab the Wind”2011,Visual Essay, for Le Journal de La Triennale.

p. 24 p. 25

p. 26 p. 27

p. 28 p. 29

p. 30 p. 31

p. 32 p. 33

Ismail BahriWaiting for change?

pin. So the traced line was so fine that is was practically invis-

ible and yet it could seem monumental because it was several

meters long. The paradox was interesting to me then because

it was about making this line and my physical presence publicly

unnoticeable. A bit like crossing town as a shadow, withdrawn

from the vision of the passers-by, fitting myself into the nooks

and crannies of the walls and the light. Although it was totally

inoffensive, it did generally provoke reactions such as surprise

or avoidance. The residents of the walls that were being pinned

sometimes asked what I was doing and one young girl threw

some water destroying part of it while cleaning the street. These

contacts were always brief and shy. Making Orientations also

involved going through the city myopically, because I was only

focusing on the ink’s surface that worked kind of like an obscure

compass. I was seeking to perceive the city through this black

hole, this keyhole revealing a landscape. The moments when

the camera managed to catch a piece of the scenery in the

glass were captivating because it opened a new view of the

city. Suddenly I was seeing something different in a familiar

city where I was born: fragmented, upside-down, erratic and

sometimes nearly diluted. It’s about the appearing image, with

the ink acting as a photosensitive solution. And what interested

me was to make the glass a receptacle for fragments of scenery,

making it possible to capture images of the city and carry them

away. The contact with the city and its scenery happens through

a diverted representation.

B.S.: In your description of Orientations you evoke a myopic

meandering, whereas the reactions of the passers-by sug-

gests a decoding of reality: “ Yes… yes… the ink shows the

perimeter, you lower the glass, it enlarges it and shows you

the opposite of what you usually see. “ If this is a deciphering

what does Orientations reveal about the streets of Tunis?

I.B.: It appears to me that the two “visions” are not contradic-

tory. Myopia is already in way decoding the world, an altered

form, and a way of seeing without a horizon, somewhat like

navigating by sight. The passer-by pronounced this sentence

just when the glass shows us a fragment of the tree. This partic-

ularly curious man really wanted to find out what interested me

so much in that glass. And then he was very surprised to see

differently the street he lived on. That moment is very important

because the image captured by the glass became a vehicle for

encounter and in fact one doesn’t often discuss images with

people met on the street. It’s the glass and the image that

operate the contact. The exchange with the passer-by was made

through this optical intercessor.

B.S.: It is interesting how Nicole Brenez approaches political

stakes when she refers to your work: “What (Ismael Bahri) con-

veys is that ‘the downfall of writing can speak of voicelessness,

the loss of words, but also a resistance to loss’. In other words,

far from the autotelic inwardness of the individualist subject,

from his intimate sensitivity he invents unlimited processes of

connections to phenomena, passing through all sorts of psy-

chic and material channels, through porosity, capillarity, fluidity

and not only through identifiable entities or logical processes2”.

How can you consider these issues in your work?

I.B.: What is certain is that traces of politics are difficult to

detect in my work. What’s more, I don’t look to maintain

a clear and directly identifiable connection to politics. A

trace sometimes reappears from behind, or fragments rise

to the surface, without my wanting or seeing it. And most

of the time, its others who make the connection, often

because they need to define artists and locate their work

amidst current events, their origin and whatnot, without

taking the time to look at their work for what it is. They look

for the means to interpret social references. And curiously,

since the Tunisian revolution, more and more people are

detecting connections between my work and politics, while

frankly they are minimal. But all things said, these lines by

Nicole Brenez seem relevant. If there is a relation to politics,

it is minimal, between the lines, through movements, links

created through micro-phenomena that at first glance seem

insignificant. It’s delicate matter, producing connections

with multiple resonances, without ever falling into the trap

of discourse or the temptation of communication. I am wary

of these types of approaches. This is why I often refer to mur-

murs or rumors, meaning these horizontal and unpredict-

able propagations of contiguities. What moved me so much

in what they call the Tunisian Revolution, is to have recog-

nized there this type of dissemination. The population’s

uprising was propagated by contiguity, from one to another,

no hierarchy or discourse. What is troubling now, is to see

discourses emerging and icons of the martyrs worshipped,

risking paralysis to the movement. It’s inevitable and prob-

ably necessary, but I think we should be careful about it.

B.S.: What is your view of Tunisia?

I.B.: My outlook on Tunisia is intimately distant. I mean

that I’m very concerned by what is happening there, but I’m

physically far away. Certainly what is coming to Tunisia will

be much more difficult to deal with than last December and

January’s uprising. The revolution of the streets quickly grew

because it was inventing, discovering and developing itself

simultaneously. Today everything must be invented, and we

already begin to see identifiable political discourses coming

from all sides within a context of fear of a suffering economy

and the war reaching their borders. No one can predict the

outcome, and here again, we are myopic. On the other hand

I don’t see dictatorship emerging from the present situation.

2 Nicole Brenez, “Prima delle Rivoluzioni, Avant-gardes arabes des années 2000”, Art Press 2, Cinémas Contemporains, Quarterly n°21, May-June-July 2011.

JUNE 2011

Barbara Sirieix: In your work, you use ordinary familiar

objects such as milk, ink, paper, glasses, bowls, pins,

strings... Their state is altered and they become minimal

achromatic forms, reflecting surfaces, shadow markers, and

line tracers. What determinates the choice of these materials

and how do you make them work together?

Ismaïl Bahri: I don’t choose the materials for what they

are as much as for what operations they enable and their

capacity for revealing things. Among the elements you have

mentioned, some of them are just receptacles, receiving sur-

faces. The glasses, the pores of the skin, the sheets of glass

or the walls, or on a larger scale, a snowy landscape become

appearance surfaces. Various elements like ink, water,

string and others are conductors of vibrations, presences

or images. For example, with a piece of string I can hold

a drop of water along its course (Coulée Douce) or reveal

the movements made with my hands that are off camera

(Dénouement). The ink reveals. It can reveal a landscape or

the lines of the skin by infusion like in Sang d’Encre. I never

totally manipulate these materials but try to activate their

potential. Once it is dropped into the hollows of the pores,

the ink spreads through the lines, the pattern unfolds before

my eyes (Sang d’Encre). When I tie knots in Dénouement, it’s

the string stretched towards the camera that reveals and

amplifies the movement of my fingers, it acts as an inter-

cessor. The materials used are intercessors in the same way

chance was Duchamp’s intercessor, his operator of differen-

tials. The materials I use generally amplify a simple action.

B.S.: What do you mean by a simple action?

I.B.: Tying a knot for example, carrying a glass, sticking a pin,

or dripping ink. I don’t develop any particular technique; it’s

more about exploring body movements. Simple movements

that I try my best to make precise. When I speak of precision,

I’m referring to a clearly defined movement, often practiced,

varied and perfected over several weeks. This reminds me of

what Jean François Lyotard said about Duchamp:” precise,

but inaccurate1”. That has intrigued me for many years. How

do we carry out a precise but inaccurate movement? One

has to imagine an abbreviated movement, sharpened to the

moment, but as soon as it is executed, outwits the question

of technique or measure. It would then be an action carrying

incalculability, setting off an unpredictable movement. A

bit like the idea of a rumor, that can be very clear, incisive

but untrue. And then, what is interesting is seeing how

the movement, or a specific action, can influence the body

posture the way the body enlists in society. Walking, carrying

a glass of ink that the eyes are focused on is an action of

great simplicity (Orientations). But it took me several days to

learn how to walk, only guided by the reflections revealed in

the glass, and not be tempted to raise my eyes to see which

street I was crossing or the people I walked by. Of course,

this type of activity influences the way we interact, with the

passers-by, for example. It is all minimal, almost negligible,

but there is a certain physical stance quite ambiguous

because it attracts attention through its own withdrawal.

B.S.: You have done several ambulant projects in the city of

Tunis: first comes to mind Ligne Fantome where you traced

the line created by the shadows of the pins you stuck in the

walls. In 2010 in Orientations you walked through the streets

carrying a glass of ink, focusing the camera on the city’s

reflection in the opaqueness of the liquid. For Ligne Fantome

you talk about meeting others in a context with ‘geopoetical’

settings. What do these interventions signify for you in the

context of the city?

I.B.: Maybe I need to explain what is involved in Ligne

Fantome. This intervention consisted in the tracing

of a shadow line on the walls of the city. This line was

embroidered, sewn in a certain sense, because each pin

was stuck according to the shadow it would produce. Each pin’s

shadow would connect to the shadow of the following pin, and

so on and so forth, creating a line stretching more than 20

meters. The line was drawn in accordance with sunlight. This

activity enabled me to travel the narrow streets on a centimeter

scale, alongside the wall with no other horizon than the next

1 Jean-François Lyotard, Les TRANSformateurs DUchamp, Paris, Edition Galilée, 1977, p. 74.

Ismail Bahri speaks to Barbara Sieireix

Waiting for change?

p. 34 p. 35

p. 36 p. 37

B.S.: Before coming to the experiment on the mirage, you

had another project working with capillary origami and

newspaper, which you took up again in Tunis during the

elections. It developed alongside the events, using the

newspaper editions of that period. You had temporarily put

it aside to clarify the position the images and text would

occupy in it. How did you finally work that out?

