Story
Probity requires clarification about the title of the exhibition ‘Archeology of Intimacy’. It is, the resonance may seem, in some respects, either pompous or familiar. More than one project has carried a similar title in the past. The aim of this project - as we will see - is far from wanting to establish any relation with them. That would be impossible, given the wide range of potential interpretations. Each context would appropriate the expression in different ways. Still, we would like to ‘clear’ the ground for this exhibition and thus define the framework of the use we make of it, particulary because possibilities are so many when imagined from the perspective of Dar Bellarj. For instance, it is far from being a research on the proto-intimacy. The latter remains the prerogative of archaeological excavations of artifacts.
Even so, we share with photographer and historian Antoine Cardi a desire to record reality from subjective viewpoints. In 2007, Cardi studied the sedimentation of individual and collective lives through the use of photography. He explored different strata of life by inventorying the objects he approaches as silent witnesses of our daily lives.1 ‘Archaeology of Intimacy’ also appears as a collection of subjective viewpoints, as well as one of material or nonmaterial objects often threatened by disappearance. In this sense, the exhibition could stand as a commentary on preservation. For it proceeds with a series of excavations carried out on the territories of the past, the present, and the personality. The three fields match the directions of three artists: Laila Hida, Hassan Hajjaj and Nour Eddine Tilsaghani. Each one of them highlights Les Mamans Douées’ (The Gifted Mothers’) ways of seeing. Made up of Nadira Mentagui, Nouzha Koudou, Fatima Ennaaoui, Jamila Assamadi, Zahra El Khiraoui, Khadija Karbah, Rachida El Idrissi Lahbali, Rachida Elguendouf, Amina Bouyabrine, Latifa Ghazdaoui, Amina Chennak, the group of the Gifted Mothers emerged in 2008 on the initiative of Maha Elmadi, Director of the Dar Bellarj Foundation. After the death of Susanna Biedermann, founder and spiritual mother of the place, the idea of the Gifted Mothers emerged to fight prejudices that reduce women to the roles of mothers or wives. The initiative also drew inspiration from Fatima Mernissi’s ‘Caravanes Civiques’,2 a network of Moroccan artists, intellectuals and activists fighting for the education of rural Moroccan women. According to the Mamans Douées, the ‘Mother’ is a pivotal point in transmitting values. As the guardian of the collective memory, she bridges the gap between generations and welds the ‘social’ family together. For the past 10 years, the actions of the Gifted Mothers developed at Dar Bellaj through creative workshops, collaborative projects with artists, Sufi songs, theatre, poetry, and handicraft. To them and to the communities they represent, Dar Bellarj is a place to reinvent the way they see identity, and a laboratory for the restoration of social ties.
The idea behind ‘Archaeology of Intimacy’ brings us to the philosophical framework that shapes the actions of Dar Bellarj. The institution’s vision of education stems from the will to establish exchanges between artists and social groups situated outside the artistic field. It is underpinned by the belief that increasing access to culture is a prerequisite for citizens’ freedom of choice. This reminds us of Cultural Democracy, a paradigm dating back to the post World War II period, and describing practices in which culture and artistic expression are generated by individuals and communities rather than by central power institutions. ‘Archaeology of Intimacy’ reflects this relationship with culture because it promotes collaborative practices. Similar actions have been taking place at Dar Bellarj, such as the ‘Collective Workshops’, designed in 2019 by curators Francesca Masoero and Rim Mejdi. The Collective Workshops are creative programs led by groups of artists, activists, students, youths and other inhabitants of the medina of Marrakech. They address topics like macro-history, intimacy, the forgotten and the margins. Conceived as an ‘alternative school’, these workshops are spaces for knowledge transmission, merging contemporary art with traditional methods of learning, dealing with such themes as the city, the circulation of ideas, contemporary culture, as well as economic and socio-cultural or environmental disparities. This framework allows the institution to base its vision of collaboration on listening, solidarity and hybridity. In short, it lays in the very center of Dar Bellarj the foundation for the management of the commons. Among the methods adopted, the Collective Workshops articulate theoretical and practical tools for critical reading and writing based on art, cinema, and exhibition. The latter represents a powerful tool because of its political scope. ‘Archaeology of Intimacy’’ is the second major exhibition in this line of projects, after ‘Marrakech, lieu evanescent: Une ville phœnix’ (2019).3
