Production CHRONIQUES 2020
In Al Amakine, Abdessamad El Montassir uncovers micro-histories and non-material archives of the South-Moroccan Sahara that have been invisiblized by official history.
These stories recount political, cultural and social events inherent to the South-Moroccan Sahara. They are transmitted orally – and poetically – by local populations, and are disappearing from the official narrative because they have not been set down in a documentary form. This immaterial knowledge, however, constitutes crucial historiographical material for this seemingly empty geographical area.
Using a photographic installation and a sound piece, Al Amakine opens up an unprecedented interstice that highlights these micro-stories from the South-Moroccan Sahara, thus filling the silence and emptiness projected onto the region. The project invites the viewer to listen to these silent voices and to shift the focus to think differently about these geographic places which are neither located on maps nor in official history.
Presented from October 9 to December 5 2020
Les Méjanes – Michel Vovelle – Patrimoine et archives municipales, Aix-en-Provence
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Born in 1989, Abdessamad El Montassir lives and works between Boujdour, Rabat and Marseille. His research focuses on a trilogy: the right to forget, fictional and visceral narratives, and anticipatory trauma.
In all her work and research, the artist sets up reflexive processes that invite to rethink history and cartographies through collective or fictional narratives and non-material archives. At the same time, his projects question traumas and their influences on individuals, their behaviours and their socio-political evolutions, and deploy processes in which these traumas are used for historicisation.
Abdessamad El Montassir addresses these issues by taking into consideration the knowledge of non-human identities – plants and visceral narratives – in order to bring out new ways of thinking about our environments.
Creation produced in co-production with Le Cube – independent art room, Carte Blanche by Al Safar, Institut Français du Maroc, IMéRA with the support from Labex RFIEA+, gmem-CNCM-Marseille and the CHRONIQUES platform, supported by the South Region, the City of Marseille and the French Institute in Paris, coordinated by SECONDE NATURE and ZINC.
Executive producer: Le Cube – independent art room.
Sound creation in collaboration with Matthieu Guillin, composer.
Implementation: Société Lumière and Atelier Deuxième Oeil.