I.B.: During the elections, Abdellah Karroum asked me to

send some images from Tunis, and that’s when I developed

the capillary origami project. I then began working with pieces

of newspaper that I would cut, roll and then set on a liquid

surface. The roll would slowly open on contact with the water’s

surface, setting off an elementary mechanical movement, a

simple metamorphosis. These experiments turned into a series

of one to two-minute videos where we see the rolls unfold. The

camera situated on the water’s surface films the coil unrolling

into the body of water. The picture is full frontal. In this situa-

tion, we never actually can grasp the content of the newspaper

text, the perception is furtive, the same way news images dis-

solve as soon as they appear, before we can grasp or decipher

them. About the status of text and image in this project: the

omnipresence of the writing was problematic because I didn’t

want to offer something to be read or understood. The accent

is on the paper’s fiber, the textures, the colors, in short: the

foam of the wave rolling towards us. It’s about indicating, in

other words, the fragment open to interpretation. The “indi-

cations of topicality” recorded on the roll of newspaper keep

disappearing. What is important to me here is the movement:

the kinematic of paper. This unrolling becomes a sort of mini-

cinema, a hydraulic mechanism that reveals and veils images

and clues.

B.S.: This rotating mechanism of coverage relates to the pro-

cess of appearance of the character in printing and the rolls

of the press, with it the idea that in this process there is a

re-producing of meaning by recomposing it into indications.

What is the position of the indications and topicality within

these “indications of topicality”?

I.B.: The newspaper is the only reference to the election

context, as for most of the videos I used daily papers pub-

lished on those dates. But I handled these elements of the

current events as materials, the same way any material is

transformed. The more they were altered, the more they

gained their autonomy and freedom from their original

context. I don’t know much about semiotics, but I prefer to

speak in terms of indication rather than symbol because the

indication activates a potential. It refers to a hypothetical

event, and implies having distance. The term “ indications

of topicality” evacuates the precipitated referral to a fact

or a particular event. The images I use are often shown in

their dynamic of ‘appearing’ because I feel less comfort-

able with images that state a fact or recount a fact. Using

movement is a way to outwit the authority of such an image.

Furthermore, what interests me in the ‘appearing’ is that it

always introduces a distancing, a latency period or delay that

forestalls immediate contact with the image.

B.S.: Your work on the mirage, the capillary origami, and

Orientations use movement and play upon the alteration of

visibility or visual signs to enable a vision. These projects are

experiments taking place in a context, and they are linked

to”stories”. What role do these stories play for you?

I.B.: Yes, most of the time, all these projects, all this han-

dling, fit into a particular context, be it in a particular space

or a current event as we have just seen. And as you pointed

out, it’s often this context that activates the impulse to

explore. It can be rolling newspapers and watching them

unroll, or like the other day, observing in the context of relo-

cating, unwinding a roll of scotch tape hanging in midair. All

these activities carry with them a “story”, but this “story” is

sometimes relegated to the rank of the anecdote because

it’s not always there in the final rendering. With the excep-

tion of Orientations, where the spatio-temporal context of its

creation is integrated into the setup, it’s often the simplified

action that remains, outliving the rest. I privilege the phe-

nomena over the story.

B.S.: Beyond the idea of breaking down the function of the

newspaper there, the information is processed. Because

they are seen as potentials and not as data, the “indications

of topicality” escape the ephemeral nature of news and have

more to do with history. The indications remind me of Walter

Benjamin’s flowers: “As flowers turn toward the sun, by dint

of a secret heliotropism the past strives to turn toward that sun

which is rising in the sky of history. (…)(One) must be aware of

this most inconspicuous of all transformations3.”

3 Walter Benjamin, Sur le concept d’histoire, Ecrits français, Paris, Gallimard, 1991, p. 435 (Translation by Dennis Redmond, internet source: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/1940/history.htm).

Previous page:Ismaïl Bahri, Film, film stills, 2011Courtesy the artiste & Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire, Paris

B.S.: What do you think about the ‘Jasmine Revolution’ and

the media’s mythologizing it?

I.B.: I can’t add more to what we’ve already heard. The media

inflated the issue while the revolution was brewing in Tunis,

but typically lost interest in what is happening now, because it

is critical now and tomorrow it may be at risk. Another more

general observation, I’m afraid that this spontaneous move-

ment is becoming a kind of brand. People always try to detect

the perpetual post-orientalistic clichés in Tunisian art and film.

Journalists, artists and specially curators must ensure that the

people’s movement not become another easily identifiable

brand, a recognizable marketing source. When there is interest

for Tunisian and Arab artists, it is seldom for the right reasons:

another classical phenomena. Reference to the revolution does

not suffice to be artistically relevant. I get the impression that

the revolution is sometimes used like a passkey to anything. I

think the best thing for Arab art in general is to be demanding

and rigorous with it.

B.S.: Have you been back to Tunisia since December 2010?

I.B.: Yes, several times. My last visit was in January 2011,

three or four days after Ben Ali’s departure. I landed in a

country that was completely transformed. This is when we

witnessed the emergence of speakers in Bourguiba Avenue.

Anyone could just stop and make a speech. We could see

crowds suddenly gather, demonstrations improvise them-

selves. This was amazing when you knew how speech had

been inhibited for so many years. The voices had been

silenced and thoughts denied. Seeing all these anony-

mous orators brought to mind the work of Michel François

Speaker’s Corner. Here we see anonymous orators delivering

their speeches on large blocks of ice that are placed under

them by the artist, until their pedestals completely disap-

peared. We imagine the orator descending to the level of

his audience, at the pace of the melting ice. The general

euphoria and the inflation of words and images were unbe-

lievable. I asked myself, what more can be done, or said?

What image can be made of this commotion and excite-

ment? Now we are witnessing the aftermath. It is a time for

reflection and opening the intricacies of dialogue.

DECEMBER 2011

I.B.: Before we begin, let me say that it’s a good idea to have

this discussion in two stages because it contributes to the

approach in a perspective. I have just reread the June interview

and a lot of what was said is still ‘topical’ as one would put it,

even if I don’t really know what the word means. I found there

again the idea of the ‘simple action’ which is still in me, but

also my puzzlement with regards to current events, especially

in Arab countries. Things happen fast and I still feel myopic

facing current issues that are impossible to grasp. Also over the

last seven months the Working for Change project has given us

time to think about these issues and begin a dialogue through

exchanging mails, images and videos.

B.S.: To follow up on this first interview is also a way to

chart out what has been covered. A first project has been

started through your stay in Venice in June during Working

for Change. You worked in a space with the material that you

found there. What were your prerogatives in this improvised

‘in situ’ intervention?

I.B.: What I did in Venice was experimental, a quick and impres-

sionistic draft. Those two days there were a time of guessing

and trying to be aware of what was happening optically and sen-

sorially. I took a look around the place and found a roll of scotch

tape, which I began to work with. Soon I was using the roll to

make several strips across the doorway separating the space

from the garden. What began as just the repeated action of

slowly emptying a roll of tape turned into an attempt to create

a mirage. You may recall, we observed that while reflecting the

garden and vibrating with the breeze, the tape brought about

confusion between the indoor and outdoor spaces.

B.S.: The continual transition from the darkness of the space

to the bright luxuriance of the garden outside produced ghost

images on the retina. The idea of a mirage became clearer

and clearer. After that I could not stop associating the blurred

image of the garden with the screen inside the space where Al

Jazeera TV channel was on continuous broadcast. The radical

difference in content between the Arabic and Anglo Saxon ver-

sions was remarkable within the context of the revolutions, as

an expression of ideological dichotomy, and a testimony to the

stalemate of journalistic objectiveness. And again mentioning

myopia, it is no wonder we are out of focus. We experience

again a blurred and deformed vision, a difficulty to decipher

images when we look at over-pixilated amateur footage mas-

sively used by the TV channel for coverage.

I.B.: Your parallel between the mirage and the television images

concerns me. What is certain is that the mirage questions the

very notion of the screen. The screen is by definition out of

focus, it “enables to see” and blinds, shields our vision.Screen shot of Al Jazeera TV by Barbara Sirieix, june 2011.

Ismail BahriIsmail Bahri Waiting for change?Waiting for change?

p. 38 p. 39

PRE & PROTOHISTORY

“UNNATURAL HORIZONS”re-alinement of Morocco/Algeria/Lybia,countries border lines divided by 4 in cross section. (acid on roof slates), 2012.

