AÏCHA EL BELOUI Legend of the MAP OF THE LEGEND, 2017 ZINEB ANDRESS ARRAKI

“la beaute sera convulsive ou ne sera pas”, 2017 [“beauty will be convulsive or will not be”] In situ installation of 7 series of 2 photographs each 60 x 90 cm (8 photographs) 140 x 190 cm (6 photographs) Matt Cotton Smooth (300g, white matt), Harman by Hahnemühle, laminated on Dibon Commissioned for Iconic City; an annual exhibition by Dubai Design Week Courtesy the artist HICHAM LASRI

CASAONEDAY, 2017 Still Medium-length film 30 mns Courtesy the artist MOSTAFA MAFTAH

Feu en ocEan, 1979 [Fire in the Ocean] Socica (), c. 1990 Tapestry Wool and cotton Mixed media on canvas 85 x 160 cm 60 x 83 cm Courtesy the artist and Thinkart Courtesy the artist and Thinkart I am from Casa

SALMA LAHLOU with the collaboration of OMAR MRANI

I was Casablancan without knowing it. As breath comes without thought, I inhaled my city, never questioning it. Polycentric over time, saw its surface area spread out, and its population migrate within the When Dubai decided to make Casablanca the Iconic City of its design week, and to entrust me with an exhibition urban space as a function of upward mobility. The city adapted by inventing its own model of self-regulation: about my city, I needed to examine certain issues for the first time: What does it mean to be Casablancan? annulling the classical distribution patterns of European metropolises that had served as inspiration for the And, by extension, how can I speak of this tangible yet elusive city other than by impressions? And how could initial urban plan of Casablanca. I bring some part of its spirit – Zeitgeist - with me to Dubai? The second property is of a more “social” context, concerning the high mutability of the city. When questions so defining of our identity are asked, a precise methodology of thought is required. I was The very nature of Casa is defined by the many Moroccan territories it absorbs and digests - notably via necessary to be able to rediscover (and discover) Casa. To be amazed or disconcerted, but first of all to find mechanisms such as rural exodus. This capacity for progressive synthesis has created a syncretism found a new sense of wonder in it. Walking through its territories and rereading its archives. Meeting its inhabitants most noticeably in the city’s diversity (social diversity as well as religious, political, etc.). and conversing with its ardent aficionados. Heretofore deeply rooted in their regions and in their beliefs, Moroccans had only thought of themselves in I offer you my city and invite you on a journey that Casablanca has revealed to me. Not as a reproduction which terms of tribes, or groups. It is in Casablanca, for the very first time, that this phenomenon of diversity will would be impossible. But as an offering of its spirit. exist, primarily in the proletarian zones of the Maârif, Roches Noires or the Carrières Centrales. The original urban plan, as evidenced in other areas of the city, had the perverse effect of creating a de facto apartheid, Open your eyes … To see Casablanca as though for the first time, and to look beneath the which did not apply to these neighbourhoods and these populations. It is this community of destiny that will cacophonous veneer of chaos to see what lies beneath. Before any interpretation, there must be analysis. And forge the identity of Casablanca. A new Moroccan is born. before analysis, there is perception. Mine is evidently subjective. And yet the frame, the off-camera that are mine do not exclude objectivity in the collection of data. Walking the streets of the city, its outskirts, its centres, The third property inherent to Casablanca is “politico-cultural”. It is found in the history of resistance that is all that I saw and did not see has inspired my reading of Casablanca. continually perpetuated through the counter-culture (Populärkultur vs Hochkultur) rooted in Nayda (a 1990’s Renaissance movement) and its catalysing force, L’Boulevard4. I see this as the living Identify … To see is often not enough. The ineffable, the transformed, and the vanished elude this heritage of popular culture. single sense of vision. And so, I sourced available information about the city to construct a True History1. I met with its inhabitants and its artists: those who reclaim this city and those who study it. And they in turn In the aftermath of independence, Casablanca forged a culture in total rupture with a mired in accompanied and enrich my rediscovery of the city. tradition and corseted by the official discourse of what Moroccan culture should be. The artistic scene that has since emerged considers, as writer and curator Omar Berrada so rightly states, “the popular heritage as a living body, a permanent agent of cultural renewal”. Artists make profane what was once considered sacred. Analyse … This method of empirical observation led me to propose a theoretical synthesis that would They cease the right to take possession of it, to reinterpret it, and to take every liberty with this legacy. unfold Casa, divided among five axes of inquiry. This analysis rests upon five properties inherent to that which Casablanca, or being Casablancan, represents as a habitus2. The aspect of memory, or rather its absence, provides basis to the 4th axis of inquiry - “historic” this time The initial “geographical” property associated with the very territory of Casablanca - which refuses centralised - of the city of Casa. I have chosen to speak to this issue of an amnesic memory, which this readings and imposes a total and permanent inversion of central/peripheral polarities - as fuelled by the exhibition attempts to correct and repair5, in a gesture that might actually be a form of resistance. significant social factor3 of transhumance.