1. Fondation Dar Bellarj, Marrakech, Lieu Evanescent: Bilan 2018-2019.
2. Créées fin 1990, par Fatima Mernissi, les Caravanes civiques sont un réseau d'artistes, d'intellectuel le set d'activistes marocaines qui militaient pour l’accès à l'information pour toutes les couches de la société et pour un partage équitable des ressources intellectuelles et matérielles.
3. Fondation Dar Bellarj, Marrakech, Lieu Evanescent: Bilan 2018-2
The family album is the central theme of the workshop, ‘About Us’, led by Laila Hida. Here, the Gifted Mothers re-examine their personal archives through a slow and studious investigation of clichés dating back to their childhoods. Few of these objects have survived the passage of time, being damaged by the weather or kept far away by a brother or sister.
During the workshops, the images are discussed in relation to their expressive or aesthetic qualities. The association of sepia with the nostalgic past will rarely have been close to the prejudices we know about it. Still, the workshop evolved as a conversation around the scope and boundaries of intimacy. A series of changes affects the way the Gifted Mothers relate to their personal photographs as they move off from the family space to the space of the workshop, then from the latter to the exhibition space.
The first series of changes addresses the sacredness of the images. In this perspective, the group started by separating the photographs from the photographic albums. Afterwards, they produced scans and blow-ups which helped liberating speech and written texts. Such duplications affect both the materiality of the photographic object and its coupling with a photo album. The photographic album would thus preserve the integrity of the original images; and the reproductions would serve as many narrative mediums. In fact, that which needs to be preserved reminded me of what French philosopher Roland Barthes called the punctum. Barthes used this term to describe the subjective effect of a photograph on the viewer. ‘The punctum of a photograph, he wrote, is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me).’ This first series of gestures would therefore explore without affecting the emotional connections to the photographs.5
The second set of changes involves anonymity. In some cases, the punctum of an image would naturally elect it as working material, while its subject would only be partially showable. In such cases, the reproductions allow another negotiation of the boundaries of intimacy. Here, they function as screens of representation, that is to say, places where images’ auxiliaries can replay their relationship to the public space of the exhibition. This explains, for example, the ink mask drawn on some images, a paradoxical act of violence and protection. More than a rupture, this event is closer to a dilation of the frontiers of intimacy, which can now be drawn in dotted lines where they used to appear, rigid, full and impenetrable.
The third series of ruptures lies in the spatial organization of the exhibition. The presentation resembles a chronology of images arranged by decade, in which biographical visual stories intersect with national histories, without identifying the participants. Sometimes, narrated forms of handwritten captions describe the events in the images in Arabic or in French. The scenography resembles a nexus of micro-biographies, and feels like navigating a kind of zeitgeist. ‘About Us’ seems to lead to possibilities that transcend the framework of the Mamans Douées’ individual lives.
Finally, Laila Hida uses a selection of publications as temporal markers of the conversation on the status of Moroccan women, namely through texts published by Zakia Daoud and Fatima Mernissi, at the time of Lamalif. Such a choice could recall the slogan, ‘The Personal is Political’, used as the rallying phrase of the student movement and second-wave feminism from the late 1960s.6 This trend interpreted the separation of the public and private spheres as a prelude to the exclusion of women from political decision-making, as well as their confinement to the so-called domestic space. Yet, it is known that issues related to marriage and the division of roles between genders are, in fact, political issues, insofar as they concern the distribution of power. During the same decade, the journal Lamalif emerged as a space for reflection and debate around issues based on a left-wing political ideology. Lamalif was created and produced by Zakya Daoud and a group of independent Moroccan intellectuals and journalists. The pages of the publication served as a platform for feminist and activist voices, and a critical space to reach out to a wider audience.7
Taking individual stories as a starting point, this project argues that they link to social history. All these lives ‘make up’ society. Their particularities forbid any form of confinement. The ‘women of Dar Bellarj’ are not part of a distinct category labelled as ‘housewives’. They represent women in society at large, as they stand at the crossroads of more than one social role. The issues that affect them were already subjected to criticism in newspapers even before they were women. ‘About Us’ is an attempt to break down the reductive (thus questionable!) vision of the ‘traditional woman of the Medina’ by linking biographical to historical temporalities. This chapter of ‘Archaeology of Intimacy’ expresses a will to highlight the asperities of lives often wrongly flattened and approached with obscure terminologies.