Seamus Farrell

PRE & PROTOHISTORY“UNNATURAL HORIZONS”re-alinement of Morocco/Algeria/Lybia a Decomposed Arabian spring...countries border lines divided by 4 in cross section.( acid on roof slates)

p. 40 p. 41

PRE & PROTOHISTORY“UNNATURAL HORIZONS”re-alinement of Morocco/Algeria/Lybia a Decomposed Arabian spring...countries border lines divided by 4 in cross section.( acid on roof slates)

p. 42 p. 43

PRE & PROTOHISTORY“UNNATURAL HORIZONS”re-alinement of Morocco/Algeria/Lybia a Decomposed Arabian spring...countries border lines divided by 4 in cross section.( acid on roof slates)

p. 44 p. 45

DépaysementThere is an anachronic sensation stemming from the notion

of Outre-mer. The distance between the continental France (la

Métropole) and its DROM-COM (Départements et régions

d’outre-mer - Collectivités d’outre-mer) scattered throughout

the globe is geographically punctuated by maritime spaces, by

bodies of water. From a social point of view, the imaginary sug-

gested by the Outre-mer term grants a convenient remoteness

to these regions (for instance, when considering that those

territories have been the set of both nuclear tests and penal

colonies), or it might evoke a weary exoticism that fits the cur-

rent condition of coloniality1 experienced there; it might also

rise a flight of imagination, relating to notions of the distant

and the unknown. That which exists beyond the sea is different

but equal, is strange but exploitable. It is a far-away that can be

brought near when necessary but it is also a forgettable fantasy.

The homes of the people that inhabit the lands of the

DROM-COM probably exist somewhere in-between the

aforementioned considerations, the bodies of water, the

mainland, hybrid cultural traditions and the internet as a

transnational vehicle for identification. If we make an effort

to assemble the heterogeneity of the Outre-mer population

under one concept, we can observe an on-going construc-

tion of a shifting plural idea of a nation, defined as an

encounter of evolving particularities. These are constantly

being projected in subjective cartographies.

Transient home-makingIn “Foyer d’Outre-mer” (working-title), Carolina Caycedo

develops a research that engages with the evocative curato-

rial premise of an Intense Proximity, analyzed as a condition

that is experimented in the current French political pano-

rama, where the idea of national space is expanded beyond

1 “Coloniality of power” refers to a crucial structuring process in the modern/colonial world−system that articulates peripheral locations in the international division of labour with the global racial/ethnic hierarchy and Third World migrants’ inscription in the racial/ethnic hierarchy of metropolitan global cities. Ramon Grosfoguel. A Decolonial Approach to Political-Economy:Transmodernity, Border Thinking and Global Coloniality Kult 6 - Special IssueEpistemologies of Transformation: The Latin American Decolonial Option and its Ramifications. Fall 2009. Department of Culture and Identity. Roskilde University, Denmark

geographical limits and identity issues.2 Caycedo inves-

tigates the parcours of the Outre-mer dwellers, departing

from the observed structures of coloniality and interrogating

its consequences from intimate viewpoints and personal

narratives. She inquires about the “reproduction of the uni-

verse” that is implied in home-making practices.

The existence of such institutions as Le Centre Municipal

d’Accueil et d’Information for the Outre-mer territories

in Paris -whose functions are, among others, to orient

the natives from Outre-mer in order to “compensate for

the absence of territorial continuity”3- is the evidence of

contemporary French society’s difficulty at addressing this

persistent coloniality. These conflicts state the desire for an

imaginary of a homeland where the citizens are equal but

diverse and where their ability to exert their citizenship must

ideally accommodate to each specific geo-politic location

within the national space. In Caycedo’s project, the varying

intensities of the sense of belonging granted by geography

and citizenship are addressed from a creative aspect, using

subjectivity as the dimension for the constant remodeling of

these emotions.

Temporary islandsIn an increasingly technologically charted planet, how far is

beyond the sea? When trade does not depend exclusively on

physical distances anymore, is it even relevant to keep using

the Outre-mer and Métropole terms ? What are the political

implications of these representations in language? In my

mind, there is a dissociation in the idea of the Outre-mer

homes being exposed in the immediacy of the world wide

web through social networks, yet being geographically situ-

ated in...well, Outre-mer.

What are the shared imaginaries between a native of

Martinique, a native of New Caledonia and a scientist tem-

porarily residing in the Terres Australes et Antarctiques

Françaises? An Outre-mer native is susceptible of feeling

disoriented, or, in the more accurate French term, dépaysé

when in her/his expanded homeland, the Métropole. Or she/he

might feel dépaysé when going back to her/his native land after

years in the Métropole. Dépaysement dans nos propres pays.

2 La Triennale 2012. Artistic director: Okui Enwezor. Associate curators: Mélanie Boutelop, Abdellah Karroum, Emilie Renard, Claire Staebler. www.latriennale.org

3 My translation from french. Centre Municipal d’Accueil et d’Information DOM-TOM: www.paris.fr/politiques/citoyennete/delegation-generale-a-l-outre-mer/centre-municipal-d-accueil-et-d-information-dom-tom/rub_6896_stand_19529_port_15721

Natalia Valencia

Ultramaron Carolina Caycedo’s work

Natalia ValenciaUltramar

Speaking from a strictly geographical viewpoint, for them, all

that is beyond their surrounding waters would represent their

own Outre-mer; their Métropole is beyond their sea.

Mutating flags

Carolina Caycedo, “Cayenne”, digital print, 2011.

In 1917, fifteen woman and children were rescued by a US

Navy ship in the atoll of Clipperton (also known as Ile de la

Passion), located in the Pacific Ocean, off the Mexican coast.

They had been sent there three years before by the Mexican

government, in an effort to claim the ownership of the island.

But the political and economical unrest caused by the Mexican

Revolution in the mainland led to their eventual abandon. Their

country left them to their own fate, in total disorientation. At

the time of their rescue, a new constitution was being imple-

mented in Mexico and these persons where somehow living

in a space outside of time, with a blurred sense of citizenship

in an uncertain geopolitical space. The island was officially

declared a French DOM TOM (later renamed DROM-COM) in

1931. Clipperton Island has an official postal code but it remains

uninhabited since World War II.

Antiterra

Carolina Caycedo, "Kanakfloat", digital print, carolina caycedo 2011.

“The image, the imagined, the imaginary - these are all terms

that direct us to something critical and new in global cultural

processes: the imagination as a social practice. No longer mere

fantasy (opium for the masses whose real work is somewhere

else), no longer simple escape (from a world defined principally

by more concrete purposes and structures), no longer elite pas-

time (thus not relevant to the lives of ordinary people), and no

longer mere contemplation (irrelevant for new forms of desire

and subjectivity), the imagination has become an organized

field of social practices, a form of work (in the sense of both

labor and culturally organized practice), and a form of negotia-

tion between sites of agency (individuals) and globally defined

fields of possibility. This unleashing of the imagination links the

play of pastiche (in some settings) to the terror and coercion of

states and their competitors. The imagination is now central to

all forms of agency, is itself a social fact, and is the key compo-

nent of the new global order.4

Arjun Appadurai: Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions

of Globalization (1995)

How is the “absence of territorial continuity”, resolved in an

Outre-mer native’s mind? Shouldn’t this issue by adjusted

in the minds of the Métropole inhabitants as well, perhaps

translated in their case as an “extension of territorial con-

tinuity”? A dislocated territorial condition exists in their

minds too. Another problem lies in considering that the only

continuity that is interrupted (or extended) is that of a ter-

ritorial nature. This points out to conflicting views towards

the reality of transmigration. What can hold together a sense

of belonging in the shifting symbolics of a national territory

where temporal realities blend as the road stretches below

one’s feet or one’s train or plain seat? The state of dépayse-

ment and its various resonances are experienced in imagina-

tion and probably only resolved in it.

In his inexhaustible last novel “Ada or ardor” (1969),

Vladimir Nabokov solves the territorial breach between

former colonizers and former colonies in a single world

map, Antiterra, where the current territories of Canada and

the northern United States form the countries of “Canady”

and “Estotiland” (discovered by African navigators), which

enjoy a subtropical weather and whose native tongue is

Russian. In this novel, the protagonists, Ada and Van, are

raised as cousins in the hybrid region of Ladore. They dis-

cover that they are actually brother and sister but they fall in

love with each other nonetheless.

ReferencesAppadurai Arjun: Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (1995). University of Minnesota Press, 1996Grosfoguel, Ramon: A Decolonial Approach to Political-Economy:Transmodernity, Border Thinking and Global Coloniality Kult 6 - Special IssueEpistemologies of Transformation: The Latin American Decolonial Option and its Ramifications. Fall 2009. Department of Culture and Identity. Roskilde University, DenmarkNabokov, Vladimir: Ada or ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969). Penguin Modern Classics, London, 2011

4 Arjun Appadurai: Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, University of Minnesota Press, (1996)

p. 46 p. 47

A speculative essay by Olivier Moana Paul Marboeuf

With Richard Price, Édouard Glissant, Marie Voignier, an old Saramaka, a French folkloric music group, Vincent Meessen, the poacher Fanon, the freed slaves Malcolm and Marius, Félicien Marboeuf, Marie Bouts and Till Roeskens and others appearing as ghosts or bodiless voices.

“(…) Although the trip had been planned in the best possible

way, I spent a dreadful night. At first unable to sleep with the

incessant rolling of our vehicle, later I was assailed by a series of

dreams, each more obscure than the previous one. My mother

became crazed and definitively silent while my father could

not cure himself of a strange malady he had contracted on

our overseas voyage. In the midst of a violent crisis he knocked

on my door in the middle of the night. Completely naked and

covered with sweat, he informed me that I was a bastard, a half-

caste that he had been forced to recognize in haste to avoid the

scandal of adultery. Oddly enough, this news relieved me. And

that is the strange fantasy of a dream I wanted to share with

you, knowing how much the imagination upsets with fracas the

worldly order that both of us flee.”

