QANAT PERFORMING CHANGE FROM THE MARGINS Masoero ©Francesca ENCOUNTERs — cONVERSatIONS MAPPINgs — iNTERVENTIONS 21 - 25 NOV. 2018 QANAT: P QANAT: Unfolding across five days at LE 18 (Marrakech) in November 2018, QANAT: PERFORMING CHANGE FROM THE MARGINS reunites artists, cultural practitioners, architects, researchers and activists engaged through diverse practices and lenses on the politics and poetics of water in ERFORMI particular and the commons in general in Morocco. The programme aims at creating a temporary space of encounter and critical collective thinking, a time for exchanges and proposals allowing for the circulation and cross-pollination of knowledges, subaltern narratives and radical visions N G spurring from the researches, projects and struggles each conducts. CH In dialogue with local inhabitants, and adopting an experimental, collaborative and dialogical AN format, the five days are designed as a moment to (self)reflect on, and act upon the relationship GE between cultural and artistic projects, activism and other forms of social engagement. Through FROM informal exchanges, public conversations, common cooking, reading and screening sessions, T collective interventions in public space and the development of a collective cartography, we HE will therefore address methodological and strategic questions connected to different forms M A of resistance to commons enclosure, aiming at mapping and performing situated and trans- RGI N disciplinary practices and methods. S — english QANAT: PERFORMING CHANGE FROM THE MARGINS hence aims at: — Mapping and fostering unheard, silenced or new understandings on the politics of and struggles for water and common goods in Morocco, in dialogue with other geographies; — Exploring the space that artistic practices and transdisciplinary participatory methods can have in processes aiming at reappropriating and intervening in public spaces; — Sustaining and connecting a community of practitioners engaged on these subjects, though across different, sometimes detached, fields. These five days come finally also as a way for Qanat to map what is there and what is still missing, as a way to shape the direction the project could further take. While avoiding repetition, we aim at bringing forth a new critical dimension, nourished by each resonating contribution, as well as meaningful tools for the already existing projects. QANAT: PERFORMING CHANGE FROM THE MARGINS is initiated by Francesca Masoero/ LE 18, curator of QANAT and Heidi Vogels/AiR Platform NL, DutchCulture|TransArtists as a way to relate, make resonate and expand QANAT with the reflections developed through the conference Working on the margins organised by DutchCulture | TransArtists in spring 2018. The days have been conceived with Flore Grassiot/TOPOI, advising on the format of the programme, the methodology, the tools adopted and the scenography, as well as through proposals by Edouard Sors/ILUO° and Jérome Giller. Other invited contributors are: Sara Frikech, Carlos Perez Marin & Ahmed Dabah/Caravan Tighmert, Fayrouz Yousfi, Soraya El Kahlaoui, George Bajalia, Younes Boundir, Gilles Aubry, Ayoub Mouzaine, Hicham Bouzid/Think Tanger, Samir Aït Oumghar, Laila Hida, Léa Morin/Atelier de l’Observatoire, Nadir Bouhmouch, Yassine Madri/Movement on Road 96, Cantal Bakker/Pikala, Alexandra Kollarova, Said Afifi, Nicolas Moulin and possibly many more. We thank Fondation Jardin Majorelle, NOMAD, DutchCulture | TransArtists, the Flemish government, Wallonie Bruxelles International and Riad Marrakech for their support. These five days are also organised in echo with, and with the support of Meet the Neighbours, a programme co-funded by the Programme Creative Europe of the European Union, and are developed thanks to the contributions and the partnership with Dar Cherifa, Pikala Bikes, Caravane Tighmert, TOPOI, ILUO° and Awaln’Art. QANAT: P QANAT: ERFORMI N G CH — QANAT: ON THE POLITICS AND — AN POETICS OF WATER GE QANAT is a curatorial transdisciplinary research programme initiated by LE 18 in 2017, which FROM aims to critically reflect on and act upon the politics and the poetics of water and the commons. T Assuming multiple configurations, spanning from residency programmes, exhibitions, HE presentations, workshops and discussions, to interventions in public space, collaborative M A researches and collective cartographies, QANAT investigates the spaces of water, its RGI routes and (in)visible traces, exploring its spatial, sonic, olfactory and visual memories and N S embodiments. The programme brings together artists, researchers and activists to facilitate — english the production of multiple knowledges, narratives and visions of the past arrangements and present configurations of water’s presence, absence and distribution