Public Space in North Africa Today: Through Art Spaces, Cultural Movements and Literary Icons

[Aomar Boum]: Alright good afternoon everyone my name is Aomar Boum. I'm the Vice Chair of undergraduate studies in anthropology and associated with NELC and also a member of the academic Committee of the Center for Near Eastern Studies which is hosting this talk. It's my great pleasure to introduce my colleague and friend. Driss Ksikes is a prolific fiction and nonfiction writer, playwright journalist, and editor who lives in Rabat, Morocco. He is a director of the Centre d'Etudes Sociales, Economiques et Managériales in Rabat, the editor chief in chief of the important periodical Economia, and also published a number of academic essays on Moroccan cultural life. His first play Pas de mémoire, mémoire de pas was published in Casablanca in 1998. In the fields of drama and fiction, Ksikes has been called one of the most innovative writers in Morocco today and was named one of the sixth best African playwrights by the National Studio Theatre in London. He is the author of numerous plays. I would name a few Don't hurry up in burying Big Brother 2013, The Match 2015, and novels such as Ma boîte noire 2006, L'homme descend du silence 2014 and a very acclaimed recent book Au Détroit d'Averroès 2017. Ksikes has also maintained an active journalism career, most notably as editor-in-chief of the groundbreaking moroccan magazine TelQuel and it's arabic sister publication ... from 2002 to 2006. As a nonfiction writer he was awarded ... Atlas prize, Morocco's biggest book prize, in 2015 for his book Le métier d'intellectuel : dialogues avec quinze penseurs du Maroc which was co-authored by another colleague Fadma Aït Mous. His recent work includes the art the the article the media in Morocco a highly political economy the case of the paper and online press since the early 1990s which is co-authored with two colleagues too. Ksikes is also the co-founder of ... 2009 to 2012 co-organizer and curator of ... in Rabat and Casablanca and co-founder and coordinator of ... from 2000 to 2015 to the present. If you wanna know somebody who actually worked with ... many of you you got somebody right here in front of you. He's a living memory of Fatima Marissa. His professional accomplishment aside Ksikes has throughout his life being an outspoken advocate for free speech and democracy in Morocco. His commitment to human rights has frequently crossed Morocco's notorious boundaries of acceptable speech in red lines. In 2006, the Moroccan government charged Ksikes and fellow journalists from with defaming Islam and damaging public morality for an article in ... which marked the intersection of religion and politics. He was convinced he was convicted, fined, and received a three-year suspended jail sentence. He later said that the trial only increased his commitment to promoting public debate. Ksikes is a rare intellectual in North African media and academia his main concern besides writing and editing is how to contribute to open and free public space in Morocco and beyond and how to develop networks of creative thinking with southerner partners. Please join me in welcoming my colleague Driss Ksikes who is going to talk about artistic spaces cultural dynamics and new politics in North Africa.

[Driss Ksikes]: Thank you so much Aomar for welcoming me here. Thank you all for being for attending this talk. It looks like there are some time bound research topics that appear to in the long run to be less temporary as they may seem to be at the beginning. This is probably the case of the investigation I've been leading around 2011. Is it about your internet users? New political movements in North Africa? None of this is my initial area of studies. Mine as a scholar is culture and media and as a practitioner fiction nonfiction and theater writing. Why bring my personal experience to the floor? How come both my research issues and artistic practices became intermingled? What brought me while eager to distinguish aesthetics of creation and ethics of action to think about a possible relation between artistic spaces, cultural dynamics, and new politics? Have there been old politics with no arts and culture involved in it? Doesn't culture as a human activity expressed in desires and belongings every time predefined but also extend political relevance? Well, let me start by recalling two experiences that made me feel at the heart of all this. The first one will be around ... and mainly a laboratory we called ... which means "news on stage". And the second one will be around the book ... and the question that was raised in 2011 everywhere in North Africa, mainly, the question is, "Where are the intellectuals," while people were in the streets they were asking "Where are the intellectuals?" So I'll start then by talking about these from these two points. Let me start with the experience of ... "news onstage". That took place from 2009 to 2012 so you see that two years before 2011 and one year with after in Rabat. The main the starting points were two quotations - one from Dostoevsky and from ... Dostoevsky says, "The universal sometimes is just in everyday news," and ... says, "Theater is the locus of public controversy." So we tried to create a place where a small stage where every month I was running a workshop of creative theater writing taking news as raw material and creating debate out out from this. What happened when we did this for nearly 30 sessions? Actually there was a feeling of organic connection to the world through facts, news, and citizen appropriation of events. We realized while