Excerpt from a letter from Félicien Marbeouf to Marcel Proust, May 1898.

Summary:At the moment of leaving for the conquest of the New

Worlds, the narrator learns that he is no longer from an

unknown world. Ready to renounce an expedition that has

no future, he discovers he has a secret name that allows

him to follow the routes of magic. Moving from one body to

another, using the patronymic Océan, he wanders through

the marshes of History seeking the departments of Beyond

the Grave, lost Caribbean Islands. There he questions the

dead about their science of travel and spirits away some of

their ancient works of navigation. Convinced he has redis-

covered the route to his native land, he endeavors to find a

new maritime passage. But what he has taken to be a map

of roots turns out to be the infinite album of sources and

so he finds himself incapable of making order of the erratic

episodes of his adventure. Not knowing where else to go,

he returns to the forest where he had left the poacher Fanon

and the former slaves Malcolm and Marius in the midst

of an animated discussion. But he cannot find the trace

of his companions. Nearly hopeless, he attempts a final

transformation. Following the counsel of an old Saramaka,

he throws his magic name into the boiling water of a court-

bouillon. Henceforth he will be known as Autochton.

Chapter IThe narrator’s journal

Here is how the narrator relates in his journal his troubled

feelings about the first days of his adventure:

One has to admit that the rigorous activity of a curator in

today’s world requires, in addition to a solid university educa-

tion, if possible dispensed in English, an aloofness, a distance,

from certain practices of magic, bewitching, possession, telep-

athy, transformation, levitation, sorcery… But let us also admit

that there exist territories that are terribly complicated to explore

with the poor tools we are authorized to use. There is no book

or university thesis on the secret art of swamps. Certain territo-

ries become intelligible only when we engage our whole bodies

in the encounter. They do not accept any form of aloofness, or

frigid regard that might condemn them to being only a still life,

or inconsistent landscapes, peopled by insipid beings, fetishes

without raison d’être, like those that are collected even today

Olivier (Moana Paul) Marboeuf

Journeys to the country of return

p. 48 p. 49

in certain parts of the world under the title “objets d’art”. Yet I

have the impression that the very nature of this engagement has

changed considerably as the conquest of unknown territories has

become exhaustive. Does there even exist anymore a place that

could decently be denominated a virgin land? To the ancient

fantasies of maps of the known world someone has substituted a

computer application of the visible world—which Anglo Saxons

have named “Google Earth” and that we would be tempted to

call in our language “the mathematical map of the Earth seen

through the eyes of satellites”. Nothing seems able to escape

this algorithmic atlas. Is this the last stone laid in the rational

project? To index knowledge in the register of the visible? What

is the use of travel if it now only serves to verify images? The

islands of which I have been told are surely only a few key words

or search engines away, points in the ocean that I need only

enlarge on my screen. Until bodies and their faces become vis-

ible. And recognizable.

Later he is overtaken by doubt:

Saw Marie Voignier ’s film tonight, “The Hypothesis of the

Mokélé-Mbembé”. A strange remark from Michel Ballot accom-

panied me throughout the evening. A clairvoyant flash in the

middle of a journey into the darkest of obsessions. “Do you

think I have to take something to be able to see the Mokélé-

Mbembé?” he innocently asks a native. Fearing he will never see

the mythical creature, the amateur explorer imagines changing

methods, and more exactly, changing vehicle, form, body. He

thinks of becoming forest, river, rain and sand bank. To pen-

etrate to the interior of what he seeks. The objective is no longer

the creature but a new sensitized system. Quite a discovery!

While Ballot penetrates the forests and follows the rivers in his

quest of the invisible, the inhabitants of the bush repeatedly tell

him that everything is there and always there. He questions

them about the pantheon of ancient gods that preceded colo-

nial Catholicism, those “local” gods that he imagines to be in

osmosis with their ecosystem, while the inhabitants remind him

that it is always men who fabricate these interrelated figures. Is

not the ancient god Pumba the father of Jesus Christ?

This results a few days later in two strange notes, the last

entries the narrator makes in his journal before the occur-

rence of radical changes about which we know little:

As a child I suffered from somnambulism. I would regularly be

found walking through the house like a zombie in pajamas.

I slowly lost this habit, as I abandoned all practice of magic

and wild rite—including football—so as to organize my life in

accordance with western standards—study, work, loans, death.

And yet to walk amongst dreams is the best way to find the

way to return. If it is a question of journeys, I voluntarily would

choose to dedicate myself to the return, the return to home, the

return from home.

In the Parisian suburb that is my Heimat, my community,

we were indistinctly asked to return to our country. Some of

our interlocutors even promised boats that would cross the

Mediterranean, never the Atlantic. And then, finally, it was

our countries that returned. At first on soccer jerseys, then in

language and sometimes even in the form of a catalogue of

prayers. Reinvented countries, repaired myths, flamboyant and

painful because we all knew that going back to countries about

which we knew next to nothing was an impossible endeavor. For

the “Domiens”, there was no country.( translator’s note: the

acronym DOM denotes a French Département d’Outre-Mer or

French Over Seas regional Department, by extension a Domien

is an inhabitant of a DOM.) And so we satisfied ourselves with

names. A name is the orifice by which we enter into possession

of beings and things.

At the moment of beginning this return voyage, approaching

the banks of this hypothetical New World about which I had

formulated an obsessive question—and accessorily made the

subject of an exposition—I cannot economize a few detours into

magic. These detours must be considered as means of transport,

no more. They are not the rule, and even less a religion. At the

moment I have effected changes in my name. I have removed

the outer crust. Let me be called Moana; the ocean, the horizon.

Let me be allowed a form of Utopia where the earth is always

in movement, the myth of roots swept away by that of origins.

Let me be accorded an island medicine to fight the continental

malady. Gripping the rotted trunks carried along by the poisoned

river of History I am off on a voyage under the rein of chaos.

Chapter IIFragments from the journey: oral myths and collected histories from overseas

Poaching and court-bouillonOn a volcanic island, Océan meets a poacher named Fanon.

A half-caste with elegant carriage, Fanon carries at his waist

a number of shining trophies, amongst which the psychoa-

nalysis of Freud. Océan is fascinated by this bauble, the likes

of which he has never seen at such close hand. To see it

hanging at the waist of this indolent young black man and so

far from the European continent—where it is a fashionable

accoutrement in high society—does not cease to intrigue

him, he who thought only to discover exotic fruits and

unknown beasts here.

Journeys to the Country of ReturnJourneys to the Country of Return Olivier (Moana Pau)l MarboeufOlivier (Moana Paul) Marboeuf

He questions the so-called Fanon, who is collecting

branches to light a fire underneath his improvised cook pot.

The man does not answer, absorbed as he is by searching

for a few of the sweet potatoes that grow in abundance on

this side of the island. Fanon soon tosses all that he has

found on his path into the court-bouillon: spices, dogfish,

ingredients from far off countries some of which are prob-

ably poisonous, and finally the famous psychoanalysis that

turns slowly in a brown sauce, in rhythm with the cook’s

agile stirring.

At the sides of the silent chef, Océan learns the arts of

poaching and dressing sauces. This takes weeks, months

perhaps. He no longer has a notion of time. The two men

cross immense forests, hilly countryside, luxuriant valleys,

walking far from towns, sheltered from curious regards.

Océan now invents his own recipes, lies in wait for game,

gathers fruit and gleans.

One evening, as they cross through a tiny hamlet inhabited

by fugitive slaves, they meet Malcolm, a light-skinned black

who has renounced a dissolute life to follow pious practices.

Malcolm explains to Océan that he no longer has a name

and proudly displays the X as his only civil mark. Océan tells

him of his meeting with the freed slave Marius and how

Marius explained the possession of names. According to

him, the colonists deposed their names everywhere so as

to take possession of objects, streets, façades and efface

even the patronymics of the slaves. Malcolm cuts in: “and

that is why we have to get rid of these marks, cross them out,

with an X.” “Let me finish with Marius’ story” replies Océan.

“According to him, name is everywhere, visible, like a ripe fruit

fallen from the tree, you need only pick it up. With the name,

we in our turn take possession of he who had the imprudence

to expose it to all eyes.” “We must poach and cook the names”,

Océan concludes gaily. Fanon, who has kept himself at a

distance, acquiesces with a nod at the words of his young

disciple, never taking his eyes from the mask he has been

carving in silence for days now. Océan throws his voice as

Marius: “the name the colonist left us is a passage, a key. It is

through this orifice that we enter him, make our return into

his thoughts and haunt him. This name is a treasure (“trésor”

in French). In place of all these Xs, we must affix the word

Treasure. From this day forth, that is how I wish to be called:

Marius Trésor.” (Note: Marius Trésor is a French international

soccer player, born in 1950 in Guadeloupe.)

And that is what Malcolm learned that night from Océan,

who had himself learned it from Marius. We do not know

what each one did with this amazing story, if it was handed

down through time or was forever lost.

The companyWarning: In The Second Life, a text commissioned by Vincent

Meessen, as an echo to his exhibition My Last Life, we find other

traces of the narrator’s adventures in the land of magic. It is

not impossible that he brought back the account of this same

chaotic trip to the Caribbean even if for the moment it remains

purely speculative. Other experts affirm that it is rather an

episode related by one of the witnesses of a bewitching séance.