4 Par ‘communs’, j’entends toutes les ressources matérielles ou interactions sociales (économiques, culturelles et politiques) au sein de communautés qui s’accordent sur les conditions de leurs gestions collectives et pérennes. Voir Le portail des Communs. Une introduction à la notion de Communs. lescommuns.org visité le 13 février 2020, à 10:32.
5 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, 1980.
6 Carol Hanisch, 'The Personal is Political: The Women's Liberation' Movements Classic with a New Explanatory introduction. www.carolhanisch.org/CHwritings/PIP.html visité le 6 février 2020
à 23:05.
7 Voir Loubna H. Skalli
(27 July 2006). [Through A Local Prism: Gender, Globalization, and Identity in Moroccan Women's Magazines] Lexington Books.
Khadija Karbah
Read more‘Ana’ is a display of eleven meticulously scripted and performed self-portraits by the Mamans Douées. Each of them describes personality traits and a strong attachment to a specific memory, to family or to the Medina. ‘Ana’—Arabic for ‘Me’—is a living experience of knowledge transmission and metamorphosis.
As an educator, Nour Eddine Tilsaghani proposes to meet and discuss as frequently as possible. Along the work sessions, the stories of these self-portraits are written and rewritten as would do, say, a writer. Les Mamans Douées also multiply inspiration sessions, taking examples from still-scene film sequences, and from collaboration in cinema in general. Today, for instance, Nour Eddine reminds them how impossible the work of directors would have been without the involvement of scriptwriters, cinematographers, editors, sound engineers or post-production.
Even though the metaphor of collaboration in cinema has proven to be effective, it remains difficult to make one single image out of a narrated story. The idea of the polyptych emerges! Every individual life is by definition as intricate as a convoluted collection of significant moments. So, yes, polyptychs, but on the unique condition that it ‘works’. The work of the photographer—and that of any designer in the broadest sense—is mainly a work of synthesis, that is to say, endless effort of selecting and managing constraints. Among the choices the Mamans Douées had to deal with are, for example, choosing the right color, defining a preferred composition, or designing the scenery. The technical handling of the cameras is unavoidable in the long run, yet priority is given to conversations about aesthetic choices. All the more so as the participants are bursting with ideas, sometimes elaborating up to five possible ‘scenarios’. Since listening is essential, they must ultimately decide on the form, keeping in mind strict criteria of feasibility. They assemble and disassemble, compose and recompose. The patio of Dar Bellarj is transformed into a shooting studio where ambitious and ephemeral sets come up and come down. Then, from time to time, les Mamans would pause and sing along together in the midst of scaffolding, ladders, tripod cameras, projectors, etc.
Finally, they run the printing of cyanotypes8 themselves, which would renew their physical and emotional relationship to the photographic image. This specific experiment does not fail to revive their memories, because time plays a big role in the making of these types of images. When they were younger the images in their photo albums required similar waiting times before they were revealed: think of the time it took to visit the studio, the time they waited for the image to be developed, or even the lifespan of the printed images. Time remains one of the major differences between silver and digital photography. The Mamans Douées have technically experienced photography. Moreover, the group dynamics seems to have completely reshaped interpersonal relationships within the collective. For instance, one would discover a completely unknown aspect of the life of a friend they thought they knew so well! Another would draw a colleague’s attention to the infeasibility of her artistic proposal, etc. Finally, each would play the role of the assistant for a sister. Their self-portrait projects are a rarely seen experience of knowledge transmission.