talking to people that history is not a predetermined flow but an endless stream of events. Collaborative workshops created collective intelligence. Theater and performance are more about energy than more about discourse. So there was energy that was shared. Language is there was a performative tool not only as a discursive element and debates and knowledge not only we have debated knowledge not only through cognition but mainly through sensations. The idea here is that you should feel it to grasp it. This is very important. Maybe we feel this more in in societies where the literates' tradition is not anchored and feeling things to grasp them is something very crucial and also we felt the need for materialized way to think the city while there is crisis of classical intermediation. Political intermediation political parties are in crisis even in in advanced democracies are like like yours let alone in semi-autocracies, like ours. So here we have a materialist way to think the city together and also the idea another idea that that came out from all these experiences is art is not leading to political action but helping build aesthetic and political awareness of what is common. And here I am talking well while saying aesthetics I'm not only meaning Aesthetica but also ... which means relation to your environment as Felix Guattari puts its social ecosophy. So you see how this is a practical experience on stage three years in Morocco every month taking place brought us to think these questions. I will go further later. But more than that through theater I came to meet different experiences and the first one from Egypt by ... This is a an image from no time for arts. Actually since 2010 2011, we felt that there is an urge of documentary and form theatre. This is documentary theatre bringing people to the testimony about military arrests on stage and also and as if as if there were there were echoes from one country to another. When I moved to Algeria I am I am struck by what a an excellent Algerian playwright is doing ... Maybe where we're quite alike, he's journalist, playwright, fiction writer, and activist. I'm not activist, he is activist. He is today every every Friday on the streets in Algeria he's been arrested and he's been released again and ... made an excellent play called End/Igne ... I have to I will spell it, "end" here like the "end of a film, end of a movie" and slash I-G-N-E, which tells you something about ... But End/Igne means indignation so it's a pun that he made but actually through his experience and the fact the display had a long a long career the feeling that theatre could be used as media to share sensations neither filming nor classical nor digital media are able to convey. Only theatre can convey these sensations of a person going through an experience. It's exactly the same thing I was saying about feeling to grasp it and the lasts experience I would like to tackle from in this first slot of my talk is ... play Amnesia. Amnesia or ... is incredible is an incredible play that is talking about the fall of a dictator but it was written and staged before ... was toppled down. This is not this is not from from ... this is another play called Fear which was the aftermath of the fall of the dictator. But what I I realized through ... by the way is one of the most leading theater theater figures in the Arab world, I mean the most one of the most prominent ones, and I realized that as a director he's a dictator sorry of latent fears and apprehensions will to revolt. Actually he I found out in people like like him what I didn't find in social sciences. He's what I call seismograph of undetected movements, seismograph of undetected movements in society. This is not this is what social sciences should is supposed to be doing but was not doing it in our in in my in my region while theater was helping to realize that there was a will to revolt I want I don't want to talk about my own experience, one of my players was doing the same, but I will be too idiotic to refer to it I'm not. So that's you know this is the first experience this story of theater in relationship with the public public questions was raising all these elements to me. The second experience is as I told you around the book of Le métier d'intellectuel and this question raised by people in the street "Where are the intellectuals?" And actually, I while doing the book and going through a lot of things, I realized many elements. First the difference between knowledge and consciousness. In in our in North African countries and now it's no more the case I mean this is very important there is a big shift. For a long time people think thought that being an intellectual is being a learned person ... so somebody who accumulated culture accumulated knowledge but actually historically anthropologically in our societies it's more consciousness than knowledge that is making of somebody an intellectual a a Cameroonian scholar ... says that people who've got who hold diplomats are pseudo are pseudo-intellectuals pseudo-intellectuals. Actually where where does this question of having knowledge come from? It has come from mainly from colonial colonial experience and from France where the figure of ... as somebody who is speaking out his mind is something very important but we don't realize that besides ... there was ... who was more somebody who learned how to listen to others rather than speak to others but we did but ... didn't get the same the same impact as ... But also we forget in our experience in our muslim societies the figure of the ... the the religious scholar but also the