We choose here to reproduce it expressly following the poaching

episode.

A quartet of popular musicians floats on a catamaran in the

middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The action transpires towards

the end of the twentieth century, at the moment of a king’s

illness—François Mitterand. The boat has set sail much too

late in the history of the West to guarantee the conquest

of any New World. History recounts that it sailed with the

benediction of no court and without a mission. Far from the

immense silhouettes of the great caravels, it is the shadow

of the Manureva that sinks the maritime expeditions of a

decade of fiscal exile. As flamboyant as they may be, these

years of the 1980’s announce the imminent fall of a reign.

The end of Europe is near. One no longer goes to sea to find

fabulous treasures but more to hide treasure from national

tax. Even if it is not the case in the present example. The tale

as it is recounted to us by the narrator named Océan leads us

to believe that it is more than anything a voyage of initiation.

And maybe even a return voyage adrift. On the fiberglass

bridge three men and a woman sleep, all black, dressed in

buccaneer costume—at least in the idea one might have

of piracy. In the numerous trunks they are transporting is a

lycra mix of costumes: Superman, Spiderman, Casanova and

Bécassine. All this leads us to think that these four practice

the art of sophisticated disguise that cannot be indifferent

to the highest levels of State at a time when, for inexplicable

reasons, the grip on our far off overseas territories has been

released. With the consequences we know. History recounts

the links the four musicians maintained with the fanatics

from Ouvéa in New Caledonia, in the news in that year of

1988. We understand during the course of the voyage—the

length of which we ignore—the hidden meaning of the pop-

ular songs all of France and the rest of the world danced to.

How can we explain that the most popular French-speaking

music of all time at the same time carried in its heart—and

in secret—the voices of revolt? That is what history does

not really tell us. The part perhaps consciously left in the

dark by this mister Océan is not the least of the mystery.

When he recites in a confident tone the original passages of

songs as they were heard in the very mouths of the Ouvéa

rebels, there is no doubt that we are dealing with a form of

independent satanic verses for keys and bass guitar. Océan

with his manifest gift for the grotesque begins to sing a Bal

p. 50 p. 51

Masqué that freezes the blood and leaves the assembly in

petrified silence. At the end of his tale, he uses magic tricks

and occult interventions, without anyone seeming to care.

The audience has gone into a state of possession. And so

no one asks how a menacing letter from Charles Pasqua has

managed to fall into the hands of the four fugitives on the

high seas. In a telegraphic style the letter informs them that

they are the last remaining after their Ouvéan brothers gave

up their breath under the fire of the French commando. Nor

does anyone, at this near tragic moment, try to understand

how it is that a catamaran can be sailing directly towards

the Caribbean, while none of the passengers knows how to

navigate, despite the rapidly revealed artifice of their historic

maritime costumes. And yet the adventure continues at high

speed in the company of a whole pantheon of joking and ter-

rorist spirits. Our four musicians—who have always hidden

their names behind a collective appellation, which for some

people constitutes the proof of their closeness to anarchist

theses—are fleeing their country like maroons at the time

of sugarcane plantations. But this time they do not travel

inland, they flee by boat. It is a return journey without a

map, as Océan informs us. Their adventure soon continues

on a foreign coast where they have landed by miracle and

accident. But that is another story. The night before, asleep

in the middle of the ocean, deathly tired, one of them has a

terrifying dream. He dreams that they are not French, but

an invented people, creatures made out of whatever was

at hand, transported from one continent to another, then

mixed with Spanish blood, French, Indian, Dutch… A sort

of ultimate experiment of modernity. His tale provokes, as

usual, the hilarity of his companions. But he takes the matter

seriously. It is a recurring dream that he has had for years,

accompanying him throughout the band’s tours on the

roads of France. But it has never been so terrifying. We learn

from Océan’s mouth that the musician has already plunged

into a personal science of the interpretation of dreams. He

believes himself bewitched, possessed by a force whose

origin he ignores. On his shoulder, at all moments of the

day and night, he carries a charm hidden under a plastic

parrot. Océan explains how, at the end of a session of auto-

hypnosis, the musician claims to have seen himself in the

office of André Fabius, famous Parisian antiquarian, father

of a politician close to Mitterand. He remembers having

executed a grotesque dance in the office, with a Guèlèdè

mask from Benin covering his face, to amuse one of his

companions who was there, like him, to receive a medal

from the hands of the minister. He painfully recalls now this

wild dance, improvised in a Parisian salon. He wishes the

dance had never existed.

New country mapsWarning: We reproduce here in partial form one of the most

famous episodes of Océan’s journey, that exists in different vari-

ations in numerous mythic tales from Guyana. We prolong it by

an excerpt from the narrator’s journal that deals with a similar

subject. Although the context is quite different, it seems relevant

to us to note the complex movement in the science of maps to

which both events bear witness.

Océan left Fanon behind him. The chief, formerly loquacious,

has retired into silence. He no longer cooks. Now he builds

pirogues and dreams of going to Algeria. We know little of

Marius and Malcolm. There are many fables that attribute

deeds to similar characters, sometimes homonyms, tales

of extraordinary adventure in Europe and the Americas. For

many years we also lose sight of Océan. He is said to be a

student of maps, meditating, building a sailboat to cross

the ocean. Here a peasant affirms he has seen him drinking

palm wine. There a villager has seen him eating lianas and

Peyote flowers. For all, he is wandering in the land of the

dead. Several witnesses recount that he gave improvised

recitals, naked in the bush. He sang terrifying poems in a

form of Creole never before heard: a free performance that

was accompanied by the projection of anonymous experi-

mental films shot in 16 mm. Many private collections thus

complained about this fantastic spoliation. Others are sure

to have encountered him as a name trafficker at the edge

of the jungle. To each his story, his version of fact. It was

among the Saramaka, a maroon population of Surinam that

he definitively resurfaced. Fifteen years have passed, but it is

him that we see, wearing a loincloth, in a poor photograph

in the local paper. What has he been seeking here? The

story we have learned is that wandering in the thick tropical

jungle, he forgot his name. Alternative tales affirm on the

contrary that he voluntarily threw it into a cook pot in accord-

ance with a native rite. No one really knows. He told those

who approached him that the poacher of names was only a

character in popular tale. Of his previous life, he seemed to

have forgotten everything. Even in his way of speaking, he

resembles the Guyana maroons. Concerning the Saramaka,

history tells us this. Almost one hundred years before the

abolition of slavery and at the end of a war for liberation that

lasted almost as long, the Saramaka definitively obtained

their liberty in 1762 by signing a treaty with the Crown of

Holland. We see them thus masters of a vast forest region in

the heart of the country. For a long time they lived in peace

between river and tropical forest. An American anthropolo-

gist named Richard Price becomes one of the most remark-

able ambassadors of this people, of the richness of their rites

and language. For centuries ignored, the forest progressively

becomes, as time passes, an important stake for the young

Republic of Surinam—independent since 1975 but rapidly

traversed by a bloody civil war that opposes military govern-

ment and maroon peoples. Threatened, the Saramaka lodge

a plaint in the 1990’s at the Inter-American Court for human

rights to protect their land. In November 2007, the Court

judges in favor of their plaint against the State of Surinam.

They obtain collective rights over a territory where their

ancestors have lived since the 18th century—establishing a

precedent for all Maroon peoples and indigenous American

populations. Added to this is their right of regard on the level

of exploitation of natural resources within the perimeter

of their territory—gold, wood—and compensation for the

damages caused by Chinese forestry exploitation groups.

We pass rapidly over the details of this history that Richard

Price recounts with talent in a work to appear in 2012. What

seems remarkable to us and what is without a doubt the

reason for Océan’s presence so far from the coast, is the

story of a map. To obtain their rights, the Saramakas were

required by the Court to produce a map of their country—

a novel object for an essentially oral culture. It was at the

crossroads of different sources of knowledge that the map

was drawn. It associates the oral history of the Saramaka

people—sites of battle with the colonists, notably—with the

spatial distribution of their lifestyle habits—fishing, agricul-

ture, canoe-making… But finally it was support furnished by

aerial photography and GPS that allowed the contours of

the map to be traced. It is a map of usage—on which the

Saramaka voluntarily do not indicate places of ritual—that

gives these fugitive slaves the statute of autochthonous

people. A singular conclusion to multiple return journeys.

They have finally become a local population.

They say that Océan renounced his return when he heard

this startling story. They say that he immediately wanted to

become autochthonous but that he kept his secret name

hidden somewhere in his memory, in case of need, to flee

again to another world.

Chapter IIIThe narrator’s journal

Here is the anecdote the narrator wrote in his journal years

earlier concerning another story about maps:

Received today two young artists who want to make a film

in Seine-Saint-Denis. Bouts and Roeskens. Difficult for them

to apprehend such a complex territory known to them only

through its myth.

Urban density reaches records here. They openly admit to me

that they had to affront a novel form of desert: a full desert. It

seems that most of their site research was dedicated to wan-

dering and hunting down secret passages. Some sites are mani-

festly present in several locations; spaces stretch out, retract, or

even disappear entirely. The two of them are both perplexed and

excited in reaction to so many unsolvable mysteries. The cranes

that have been in operation for some time now changing land-

scapes only add a bit more confusion to this affair.

