In 2020 The Showroom guest curated the 1-54 Forum in Marrakech, Morocco.

A series of panels, artist talks, screenings and performances took place under the title On Focus: Communal Knowledge at Large, interrogating 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 explored 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.