Transmission is central to the work of Nour Eddine Tilsaghani. A son of Dar Bellarj himself, he had been involved in educational projects long before the restoration of the Ryad by Susanna Biedermann. Tilsaghani sees sharing as one of the defining criteria of artistic work. To him, sharing distinguishes between theory and practice. The former is static, abstract and accessible to all, whereas the latter renews itself constantly, fostering problematizations in the light of the challenges we set ourselves: in effect, practical experiences shed new light on abstract rules; and sharing is their true measure. The whole process is transformative for the participants because it guarantees newness and discovery. Therefore, the exhibition, ‘Ana’, presents itself as an invitation to the general public to see what has been possible. It is both a celebration and a moment of the consecration of the Mamans Douées: they have just added a new talent to the strings of their abilities: photography; more precisely, ‘makers of photographic images’. Isn’t artistic creation a method used by artists to reach greater awareness of the world? Creativity translates into images realities that are otherwise merely felt or remembered. It is a participation in the vital impulse that animates the whole world.9 May the public receive these images and expand the sharing experience.
Aji t’chouf: Intimacy as Proximity
Read moreSeveral questions mark out the conversation between Hassan Hajjaj and the Gifted Mothers: how to get the Gifted Mothers out of the symbolic background in which the common gaze confines them? Answers to this question are infinite, yet constantly renewed throughout the workshop. Putting the Mamans Douées in the foreground implies withdrawing from visibility, which one’s position of artist naturally confers. The idea was never to put forward Laila Hida, Nour Eddine Tilsaghani or Hassan Hajjaj. On the contrary, the idea was to show the women of Marrakech—more precisely, those of the Medina—in a new light, because they continue to be underestimated by the cultural eye, which gives way to the doxa of prejudices: women veiled in djellaba one moment, playing darbuka the next moment; dressmakers today, cooks at home tomorrow; eternal housewives, and so on. Such prejudices seem to be reinforced by another aberration: that the Medina, an old kind of city, tends towards the past and identifies itself with nothing more than its archaisms and constancies from one century to the next.
This installation contradicts this biased view by featuring the visions of eleven contemporary Moroccan women as witnessing their times. It states that somewhere at the intersection of the roles of mothers, sisters and/or wives, there is room for valorization. What could be the (photographic) point of view of the Mamans Douées? What do they focus on? Where do they live? Where do they go? This second series of questioning allows us to clarify the process. Hassan Hajjaj wanted to pay homage to the curiosity of one of the most famous women groups in the Medina by highlighting their personal views on the world, work, home, family, neighbourhood, etc.The workshop is driven by the idea that being a photographer has never been a condition for practicing photography. As the history of photography has shown, the amateur eye has always reflected authenticity. However, the show is neither a display of personal diaries nor a take into autobiographical research.10 Instead, the exercise consists in introducing photography as a tool of self-conscious reflection and an organizer of ordinary realities. A way to introduce newness to both the photographers and the viewers.
The workshop also made good use of the possibilities offered by new technologies; for example, by benefiting from mobile phones’ dual function as utilitarian and intimate objects at the same time. Participants became everyday archivists without having to go through tedious handling notions. Moreover, the history of image production reflects the history of image devices. There is no doubt that half a century from now the mobile phone will be perceived with the same historical hindsight as we see today the Polaroid, for example. Since each member of the group has a mobile phone, space is allowed to direct them towards the documentation of the behind-the-scenes of their lives, at least within the limits of a picture that they would have the autonomy to define.
The final question would thus be formulated as follows: How can we create a framework for Gifted Moms to invite us into their world? If chasing images pushed them to venture into unknown territories of their lives, their quest for the seemingly insignificant things highlights their personalities, their tastes and, above all, their conception of intimacy. The choice of a minimal presentation on mobile phones is an analogy of this relationship of proximity. Proximity is ultimately central to the conversation about intimacy because it recalls the idea of a continuum. Intimacy can indeed be a measure of the relatively close, or the relatively distant, a sequence of steps or events considered progressively, without abrupt breaks or boundaries