At the end of our meeting they expose an unexpected strategy.

They have the idea of tracing an itinerary following the songs of

the inhabitants, to find their route as aboriginal Australians do,

with song lines. To abandon today, at the beginning of a new

century the IGN (Institut Géographique National) maps, GPS

and other Smart Phones, in favor of the support of an oral cul-

ture. And now I, in my turn, find myself troubled by this strange

resurfacing of a far off magic. Is this the new nature of travel?

Journeys to the Country of ReturnJourneys to the Country of Return Olivier (Moana Paul) MarboeufOlivier (Moana Paul) Marboeuf

p. 52 p. 53

Le groupe LMDP (L’autre Moitié Du Paysage) est un atelier

de recherche, émanation de l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure

d’Arts de Paris-Cergy.

Le travail consiste à ne rien ajouter, ni comme idée ni

comme objet, tout en prêtant une attention soutenue à ce

qui se passe réellement quand on se livre à cette activité

au cours du processus artistique.

Ce groupe propose de manifester la forme qui s’édifie

lors de cette activité, et d’en rendre utilisable ici les

conséquences.

Merci à toutes et à tous, bon voyage dans l’inhérent, à

travers la banlieue de Paris, la Chine, la Suède et

le Maroc,

Claire Roudenko-Bertin et ses associé.e.s et ami.e.s

Virginia Gamna, Maxime Bichon,Paul Bonnet,Julien Laugier,

Dexi Tian, Feriel Boushaki, Théo Vailly, Raphaëlle Cel-

lier, Laëtitia Lheureux, Jean-Joseph Vital, Paul Maheke,

Anne-Marie Cornu, John Sundkvist, Macdara Smith, Lihong

Zheng, Mathilde Villeneuve, Sophie Lapalu, Suzi Ersahin,

Nadjia Belabbas et d’autres qui sortent et entrent

dans ce groupe à géométrie variable par la seule nécessité

de chacun.

Le groupe LMDP (L’autre Moitié Du Paysage) est un atelier

de recherche, émanation de l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure

d’Arts de Paris-Cergy.

Le travail consiste à ne rien ajouter, ni comme idée ni

comme objet, tout en prêtant une attention soutenue à ce

qui se passe réellement quand on se livre à cette activité

au cours du processus artistique.

Ce groupe propose de manifester la forme qui s’édifie

lors de cette activité, et d’en rendre utilisable ici les

conséquences.

Merci à toutes et à tous, bon voyage dans l’inhérent, à

travers la banlieue de Paris, la Chine, la Suède et

le Maroc,

Claire Roudenko-Bertin et ses associé.e.s et ami.e.s

Virginia Gamna, Maxime Bichon,Paul Bonnet,Julien Laugier,

Dexi Tian, Feriel Boushaki, Théo Vailly, Raphaëlle Cel-

lier, Laëtitia Lheureux, Jean-Joseph Vital, Paul Maheke,

Anne-Marie Cornu, John Sundkvist, Macdara Smith, Lihong

Zheng, Mathilde Villeneuve, Sophie Lapalu, Suzi Ersahin,

Nadjia Belabbas et d’autres qui sortent et entrent

dans ce groupe à géométrie variable par la seule nécessité

de chacun.

p. 55

p. 56 p. 57

Le groupe LMDP (L’autre Moitié Du Paysage) est un atelier

de recherche, émanation de l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure

d’Arts de Paris-Cergy.

Le travail consiste à ne rien ajouter, ni comme idée ni

comme objet, tout en prêtant une attention soutenue à ce

qui se passe réellement quand on se livre à cette activité

au cours du processus artistique.

Ce groupe propose de manifester la forme qui s’édifie

lors de cette activité, et d’en rendre utilisable ici les

conséquences.

Merci à toutes et à tous, bon voyage dans l’inhérent, à

travers la banlieue de Paris, la Chine, la Suède et

le Maroc,

Claire Roudenko-Bertin et ses associé.e.s et ami.e.s

Virginia Gamna, Maxime Bichon,Paul Bonnet,Julien Laugier,

Dexi Tian, Feriel Boushaki, Théo Vailly, Raphaëlle Cel-

lier, Laëtitia Lheureux, Jean-Joseph Vital, Paul Maheke,

Anne-Marie Cornu, John Sundkvist, Macdara Smith, Lihong

Zheng, Mathilde Villeneuve, Sophie Lapalu, Suzi Ersahin,

Nadjia Belabbas et d’autres qui sortent et entrent

dans ce groupe à géométrie variable par la seule nécessité

de chacun.

p. 58 p. 59

Abdellah Taïa

Fadwa’s Body

Left:

Fadwa Islah, No Title, 2011.

p. 60 p. 61

Abdellah Taïa Abdellah TaïaFadwa’s Body Fadwa’s Body

In Morocco, we would never have met.

In Morocco, everything would have kept us apart, far from

one another.

Paris, a city we can reinvent each day and night, has enabled

us to go beyond such borders, those of social classes and

injustice. In Paris, we have ceased to be blind about our-

selves. We took steps, one towards the other.

It all happened in 1999, the King of Morocco, Hassan II,

was still alive. One Saturday afternoon, in the Maison de

Jeunesse et des Sports of the 11th arrondissement, Metro stop

Parmentier, line 3. Behind a stand, in the role of a writer, I

was signing copies of a collective work, “Des nouvelles du

Maroc”, where I had been published for the first time in my

life. A young girl introduced herself. She said: I am Fadwa.

That is all.

I raised my head and saw her. I said nothing. I looked at this

girl who was coming towards me without real conviction, as

if she wanted something from me without having found the

means to obtain it. A girl, a young girl. But above all a body.

A very different body. How can I describe it without making

a judgement, without degrading it? A body that is life itself.

Life combined, generous, complex, filled with energy, black,

white. A ball. An ice cream. One feels a desire to touch

this body immediately. Forgetting its own gender, moving

towards this body both knotted and open for a bit of its

taste, its salt, its honey.

I desired all that. Immediately. I have been homosexual for

a long time. Forever. And before this young girl’s body, far

from me and my world, a transformation took place. A rev-

elation. A new form of courage. A new desire. I had to touch

this girl, let my hands wander all over her body, her curves,

her face, her incredible buttocks, her kinky hair, inexplicable

and fascinating. I just had to. For this, I needed to speak.

Give a reply. Commit.

She had said, “I am Fadwa”. That’s all. Later, I learned that it

was her way to make contact, to give very little, just one word,

just a signal, while adopting an attitude that would enable

her to succeed in her mission. With me, on that Saturday,

she had no need for flaunting other seductive techniques.

Her “I am Fadwa” was enough. I fell. I hung on. I extended

my hand. I said: “I am Abdellah.” She replied, coyly, “I know”.

So, she knew. She knew what was happening inside me even

before I did. Later, I knew all that, I understood what had

really happened between us at that very moment, in this

arrondissement of Paris, where life was suddenly no longer

life, where Paris, Morocco and France suddenly meant

nothing. What had meaning, rather strong, gigantic, trou-

bling, invasive, awkward, small, big, rich, poor, was Fadwa’s

body. A young girl. A little sister. A Moroccan, like me. Not

like me. But at the time of the encounter, nationality did not

matter, we no longer needed it. We were elsewhere. We had

only exchanged our first names for the moment, and we

were already over and in another sky. Beyond our conditions,

our Muslim religion, our sexual identity.

She revealed to me several years later: “I did not know

you were homosexual when I met you”. That pleased me. I

replied to her: “I did not know you were Moroccan. You said

your first name, which could have been Moroccan, but as

for the rest, your being, your body expressed another origin.

Your hair. Especially your hair, it comes from another world…

You are white, like a woman from Fez. And your hair is that

of a black woman. An African”. I was right. She then told me

part of her story. As for her father, he was born in Marrakech,

and her grandmother was a Black African, a slave of her

father.

That of course intrigued me. I had to learn more about her.

Her roots. About this black woman who modifies the body of

an entire family, imposing her colour, shape, features, hair.

Her spirit. Her inspiration. The way she moves and dances

on earth.

It took me many years to know (almost) everything about

Fadwa’s story, about Fadwa’s body, linked to a painful, but

ever so magical past.

At the Maison de Jeunesse et des Sports of the 11th arrondisse-

ment, the young girl, Fadwa, was only 19, and wanted some-

thing from me. Writing. I had just barely begun to write, to be

published, and I already had to give advice. Encouragement.

An opening. I replied seriously, I believe. Too seriously. And

that had surprised her. We were no longer in the getting-to-

know-each-other phase. We went, in one minute, to another

stage. How to write? What must one write? Why write? What

to write about? And the djinns, our djinns, are they assisting

us in this adventure?

To her second question, I wanted to reply by saying some-

thing evident. There was no doubt in my mind. What Fadwa

must write is about Fadwa’s body. This body says everything.

It carries everything. Mystery, pain, stories, frontiers, black,

white, panic attacks, witchcraft, voluptuous sensuality,

malice, forthright sexuality, pagan spirituality, free, freer and

freer.