nationalist thinker who have in common the idea that they should say the truth to the ruler whatever the price is, but more than that what I was working on on on figure of intellectual I realized that during the years of lead in our country the places where they were intellect there was intellectual debate where some reviews cine clubs amateur theater are not necessarily at the places of classical knowledge places and also I realized also that there has been a long divide between elite and popular culture that make people think that when you have popular culture, you are not necessarily an intellectual. So and then but bit by bit people came out to think how to consider pop art not as folklore but as part of identity narratives and that understanding social complexity in order to understand social complexity and marginally act on it. So why the need for intellectuals by people who were in the streets? What does it say? People were not asking for what ... calls the specific intellectual somebody who knows an air something knowledge and wants to do more about this specific area. No no they are not talking about this. They are more talking about what ... calls amateur intellectual. Who is the amateur intellectual? The amateur intellectual is the one who, having a field, knows to step aside knows how to step aside because there is urgency, either because political autocracy or because there is there is a colonialism or because there is hegemony or whatever, and then he's taking his time that his the time where did the classical time of publishing etc is the one that a scholar is using a specific intellectual is using. The amateur intellectual is taking more time with people and more time with causes. So that's that's what people are looking for, people who are stepping aside. The second thing they are looking for what of course this question this figure developed by ... of the organic intellectual. What's an organic intellectual? When you go back to prison memoirs of ... you understand that the idea mainly mainly is to be curious enough in order to understand in the practical world what's happening everyday in people's life in order to have a position towards the hegemony the hegemonic forces. That's the main question. So you see in all these points they're asking for people to give time, to give attention, and here we I I I recall and another concept of intellectual which is the collective intellectual that's a historian ... who is talking about the the collective intellectual who the one who is like ... listening to the others go in in being involved in spaces where we debate and we discuss and we try to make sense of things. So they're looking for non experts who are not reserving their knowledge to the government. And actually, we realize that most of the people who are doing this are not necessarily people who have knowledge but sometimes more sensations, feelings and here writers artists literary figures come to the front and in Egypt, a central figure is ... who is a fiction writer and who used to take a literary club every regularly in order to make people understand what's what's happening in the world and how what's the meaning of autocracy what's the meaning of all thing going back to literature but creates in public debate ... is exiled in the United States and because he is under arrest in his country so that's that's one figure. People are willing to listen and dialogue. But actually and and what is the trigger? What's what why people are waiting for people giving time because actually the when you see the the despair of some the symbolic despair they're expressing which is through the expression ... etc. Stop it. Stop it. So what are they asking people to stop? Stop corruption? Stop indifference? Etc. etc. So you see this urge to be listened to and also because they feel the weakening power of political parties, domestication of classical civil society, isolation and conformism of universities - I'm talking about our universities, and of media liberalization. So too many thinks we are stuck and of media liberalization is very important to keep in mind. I can go back to talk about it, but the idea here is that not only in our countries but media as an industry has killed journalism as a vocation. We're more talking more about content than news more communication than investigation so there is a feeling of what two scholars from Morocco ... disillusionment. But they're not talking about disillusionment as a suicide leading despair but as a triggering defeat to imagine new ways out. So this is very important. They are looking for new ways out, they are desperate and looking for new ways out. That's why they're looking for intellectuals. Of course, we have slightly daring scholars. People for example from political science in Morocco Tunisia creating new new generation of political science schools in order to help people officials young generations in order to understand politics in their practice. The thing is social media are generation bound, weakly invested by established intellectuals. So rise of so that's why we have rise of marginal social and cultural actors blogging, artivism, media activism, will to act for change facing sophisticated surveillance, and meanwhile we have something happening like you would find a a music band ... who is rocking in mother tongue, reshuffling legacies of different musical heritage, producing concepts so you see how popular culture is coming to the front. ... Popular pop culture and political debates about society is created by artists. This is one of the most known bands in Morocco and for when i stake