The Showroom is excited to announce our guest curation of 1-54 Forum in Marrakech, Morocco.

This year’s series of panels, artist talks, screenings and performances, under the title On Focus: Communal Knowledge at Large, will interrogate the institutional possibilities of engaging with local communities on artistic projects, based on The Showroom’s Communal Knowledge programme.

For almost a decade, Communal Knowledge has developed experimental practices and conceived collaborative projects that have addressed social and political matters affecting The Showroom’s immediate environment, while advocating for international trans-disciplinary forms of art and education. Generating playful and experimental reflections on social issues at stake in The Showroom’s local context, this pioneering programme has brought together different initiatives around art and social justice incorporating long-term research projects into existing community activities.

Conceived as a framework to hold debates on critical concerns arising from different contexts, On Focus: Communal Knowledge at Large will explore the power of art in formulating awareness of, and giving visibility to, issues that have both local and international resonance.   

1-54 Forum will become a platform to interrogate multiple practices of socially engaged art, leading to the production of a new roadmap of organisational and institutional collective methodologies between artists, activists, institutions and community organisers. 

Programme:

Thursday 20 February

11:30 - 13:30 at ESAV - ‘Curating as Collaborative Practice: The Fictional Marrakech Biennale’: A speculative exhibition history exploring the performative attempt behind the formulation of The Fictional Biennale, an artist-driven project which questions the role and agency of artists in the absence of particular platforms of display. 

Saturday 22 February 

12:45 - 13:00 at La Mamounia - Introduction to the 1-54 Forum programme with Elvira Dyangani Ose

13:00 - 14:30 at La Mamounia - ‘Context As Source’: Christine Eyene and Jan Goossens, Marie-Ann Yemsi in conversation with Elvira Dyangani Ose

14:45 - 15:45 at La Mamounia - Artist Talk: Kiluanji Kia Henda

19:00 - 22:00 at Le 18 - ‘Disguised as a Dancefloor’: A performance made of improvised happenings focusing on the politics of bass, the subversive role of loud music and their effect on the body.

Sunday 23 February

12:30 - 14:00 at La Mamounia - Artist talk: Katia Kameli

14:30 - 15:30 at La Mamounia - ‘Curating as a Collaborative Practice: Dream City’: Festival director Sofiane Ouissi and artistic director Jan Goossens lead a session delving into the concept and the materialisation of the bi-annual contemporary arts festival in Tunis.

16:00 - 17:30 at La Mamounia - ‘Enacting Agencies’: Hansi Momodu-Gordon, Carlos Perez Marín and Francesca Mayoreo will discuss models and methodologies for community based and peer-to-peer engagement projects.

19:00 - 20:00 at Le 18’ - À L’épreuve du Tamis’: Curator Fatima-Zahra Larissa and participating artists will discuss the entanglement of concepts and traditions surrounding the project, which aims to explore different approaches to material and immaterial cultural heritage and knowledge within Moroccan contemporary art. 

Monday 24 February 

11:00 - 13:00 at La Mamounia’ - Curating as Collaborative Practice: Communal Knowledge’: Elvira Dyangani Ose will lead a workshop between students of École Supérieure des Arts Visuels, local practitioners and other members of the public to observe, debate and participate in a dialogue between three case studies that look to their immediate context and the communities that inhabit them.