I refrained from telling her all this. The time was not right.

So, when?

She kept looking at me with her big innocent eyes that

wanted to be innocent. How to reply to such questions? I

understood that I had to do something. React immediately.

She was silent. And in no way bothered by this silence she

was creating. I needed to take on power, initiative. Go beyond

my complexes. Write the second act between her and me. At

that time, I seduced those around me by preparing meals for

them. I used the same technique. I invited Fadwa to come

eat a couscous at my place. When she wanted.

She laughed and replied: “You can cook Moroccan food?”

It is at that moment that Morocco, this frontier, came

between us. It divided us and brought us back to our sim-

plistic origin, to our position.

The manner in which Fadwa had pronounced this sentence

made me understand her social class in Morocco. The bour-

geoisie. She must have studied at the French high school.

Later, she confirmed this to me. Later, I understood that she

did not fully belong to this scornful upper class. She had just

learned how to speak like a bourgeois from Morocco, using

it as a power, to defend herself and perhaps to seduce.

I stifled a panic attack that was surging from within and gave

Fadwa my telephone number and address, Rue Oberkampf.

She left. She said too few words: “See you next week, then!”

And she met up with a man who was waiting for her at

another stand.

Who was that man?

The reply came on the day we had couscous. “He’s my

brother. He’s the one who had incited me to go see you

on that day. He encouraged me to ask questions about

writing…”

Her brother! Did he know I was homosexual? Did it show?

I needed to know. A reply. Quick. Quick, please. And from

Fadwa’s mouth: “Yes, and No”.

And did she know from the outset? Had she guessed?

No, she repeated it to me several times. And each time, I

had a hard time believing her. On the day of the couscous,

she brought a girlfriend with her, Jamila, also Moroccan,

also bourgeois. It is the latter who had “opened her eyes”.

But, in the end, as it was the case for me, this revelation

did not change anything between Fadwa and me. From the

beginning, the first second of our encounter, we crossed the

line, she and I; we left our compartments and rediscovered

each other in another truth, another life. In 1999, I was a

Moroccan homosexual who had just arrived in France, a

homosexual who wanted to assume his identity, and seri-

ously enter a realm of freedom of the body and mind. Fadwa

was seemingly a heterosexual girl and, up until then, had

never given thought to her sexual identity.

It took several years to go beyond all that was separating us.

Become modernized for real. Rid ourselves of skins that had

never been ours. Lose ourselves in Paris. Be hungry in Paris.

Cold, Cry for nights. Sleep. Too much. Avoid unpleasant

looks. Face the French administration. Fall a lot. Painfully get

up again. Forget Fadwa. Forget Abdellah. Remember Fadwa.

Remember Fadwa. “Hello, Fadwa, are you coming over!”

‘‘Hello, Abdellah, where are you? In what arrondissement are

you living now?

And we got together. We rediscovered each other, body to

body. History to history. In screams. And dance. And Songs:

Abdelhalim Hafez, Hocine Slaoui, Najat Aatabou, Samira

Saïd. One inside the other, one in the other’s footsteps, with

extraordinary ease. One at the same time as the other. Both

crazy. Goddess and disciple. Drama queen and healer from

another era.

She felt pain, Fadwa. Pain. Pain. Throughout her whole body,

filled with knots. She said so. She said it to me. I listened to

her. I learned how to listen to her, without sharing everything

with her, but I listened to her. I entered into her life through

the pores of her body. The successive layers of her life, her

soul. In her logorrhoea, her monologues. Her moments of

madness. Her roving. Love. Vengeance. The spells to be

cast. The crazy intensity she placed in each story that she

lived, at every moment. Her life depended on it. Her story

needed it, such tension, such words, such a desire to enter

inside the other, in the other’s hand. My hand. Possess me.

Colonise me.

Ambiguity never ceased to grow between us. Our two

bodies. She fell. I picked her up. She cried. I cried with her.

She returned to her past. I brought her a horse. A winged

horse of Mohammed, the prophet. Buraq is his name. It

is with this mythical horse that Mohammed had made his

Night Journey, when he crossed the 70 000 veils of heaven,

encountered God, and spoke to Him.

“Fadwa, come. Let’s climb.”

We rose far, high, into this other heaven, where what we had

learned about ourselves, about Islam, suddenly no longer

p. 62 p. 63

had the same meaning, the same taste. We were with our

ancestors. We were in a laboratory. A courtroom. A play-

ground. A garden of pomegranate trees. We were, as in the

beginning, black. Black with love. Black, because it was our

first step into the world, the universe.

We were in a bathtub. Rue Daguerre. Rue de Clignancourt.

Rue de Belleville. What does it matter? It was always the

same tub. We closed our eyes to see better. We undressed.

We entered the same bath. The same water. The same purifi-

cation. And we spoke not. No more. We slept like that: in the

water, in the bathtub, one inside the other, combined, dead,

alive, brother and sister. In Paris. Without Victor Hugo.

Without Marcel Proust. But with Choderlos de Laclos, for

her. And Arthur Rimbaud, primitive and African, wandering

in his caravan, for me.

We read into us. For us. We recited. We created a moment

where everything could be exceeded. I was no longer a poor

submissive Moroccan, I was no longer a lost homosexual,

I was no longer a cerebral soul. Fadwa guided me. She was

the one to have black within her, a black taste, the hair of

blacks, the baraka of blacks. She was the one who fell more

often than I, more rapidly than I. She was the messenger.

The clairvoyant one. The “chawafa”. The witch. She had

power. She was weak. She was strong. She was in the here-

after. I was forgetting everything and, happy, I entered into

her. Into us.

Writing could then come about, become real. Materialize.

From deep knowledge of the rivers under the earth. In us.

By listening to the voices that accompany us. By conjuring

our angels to the left and to the right. Write naked. Write as

two. Two. One. Continue, through necessary transgressions,

eternity. Better: Stop and impose our common breath, our

combined organs, our blended genders, our eternal love.

Our vision of the human race. Our religion.

Fadwa Islah, No Title, 2011.

Abdellah TaïaFadwa’s Body

p. 64 p. 65

Ismail Bahri (b. 1978, Tunis) lives and works between Paris and Tunis. Bahri’s works take various forms, spanning from drawing to video and from photography to installations. His work explores processes and materials always through mini-malism and strong graphic content. His research deals with epiphenomena where minute mutations are happening. Bahri is represented by Les Filles du calvaire Gallery in Paris.

Carolina Caycedo, Born in 1978, London, United Kingdom – Lives in Los Angeles, United States. Caycedo creates art that discusses concepts of boundaries such as those between pro-ducers and consumers, professionals and amateurs, advan-taged and disadvantaged, borders and territories, spirituality and politics and, ultimately, between art and society. Her works refer back to popular culture and alternative economy, and resists the commodification of art by turning to an eco-nomy based exchange and bartering. She has exhibited her work internationally.

Zoran Erić (b. 1968, Novi Sad) is an art historian, lecturer and curator of the Centre for Visual Culture at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade. He holds a Ph.D. from the Bauhaus University in Weimar. His research fields include the meeting points of urban geography, spatio-cultural discourse, and theory of radical democracy.

Juan A. Gaitán (b. 1973, Canada) is a curator and writer based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He is curator at Witte de With, Amsterdam, since 2009. He trained as an art historian and aesthetic theorist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Recent exhibitions outside of Witte de With include Models for Taking Part (2011), Presentation House, Vancouver, and Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Toronto, and Exponential Future (2008), Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver. His most recent essays have been published in Afterall, The Exhibitionist, and as part of the series Ten Fundamental Questions of Curating in Mousse magazine.

Seamus Farrell (b. 1965, London) lives and works in Saint-Ouen/Paris and Patria/Andalucia. His research, based on quotes and exploration uses a variety de technics challenging the vocabulary of art history and art in the human history. Hi work “Car Doors, The United Nations Circle” was exhibited at the 7th Gwangju Biennale (2008) and Marrakech Biennale (2009), and at La Stecca in Milano, and he 5 Rooms, 5 stories, 5 Problems and a Hallway, Le Casino, at Casino of Luxembourg (2005).

Khwezi Gule (b. 1971, Durban) is a curator and writer based in Johannesburg. He currently heads the Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum and the Kliptown Open Air Museum. Prior to that, Gule held the position of curator: Contemporary Collections at the Johannesburg Art Gallery where he worked on a number of significant exhibitions including: Tracey Rose’s Waiting for God (2010/2011).In addition to numerous speaking engagements, Gule has written for various publications such as exhibition catalogues, newspapers and magazines and journals both locally and internationally.

Pablo Helguera (b. 1971, Mexico City) is a New York based artist working with installation, sculpture, photography, drawing, socially engaged art and performance. Helguera’s work focuses in a variety of topics ranging from history, pedagogy, sociolin-guistics, ethnography, memory and the absurd, in formats that are widely varied including the lecture, museum display strate-gies, musical performances and written fiction.

Fadwa Islah (b. 1979, Agadir) is a Moroccan writer and photo-grapher. She lives between Casablanca and Paris. Islah’s texts have been published in selective publications such as Lettres à un Jeune Marocain (Letters to a Young Moroccan,) Ed. du Seuil, 2009, and Nouvelles du Maroc (Novels from Morocco,) Ed. Magellan, 2011.