this notion of ... which talking about schizophrenia is something that has been talked about in the media, used in theater as a as a concept by theatre companies, and also the figure himself ... who he is a communist in in a newspaper and he's create producing now podcasts about history in Morocco. So you see how artists are stepping back from only producing arts into doing something that has to do with public public debates. It's exactly the same thing that tried to do some alternative media either ... in in Egypt but actually they were all either censored or officially hacked. And while there was this limitations for for alternative media, what do we find? We find street ... art venues, alternative art venues. So in Morocco you have ... "philosophy in the streets". You have spaces like ... in Algeria and dream city in Tunis. These are spaces that are creating possible interaction between arts and public space. Intellectuals then are no more superior elites but artists in this interdisciplinary scholars, civil society dissidents, not only voicing anger but listening to it or making it audible making various dynamics meet and art help communities interact. So 2011 was first prefigured by cultural movements on public reading giving giving back place for philosophy in the city and also advocating LGBT through body exposure and and discussion and social movements. Let me now recall two side research projects that made me realize some common and uncommon criteria between North African countries. So yeah here you see this is ... Algeria which is more free not not as old as dream city as an experience for example or ... in Morocco but when you talk to ... who is the founder she says that she is not interested in arts for art's sake, she's interested in arts as a pretext in order to create interactions. And this is something that this is one of the places that it was most important before they were revolts in Algeria. Let me now recall as I said two research projects that made me realize some common and uncommon criteria between North African countries. I will talk first about ... and funding of arts and culture. Let me first start by the fact that after in the aftermath of 2011 there were huge funds for studying youth. Week exists in studies surveys and fieldwork to understand complex dynamics at sake that's or that's what I so talked about before hard negotiations you know the not to service South and scholars as informants to fill in theoretical frameworks designed by north northern northern scholars. This is this was a strong position when I'm talking here about ... which is a Mediterranean project of research renewals. So we had to redefine terms of academic or collaboration, equalized relations from the university's standpoints to make part making part of decolonizing politics of knowledge production and participate into a system what we what we call epistemic justice. But what what are the outputs from what happened in ... What do we realize? First, weak political participation in formal politics, weak ties when institutions related to the States, values of family and religion are predominant, a high connectivity, difference between Morocco as a Facebook country, Tunisia and Egypt as Twitter countries, and in order to explain this you have to think of a literacy rate which is still very high in Morocco compared to the other countries, middle class the route the role played by knowledge production in in in public debates, weak welfare states and high depth effects, and the wheelchair migrates is high everywhere, rate of educated unemployment and precarious employment as well, 70% and this is a common figure 70% of youth who were employed don't have contract. So this is telling you the precarious state - unexplained regression of gender equality in Moroccan and Egyptian cases, entrepreneurships as a probably misleading collective way out in Morocco more particularly, unrests between collective solidarity and hankering for individualism everywhere. Culture and arts being vehicles of this tension between community and individual. So now when I move to being involved as a juror and lecturer in various networks of arts and culture and here you have ... in the Arab and African countries I came out to remark that since UNDP 2005 report on the Arab world there have been parallel and complementary if not conflicting initiatives that have blossomed. They are fostering from the Gulf states side translation, book awards, ... refounding of Arab specificity and refurbishment of entertaining tourism. This creates as in the European 19th century women readership of novels, rewinding of Arab versions of humanities classics, discourse about identity through instrumentalization of various contemporary art forms, and the new museum culture to attract visitors and high culture and high culture supporters. But these initiatives are developing from liberal arts point of view and this is where ... fits which steady support from European and American Funds - Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Scandinavian cooperations, experimental art forms, new connection between artists and local societies and dynamics, mobility of southern artists, anchoring of cultural venues. All this is complementing ex colonizers cultural agenda allowing for more visualization of culture nascent public subsidies policies and grassroots cross-disciplinary corporations that were made invisible by mainstream entertaining media and gained again visibility thanks to social network and alternative media connections. So you realize that there are things moving either in terms of structure