1. See page 10 4. See archival display of Counter Culture 2. Pierre Bourdieu, Questions de sociologie. éditions de Minuit, 1981. 5. See the notion of repair developed by Kader Attia for dOCUMENTA 13 in 2012 3. Marcel Mauss, « Essai sur le don », Année sociologique, 2nd série, 1923-24 In fact, no commemorative plaques, no inscription, no column, and no headstone informs the visitor on the Shoot … That which first resists us, we must learn to engage. That is the chosen subject of Zineb subject of the city and its history. Casablanca cultivates forced oblivion. The price of its resilience is amnesia. Andress Arraki, who has been collecting fragments of Casablanca for years under the generic title of Here lies the story of this city: a tomb bearing no epitaph. Mobilogy, Questioning the usual. She is offering images of these fragments alongside those of Dubai to hedonism unveil familiarities and antagonisms in the commission work Beauty will be convulsive or will not be. The Indeed, among the properties of this place, it is a blearing that constitutes the true construction of my repertory of Casablanca includes both still and moving images. In his film, CasaOneDay, “philosophy” of Casa. This hedonism is particular to local colonies where a propagandist “branding” used Hicham Lasri entrusts the discovery of the city to a child with a mirror. This tool, known for the intransigence exoticism in the service of a colonial agenda of increasing the population of European settlers. This hedonism of its reflectivity, here reveals an unexpectedly urban poetry. As such, Lasri positions himself in the tradition has remained part of Casablancan identity, appropriated to become an essential ingredient of its habitus. of a Marcel Duchamp, for whom the mirror becomes a revelatory medium to a fourth dimension. As Duchamp comments his work The Large Glass, “I merely thought of the idea of a projection, of a fourth dimension, What characterises Casablanca is to work hard to play hard. A sort of gigantism has characterised the city: invisible since one cannot see it with the eyes …”7 the tallest tower in Africa, the largest swimming pool in the world, the biggest cinema (Vox) in Africa … And 6 the ‘society of the spectacle’ radiated throughout the city: bullfights, cabaret shows by the era’s great artists, Collect, remember … These works, this exhibition must serve a purpose. They are both a the Arènes and the Municipal Theatre, a Formula 1 grand prix organised in Casablanca in 1957 and downtown personal, individual effort and a collective one, in service to the reparation of the amnesic memory that afflicts exciting night life. this city in perpetual motion. Mohamed Tangi, out of love and a sense of responsibility, took upon himself Map out … the vital gesture of keeping a record of Casablanca, where the ephemeral so quickly replaces the perennial Architect and graphic designer Aïcha El Beloui accompanied me in a topographical and and vice versa. The visionary generosity of his collection allows me now to unveil certain myths that together toponymical interpretation of Casa. The welcoming work Map of the Legend plunges you immediately into the establish the basis of this Casablancan mythology8. sprawl of the city, singling out the different historical landmarks that tell its story. Sky is not the limit is an abstraction that provides a different reading of the strategic importance of the ocean and to the attributes Create, and recreate Casablanca … All of these works permit me to create common to large port cities: diversity, creolisation and commerce. As for the historic maps presented in the for you, in Dubai, a part of this subjective Casablanca, which artists bring to life. Two of these works, Socica archives section, they provide a perspective upon the city’s spectacular growth over the last century. (Hay Mohamadi) and Feu en Océan (Fire in the Ocean), by Mostafa Maftah, great observer and lover of the Hear, smell, touch … city, present a synthesis of its various long-term properties: geographical/transhumance, social/mutability, Casablanca has kept the sensuality of the great African metropolises. politico-cultural/counter-culture, historical/amnesic memory and philosophic/hedonism. This artist perfectly It is an incarnate city, fleshly, for better and for worse. For the noise of its deafening car horns that give way incarnates Casablanca’s habitus. to the poetic improvisations of rag-pickers. For the whiff of sea salt from its piers and the pestilence of overflowing garbage bins strewn across sidewalks. For all that can be touched while strolling the marketplace, One can see, the artists and I will show you, Casablanca is a city-world that escapes any tentative of holistic and for the woman who slaps the unwanted hand. The work of listening and reinterpretation, it is the work of analysis9. Casablanca is held in each of its components, and characterised by individuation and singularity. Anna Raimondo, Casablancan at heart. She offers an immersive experience through her sound installation, Each person, each artist creates a unique Casablanca. Casablanca Tells, which welcomes you to the city’s heart beat as you enter “Loading … Casa”.