Christoforos Doulgeris (b. 1975, Serres) is a photographer based in Athens, Greece. Doulgeris was raised and educated in Germany.

Georgia Kotretsos (b. 1978, Thessaloniki) is a visual artist based in Athens, Greece. Her work focuses on the reception of art. By challenging the conformity of seeing, Kotretsos introduces liberating and anarchic ways of seeing within the museum in response to art history; art pedagogy; and to the etiquette of the acquisition of art knowledge. Parallel to her studio practice, Kotretsos co-founded Boots Contemporary Art Space, MO, USA and further founded Boot Print magazine (2006-10).  She currently writes for the Art in the Twenty-First Century blog where she has a monthly column called “Inside the Artist’s Studio”.

Thanks to the contributors:

Contributors

Olivier (Moana, Paul) Marboeuf is the director of the Espace Khiasma. He is curator of the exhibition Les Nouveaux Mondes et les Anciens, (The New Worlds and the Old), a project in four parts at the Espace Khiasma from March 16 to June 16, 2012, that presents a selection of twenty artist’s films. Including works by: Sandy Amerio, Marie Bouts & Till Roeskens, Patrick Bernier & Olive Martin, Vincent Chevillon, François Daireaux, Niklas Goldbach, Amanda Guitierrez, Jean-Charles Hue, Frédéric Moser & Philippe Schwinger, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Neil Beloufa, Catherine Poncin, Alex Pou, Penny Siopis. www.khiasma.net

Adelheid Mers (b. 1960, Düsseldorf) is a visual artist with a unique, interpretive approach to events and organizations, creating site-specific maps and diagrams that are poetic and analytic records of art institutions, exhibitions, public lectures, studio visits and written texts, with extensive teaching expe-rience across topics of grant writing, curatorial practice, arts organizations and arts economies. http://adelheidmers.org/

Kutlwano Moagi (b. 1983, Soweto) is a photographer and an aspiring Jazz upright bassist. Moagi has completed a photo-graphy course at the Market Photo Workshop in 2005 and he is currently working and living in Johannesburg. Moagi has taken part in numerous group exhibitions locally and internationally. His interest focuses on the city of Johannesburg, where he explores different modes and mediums of working within the city.

Kostis Stafylakis (b. 1977, Athens) is an art theorist and artist. He is currently a postdoc researcher at Aristotle University, Thessaloniki. His research and writings focus on the political discourse articulated by the global art shows and the impact of political philosophy on theory and practices. He is the editor of the Greek anthology The Political in Contemporary Art, along with Yannis Stavrakakis, and he has published essays on the Slovene collective of NSK, as well as the the art of over-identifi-cation and contemporary Greek artists.

Karim Rafi (b. 1975) is an artist, musician and poet. He lives and works in Casablanca. He is a self-taught philosopher and poet. His work questions mankind in relation to the Space he occupies, as well as its relationship with himself. His inquiry extends to institutional territories, ideas and man’s entourage. He is the co-founder of art_lab protagonist, and portable labo-ratory for artistic research (Slam & Klam fstvl) chaotic festival for poetic exploration.

The Raqs Media Collective was founded in 1992 by Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta. Raqs remains closely involved with the Sarai program at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (www.sarai.net), an initiative they co-founded in 2000. The Raqs Media Collective enjoys playing a plurality of roles, often appearing as artists, occasionally as curators, sometimes as philosophical agent provocateurs. They make contemporary art, have made films, curated exhibitions, edited books, staged events, collaborated with architects, computer programmers, writers and theatre directors and have founded processes that have left deep impacts on contemporary culture in India.

Barbara Sirieix is a curator and art critic. Her research interests include issues about the moving image. She is the co-founder of Red Shoes, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to artist’s films and video art. In 2011, she organized Channel Project with writer Josefine Wikström (Treize, Paris; Deptford X, Chisenhale Gallery, London) and L’occasion Fugitive (Störck Galerie, Rouen).The group LMDP (L’autre Moitié Du Paysage — the other half of the landscape) is a research unity, emanating from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy (National College of Art of Paris-Cergy). The work consists in not adding any-thing, neither object nor idea, at the same time giving careful attention to what actually happens when one is engaged in this activity in the course of the artistic process. The group aims to evince the form which takes shape during this activity, and to make its consequences available and useful here. Thanks to everyone, travel safely in “the inherent”, through the suburbs of Paris, through China, Sweden and Morocco. Signed: the group LMDP, constituted by associates and friends who leave and enter this group of variable geometry simply by personal necessity: Claire Roudenko-Bertin and her associates and friends, Virginia Gamna, Maxime Bichon,Paul Bonnet, Julien Laugier, Dexi Tian, Feriel Boushaki, Théo Vailly, Raphaëlle Cellier, Laëtitia Lheureux, Jean-Joseph Vital, Paul Maheke, Anne-Marie Cornu, John Sundkvist, Bruno Barlier, Macdara Smith, Lihong Zheng, Mathilde Villeneuve, Sophie Lapalu, Suzi Ersahin, Nadjia Belabbas.

Abdellah Taïa (b. 1973, Rabat) is a Moroccan writer who lives in Paris. He often writes in French. Taïa is the author of L’armée du Salut (2006), Une Mélancolie Arabe (2008), Lettres à un Jeune Marocain (2009) and Le Jour du Roi (The Flore Prize 2010), all published by Editions du Seuil, Paris.

Natalia Valencia (b. 1984, Bogotá) currently works an assistant curator at Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros in Mexico City and curator of the Artecámara program of Cámara de Comercio in Bogotá. She has curated independent exhibitions in Colombia, France, Guatemala and is a contributing writer for Kaleidoscope, Italy and Taxi Magazine, Mexico. In 2011 she conducted the seminar Unlearning the future at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá and received a grant from Independent Curators International, NY.

p. 66 p. 67

Pablo Helguera, Artoons Vol. 1, 2, 3, Published by Pinto Books, 2008-2010 / © The Artist / Courtesy of the artist / front and back cover

Adelheid Mers On Old Imaginative and New Strategic Geographies, 2012 / © The Artist / Courtesy of the artist / p. 10, 11

Kutlwano Moagi, photographs / p. 15, 16, 17

Christoforos Doulgeris “METADATA1_1”, 2011 / Archival inkjet print on aluminium / Courtesy of the artist / p. 19

Mustapha Akrim, “Bidoun” (Article 13: All Citizens Have Equal Right of Education and Employment,) 2011 , outils de maçonnerie, 18 x 38 x 17 cm. Courtesy de l’artiste et L’appartement 22, Rabat. / p. 5

Karim Rafi, “Ça / Nit”, photograph, 2012. Courtesy of the artist. / p. 21

Raqs Media Collective, Visual Essai for Le Journal de La Triennale, 2012. / p. 23-31

Barbara Sirieix, Screen Shot Al-Jazeera TV, 2011

Ismaïl Bahri, Film, Screen Shot, 2011. Courtesy de l’artiste & Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire, Paris / p. 34, 35

Seamus Farrell, Pre & Prohistory “Unnatural Horizons“, 2012. Courtesy of the Artist. / p. 39-43

Carolina Caycedo, “Cayenne”, digital print, 2011, “Kanakfloat”, digital print, 2011. / p. 45

LMDP / Shagai, L’autre Moitié Du Paysage, visual essay, 2012. / p. 52, 57

Fadwa Islah, “No title...”, 2012. / p. 59, 62

Credits

Le Journal de la Triennale #3

March 2012

Chief editor of the Journal #3

Abdellah Karroum

As part of La Triennale, Intense Proximité, 2012

Artistic director Okwui Enwezor

Associate curators

Mélanie Bouteloup, Abdellah Karroum, Émilie Renard,

Claire Staebler

Chief Project Manager

Luz Gyalui

Contributed to this issueMustapha Akrim, Ismail Bahri, Carolina Caycedo, Zoran Eric, Juan A. Gaitàn, Seamus Farrell, Khwezi Gule, Pablo Helguera, Fadwa Islah, Christoforos Doulgeris, Georgia Kotretsos, Olivier Marboeuf, Adelheid Mers, Kutlwano Moagi, Kostis Stafylakis, Karim Rafi, Raqs Media Collective, Barbara Sirieix, LMDP/Shagai, Abdellah Taïa, Natalia Valencia.

Translations from FrenchAdrienne Cadiot, Emma Chubb, Danyel Ferrari, Sue Ann Doukhan, Aude Tincelin, Virginia Vogwill

Special thanks to Georgia Kotretsos, Guest Editor, for her valuable advices and continuous links with the contributors to this Journal.

Publisher Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP)

Artistic Production Director of la TriennaleMarc Sanchez

Graphic design g.u.i

La Triennale, 2012Intense ProximitéPalais de TokyoetBétonsalonCrédacMusée GallieraGrand PalaisInstants ChavirésLes Laboratoires d’AubervilliersMusée du LouvreFrom April 20th through August 26, 2012

La Triennale is organized at the initiative of the ministère de la Culture et de la Communication / Direction générale de la création artistique, commissioned, by the Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP), associate commissioner, and the Palais de Tokyo, producer.

Colophon

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