and its social, ecological, cultural and political effects in various geographies across North Africa, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. In between the deep wells of urban memories, rural histories, ancestral contemporary practices and the policies shaping modernity, QANAT unfolds, on the one hand, as a trans-territorial history focused on the rule of water, investigating the interactions between environmental injustices, political struggles and forms of cultural resistance, in a synchronic and diachronic way. On the other, it envisions the formation of a methodologically diverse platform swinging fluidly between artistic and socio-scientific researches, participative initiatives and militant engagement, to create a space for sharing practices, thinking projects and designing together paths in order to reactivate the memory of the collective heritage embodied by water civilizations in Marrakech and beyond, while fostering an understanding of water as an essential common. — WORKING ON THE MARGINS — Developed by AiR Platform NL (DutchCulture|TransArtists) together with bkkc (now kunstloc) last spring, the conference Working on the margins (Tilburg, The Netherlands) explored artist- in-residence programmes as open, relational, and innovative social spaces embedded in specific localities, though connected transnationally and capable of moving within and beyond Mapping Qanat ©Heidi Vogels institutional frameworks. During the conference, the notion of the margins was addressed as a lens to tackle the urgencies to think art otherwise, and the opportunities that unfold from taking this position from a local and international perspective. Together with artists, organizers, institutions and municipalities the margins were investigates as a critical space we need to continuously retrieve and advance. How can this be addressed from the practice of small context driven artist-in-residence programmes, and how can this ultimately lead to new aesthetic and social practices in the arts and society? AiR Platform NL - TransArtists is a platform for artists-in-residence programmes in the Netherlands, and is part of DutchCulture Centre for International Cooperation, based in Amsterdam. QANAT: PERFORMING CHANGE FROM THE MARGINS — english asoero M N rancesca LE 18 becomes a physical a physical LE 18 becomes ES O , F S T N RGI A M | NO HE US T December 2018 th X U NT FROM L E F GE NT AN AL rassiot, conceived with I CH G G CO N PAT lore lore S F AND November to 16 ERFORMI st D 18 — E HO T QANAT: P QANAT: rom 21 rom — — — A proposal by A proposal For of sharing, collective processes of the embodiment the a space of translation, interface, critical essential as understood While days. five the across developed acting and thinking proposed the participants, the by sessions developed working discussions and the for tools along, come to to invited audience, a larger imagined as open also to are configurations spatial its cumulation, to contribute and to and shared, constructed collected, in the material plonge referentialisation. activation, AT L AT ME F 21 NOVEMBER 22 NOVEMBER 23 NOVEMBER 24 NOVEMBER 25 NOVEMBER 10 - 11 COMMON[S’] COMMON[S’] MAPPING QANATS CARTOGRAPHY CARTOGRAPHY at the Palmeraie of 11 - 12 Marrakech 12 - 13 WISHING WELLS | WISHING WELLS | Aïns & fontains at Riad Laarouss Arsets & gardens at Riad Laarouss 13 - 14 KOUL! IT’S COOL KOUL! IT’S COOL KOUL! IT’S COOL KOUL! IT’S COOL 14 - 15 SEAWEED SPECIAL HALQA SIESTA # 2 HALQA SIESTA # 3 15 - 16 COMMON[S’] NDA NDA — CARTOGRAPHY IN PURSUIT 16 - 17 REGARDS ET PAROLES OF THE OASIS at THE HUMAN IN GE DES AINS ET DES Park Riad Laarouss THE URBAN FLUID STREAMS AUTRES at medina at Conserverie 17 - 18 — A HALQA SIESTA # 1 18 - 18h30 FILS D’EAU # 2 18h30 - 19h FILS D’EAU # 3 FILS D’EAU # 1 FILS D’EAU # 4 FILS D’EAU # 5 19 - 20 PUBLIC RESTITUTION CROSSING CROSSING CROSSING CROSSING 20 - 21 STREAMS # 1 STREAMS # 2 ON THE POLITICS AND STREAMS # 3 STREAMS # 4 RESISTANT COMMONS POETICS OF WATERSCAPES RECENTERING ON CINEMA AND URBAN MARGINS HETERO/U/DIS/TOPIAS 21 - 22 QANAT: P QANAT: ERFORMI N G — COMMON[S’] CARTOGRAPHY — PLASTIC FLUXUS CH AN Under the direction of Flore Grassiot, a room of LE 18 is dedicated to the experimentation of the Developed through cartes blanches to a number of participating artists, the Plastic Fluxus are GE cartographic tool as an open, shared, evolving and transmissible narrative system, a partition, visual and material traces of artistic research practices and production processes connected FROM language and device of reciprocity, a critical instrument for co-writing and collective design. The to ongoing projects and dispatched across LE 18 as meta-narratives aimed at enriching dedicated wall thus becomes a reactive interface, a collective, performative