6. Guy Debord, la Société du spectacle, éditions Buchet/Chastel, 1967 7. Pierre Cabane and Marcel Duchamp, Entretiens avec Marcel Duchamp, Editions Belfond, coll. « Collections Entretiens », 1967, p. 218. 8. Roland Barthes, Mythologies, éditions du Seuil, 1957 9. Emile Durkheim, les Règles de la méthode sociologique, éditions Payot, coll. « Petite Bibliothèque Payot », 2009. 1ère edition, 1894 A True History Contextualization of a city in mutation: Casablanca

SALMA LAHLOU

September 15th, 1915 was the opening date of the Franco-Moroccan exhibition, the first event organized in schemes that followed. Very quickly, the need was no longer to build a new city, but to respond to an urgent Morocco by the French protectorate, who had annexed the country three years earlier by means of the Treaty housing shortage. This would become the mission of the new chief city planner, Michel Ecochart (1905- of Fez (1912). The stated intention of this manifestation was to present Morocco as a new land of industrial 1985). and commercial opportunity. And in the process, to tell the world that this new city, for which France would ensure forced development, was on its way to becoming one of the most important megacities of the world. In 1947, a second development plan was implemented, the principle objective of which was to find solutions for the city’s overcrowding. As early as 1952, large groups found housing in shantytowns around the Among the dozens of pavilions built for the exhibition in the newly developing European quarter, each Carrières Centrales district. Out of nowhere appeared these informal structures, the earliest dating back to one representing a city of the Kingdom, the Rabat pavilion elicited the public’s greatest enthusiasm. The 1920, cobbled together with makeshift materials: reed huts with pieces of corrugated metal fwor roofs. In “neo-Moorish” architectural style of this Koubba was unique in its use of the most advanced construction consequence, it was in Casablanca that the French term “bidonville”, or shantytown, was coined, and would technique of its day: a metal framework structure. become the toponymal definition of settlements of precarious housing.

