Les Voyages
2013
Visual essay
Published in: Pas de Deux: 5 x 2 x 2, Mediterranean dialogues, argobooks, 2014
The reader may create his own story and jump between chapters.
A long time ago, in a city called Tangier, a number of animals were sitting in a coffee shop overlooking the Grand Socco, chatting and gazing at other animals passing by….
PAS DE DEUX: 5 x 2 x 2 was a residency project encouraging Mediterranean dialogues between artists from the southern Mediterranean and curators from the northern and eastern sides of the Mediterranean Sea.
Participating artists and curators: Anna Raimondo (curator and artist, Italy), Younes Baba Ali (artist, Morocco), Basak Senova (curator, Turkey), Simohamed Fettaka (artist, Morocco), Yasmina Reggad (curator, France), Ismael Leamsi (artist, Tunisia), Charlotte Bank (art historian and curator, Germany/Switzerland), Younes Atbane (artist, Morocco), Nora Razian (curator, Lebanon), Atef Berredjem (artist, Algeria). They met for a two-week residency to create a dialogue about artistic approaches to the question: “Where are we now?”. That question – central to the Marrakech Biennale in 2014 – prompted collaborative reflections focusing on the artist’s creative process as well as on the curator’s more theoretical reading of it. The conversations and themes of the residency finally took material form in a book: each artist/curator pair produced an essay evoking the key themes addressed during the residency. The first book launch took place in Marrakech in February 2014, during the Marrakech Biennale.
Başak Şenova
Başak Şenova, born in Istanbul in 1970, is a curator and designer. She studied literature and graphic design (MFA in Graphic Design and PhD in Art, Design, and Architecture at Bilkent University), and attended the 7th Curatorial Training Program of Stichting De Appel, Amsterdam. As an assistant professor, she lectured in various universities in Turkey. In 2017, she received her Associate Professorship from the Higher Education Council of Turkey, and resident fellowship at the University of the Arts, Helsinki in co-operation with HIAP. Currently, she is a Visiting Professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna running a research-based educational programme, the Octopus Program, with Barbara Putz-Plecko and also teaches a seminar course Case Studies for Master students at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.
Simohammed Fettaka
Simohammed Fettaka was born in Tangier, MA in 1981 and lives and works between his hometown and Paris, France. Fettaka studied philosophy and signal processing in Morocco and later trained in filmmaking at La Femis, Paris. Since its creation in 2005, he has been closely working with the Cinémathèque de Tanger. He is also the founder and director of the yearly film festival Cinema Nachia. Simohammed’s work predominantly uses the medium of film, however it also incorporates photography and collage and extends to other art forms such as installation, sound art and performance. At the center of his work is a reflection on the presentation of the image. This graphic personal interpretation is based on collective memory: the individual visual experience must therefore lead us to question our sense of ourselves.