Carlos Perez Marin

Some propositions about issues to be thought, considered, discussed... with artists, architects, engineers, sociologists, dancers... during the Taragalte Festival in the oasis of M'hamid El Ghizlane (Morocco).

Desert(s), as a geographical space and way of life, can stimulate the collaboration between art and architecture, in an interdisciplinary way, basing on tradition and heritage but from a contemporary perspective.

Workshop organised by Arts Cabinet, Edinburgh College of Art , Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and Mimeta It will take place on Friday 27 February.

M'hamid El Ghizlane is the last city of the Drâa valley in Zagora. There the road ends and it ends not because a physical or geographical limit, it just the end. Even if there is the border between Morocco and Algeria, there is no fence, no wall, just the desert.

In this oasis take place the Taragalte Festival (www.taragalte.org) an event to promote music and culture of this region of the Sahara desert, including Algeria, Mauritania, Mali... 

The place offers the opportunity to work (with a multidiscipinarity team) in three different "scenes".

The palm grove.

The dunes.

There are several issues we could work and think about. For example the LIMITS. They can form a physical space but also a phycological one, with multiple significations. Besides, this perception of the LIMITS may change during the day, during the night, during the sand storms... Sometimes the LIMITS are made by the nature (mobile dunes), sometimes are artificial (temporary settlement).

The LIMITS between dunes and palm grove is a tactical war, between life and death, between nature and humankind. How they can be considered and treated? That depends on the point of view, biological, geophysical, cultural, architectonical, artistic...

Some situations remember us similar concepts we find in coastal cities that will help us to understand why the desert is also a sea.

The place could be also considered as sculpture landscape where artists could intervene. Also architects, biologists, geographers, sociologists...

This is not a sculpture but the rest of a water pump jack. It is curious how engineering can become art once its function disappear.

Inside each scene you can work on another spaces made by man. We could analyse the way of life in a ksar, the urban planing, the construction systems...

The relation with the landscape, the infrastructures needed in the ksar and in the palm grove, the social structure, the economy of the place...

Some workshops could be done to show young people how to build with earth and how to improve this kind of constructions.

We could use architectural spaces as artistiques spaces...

We could discuss about LIMITS in a smaller scale.

Another kind of human intervention in a "dune scene".

The analysis of nomad tents could be done from lots of perspectives.

As a space to live, as a architectonical space, as an artistic space...

As an engineering object.

Made on a smart fabric (camel and goat wool) that could be use in another way, with another purpose by artists, architects, engineers...

As already do craftsmen, using Berber tattoos for the design of carpets. The develop of traditional crafts must engage local cooperatives (as Butterfly Works do (www.butterflyworks.org with the project http://carpetoflife.com ) and artists, designers...

Local population will let us discover a way of life rich in values and knowledge.

Where oral tradition is very important. Music, storytellings, poetry... are a way to exprime events, traditions, heritage, history...

All these issues could be analysed depending on the tribes.

Every tribe has its own music...

Its own dance. Traditional dance that could be used by contemporary dancers.

Music and dace could be used as an instrument to interact with children.

Artists could work with sociologists, architects to know more about the desert taking advantage of children behavior...

and theirs ways to perceive, to understand and to imagine the desert.

This is a Marsad Drâa workshop where Moroccan artist Rachid Ouhnni asked children of Tissardmine village, to draw whatever they wanted. Most of them drew landscapes from the desert but also imaginary ones.

Another Marsad Drâa workshop in the oasis of Tighmert (Guelmim). In this case Rachid Ouhnni wanted to analyse the relation between children and public spaces. He asked the children what they used to do during holidays and they proposed us to come back the day before to discover what they used to play...

The explanation was about the need to plant trees in front of the house, in order to be protected from the wind, or the use of a fabric (the one used in nomad tents) to protect the courtyard from the sun, or the need of having a vertical element where they could connect the electrical wire...

Things that children between 6 and 10 years old can see but not most of the architects...

During the construction of the village, they explained the organisation of inner spaces, depending of the family composition and the relation between them.

For more information about this activity you can visit: https://www.storehouse.co/stories/x1uc-builders-of-the-desert and also: https://www.storehouse.co/stories/b9rc-sailors-of-the-desert

Concerning the place where the festival take place, a though (or severals one) must be made about the functionality of the energy infrastructures, the disposition of the camps, scenes, restaurants... the mobility of persons, the graphic design of signposting, paths through art installations...  in a place that change with the wind and the light.

Where the dunes can be treated as a canvas to work on.

We need to study the scenography  by day and night, using light art installations, but also based on renewable energies.

Architects, engineers, artist... will have to work together.

It would be extremely interesting to test some of these propositions in another desert spaces, not necessarily in a hot environment but in a cold one (like the one in the picture). It could be in a Nordic country or...

in Morocco where cold deserts can be found in the High Atlas Mountains.

Marsad Drâa, as a partner of Taragalte Festival for the next edition 2016, will develop these issues with anybody interested, in a process of learning and research about ways of life in the desert.