The challenge of creating a city ex-nihilo, and to communicate this intention by way of an exhibition, is Hay Mohammadi. This is the name chosen for the first of the complexes that would become home to indicative of a twentieth century tendency to build metropoles whose growth relies upon 2 fundamental thousands of Moroccans arriving from all corners of the country, and who knew only the practices, traditions axes: commerce and immigration. and customs of their own homelands. Hay Mohammadi, merely a peripheral district. And yet, from this intermixing of populations and cultures on the furthest edges of the city was born a Casablancan identity, When the French arrived in Casablanca in 1907, they found a simple town of 20,000 inhabitants living in a one which would give rise to the identity of Morocco as we know it today. small medina of 40 acres; quite unlike the imperial cities of Fez, Meknes, Rabat or Marrakech. Like this identity sprouting on its borders, Casablanca would turn its back to the centre/periphery system The first Resident General of France in Morocco, Hubert Lyautey (1854-1934), decided to lay the groundwork model generally in use in Europe. Following the country’s independence in 1956, the city saw an inverse for a modern city of pioneering urbanism, with the vocation of making it the economic engine of the country. polarity in which the centre soon lost its status both as the historic heart of the city and its power as decisional It was in Casablanca that urbanism, in the modern sense, was born. body for the city. When the Moroccan population took up residence in the centre, it had not yet acquired a sense of “civism”, according to urban standards of the West. There was therefore a slow but inexorable The earliest implementations of urban facilities were the construction of a port built to international degradation of the downtown area, once known as an “ open-air reference book of the architecture of the standards, as well as railway and bus stations, property offerings promising windfall profits, and durable first half of the twentieth century”, with Art Deco side by side with Neo-Moroccan, Neoclassical, Functionalism, industry that would bring an inflow of capital and merchandise that exceeded Lyautey’s hopes and Steam Liner style. Confronted with the deterioration of these neighbourhoods, the citizens of Casablanca left expectations. Legend holds that if one came to Casablanca with a single suitcase, it would take less than a in search of other living spaces. The city began to spread, and entirely new suburbs entered the urban area. year to turn it into a fortune. And so began a phase of transition, a transhumance of “centres” and populations. Displacement became the The Casablanca “miracle “ captivated a cosmopolitan population, primarily European but also Jewish and means for Casablanca to reinvent itself and draw resilience. Polycentric, the city today extends over more than Muslim Moroccan, motivating them to travel from all corners of the country and abroad, irresistibly drawn 1615 km2, along the length of its Atlantic coast as well as inland. to the promise of business and work opportunities. From a population of 20,000 in 1905, the city grew to 78,000 inhabitants in 1913. And in eight years, the European population mushroomed from 570 to In one century, the city has undergone profound mutations. Rachid Andaloussi, Casablanca-based architect 31,000! and co-founder of the Casamémoire organization, notes that in Casablanca “each time a new urban centre is born, it is a death announcement of the one that preceded it “. Many iconic buildings, today gone or in ruins, If this growth was possible, it is because Lyautey relied upon a team of avant-garde urbanists, chief of have suffered in consequence. Rare are those that have preserved their past splendour. Among these is the whom was Henri Prost (1874-1959), who decided to develop the emerging megacity according to his famous cupola of 1915, originally erected on the site of the actual Central Market, and which, thanks to its pragmatic and functionalist vision. His choice of a new model of urbanism was based upon the specialist metal frame, was literally lifted and repositioned in the Parc de la Ligue Arabe. Like the city itself, the structure rationalization of the city by function: “zoning”. Casablanca would be divided into areas of commerce in the owes its existence to its displacement. centre, industrial on the outskirts (Roches noires), residential villas (Mer sultan and ), and working-class district (Maarif). As for the Muslim population that had outgrown the confines of the old medina, a new In the face of what some consider to be denial of the past and a headlong urban rush, source of the city’s medina known as the Habous, of strikingly authentic design, was built next to the European city. And yet, endemic problems, a recent film bestowed its eponymous title - Casa Negra - to the initiatives, originating the massive influx resulting from a steadily increasing rural exodus soon rendered the initial urban plan among civilians and taken up by public authorities, intent upon providing sanctuary and rehabilitation of the obsolete. A characteristic of the very nature of this city that has consistently slipped past the many urban historic downtown centre, and thus restore its original spirit of utopia. MOHAMED TANGI’S COLLECTION Unless otherwise specified, all archives are from the collection of Mohamed Tangi: original postcards with photographs by Marcellin Flandrin, taken between 1912 and 1957, and reprints from the original negatives acquired from the Wega Agency. All rights related to this collection are reserved.

With the advent of the Protectorate (1912-1956), the French decided to erect a « new city » for the European population

To absorb the bidonville populations, workers’ estates were built from the 1940s. Ex: the Ain-Chock workers’ estate The Vox, Africa’s largest cinema, built by Marius Boyer en 1935 and demolished in 1976 Nass El Ghiwane, c. 1970. Courtesy Omar Sayed. Image from Nass El Ghiwane, Omar Sayed raconte, Senso Unico & Édi- tions du Sirocco, Casablanca and Mohammadia, 2011

Miss Legs contest, 1965

Municipal swimming pool, the largest swimming pool in the world, 480m long and 75m wide, built by Georges Orth- To contain the Moroccan Muslim population, the French decided to build a new medina, the Habous, in 1917 lieb in 1934 and demolished in the 1980s, to be replaced by the Hassan II mosque We would like to acknowledge the following people and entities for their endless support which made this exhibition possible:

Ayoub Abid Touda Bouanani Fawzi Boulblah Nadia Chabâa Yasmine Kabbaj Fatima-Zahra Lakrissa Aziz Maaqoul Abdelmohcine Nakari Omar Sayed Myriam Sif Mohamed Slaoui Syham Weigant Atelier de l’observatoire Éditions du Sirocco L’Boulevard Senso Unico

Curator : Salma Lahlou Scientific Advisor : Omar Mrani Translation : Kristi Jones Architecture Design : Zineb Andress Arraki Graphic Design : Aïcha El Beloui ANNA RAIMONDO CASABLANCA TELLS, 2017