or in terms of willingness by actors. But what all this allowed me to see in terms of patterns and paths that I couldn't decipher before in the same way. I I have three points and then I will come to my in conclusion the first big conclusion I come out with from all this is relationship between art and luminance minimal spaces and here we have to distinguish following ... public and common space. Public space as you know is constructing together a city. Common space is a chaotic place that is putting everybody together until the ruler stops the chaos. And I think that we're still lingering between public and common space in these in these contexts. And actually it's good also to follow Nancy Fraser on her notion of oppositional public space but also to look at repression intensity. Oppositional spaces exists but they shrink when there is when repression intensity is high. Third, cultural movements fighting civilians online and in this city and also streets arts between political instrumentalization and new aesthetics of the common. Street art is no more disruptive today. It has been used again by by officials but at the same time it's creating new politics so the common when it brings people together to talk about these questions but it's not always the case. Controversy around ... is a notion that has been coined in Morocco around underground music but it recalls, it's a sort of revival of ... "Renaissance", through urban art movements so as if urban art movements are creating a new revival a new Renaissance movement which is not totally the case but it's very interesting to look what's happening sometimes in these spaces and in in formal discussions. Also we have private club of readers. This is very interesting when you look at public space in the ... heritage you understand also when you go back to what Terry Eagleton is talking about about England in the late 19th century the idea of public of private clubs of readers is something that looks it looks as if it's outdated but it's something that is coming out again you know in all these societies and underground and underground spaces loyalty being the major trend and here I'm talking about exit loyalty and voice ... Actually loyalty being the major trend, either exit or voice are the two options that are used in these movements so for example slam and urban poetry are in what you feel that some political poetry and rap are out I take here for example you have Moroccan rapper who is now in exile in Belgium because he was in prison before political poetry Mohammed oh what's his name sorry no no ... is the Moroccan one but the Egyptian poets Mohammed Saha is is in exile too and also you have a new political humor for a Bassem Youssef for example who is also in exile from from Egypt. So it's very interesting to look at what is politically correct in these expressions and very we feel like there are spaces of slight hope slight hope. I talked about ... I can talk about ... in Morocco I can talk about ... in Casablanca as well so all these are really very liminal spaces where artists are trying to have a take in public debates. What is interesting and what is really coming from these liminal spaces is there is no hierarchy between the learned that less learned, no class distinctions, possible dialogue triggered by art as a way to conceive public life, design in hashtags and mottos in vernacular language, as a readapter of universal issues for freedom of expression secular state ... economic equity through economic boycott in in Morocco all this is coming from a common language, vernacular language, and we reused within social networks. So that was the first point art in liminal spaces. The second point that's big pattern I think is recycling of literary and artistic legacies and here we have two main figures - ... - they have been both rehabilitated as literary icons of courage resistance and saying no to voluntary servitude in 2011 ... for being the author of ... pre-islamic poetry and ... for his book on oppression and they they have been really taken as icons. There one is live from Lebanon the other is from from Syria sorry the other is from Egypt but have been used throughout all the Arab countries as major figures and icons there is also the idea the rights to memory and counter narratives. That's what creates political prisoners literature but also you have other types of literature. For example, I take here the example of ... and the need to rewrite local mythologies with infinite controversies on fiction and truth, rights of minorities, etc. He's taking again the the figure of ... and talking about about Egypt and the whole question of Christian Christian heritage in Egypt. ... as ways to make art encompass lost traditions either in music or visual arts. For example, when you take ... or other they are using their they're using traditions local traditions and of course worldly experiences. We we feel also that there is the will to decolonize imaginaries, fighting against lost memories and stereotypes, restoring oralities, local narratives, as well as deconstructing common beliefs and thoughts via new formats - podcasts, graphics, and video installations. And and this is a new trend the the graphics is really totally new and now you have really it's coming from Algeria from from Lebanon from Egypt and now there is one new one called ... from Morocco by ... who is an engineer and artists a visual artist. So it's new ways of revisiting all these legacies. While hegemony geopolitics are biasing priorities. So the context is very important and corrupt regimes are repressing demands for change. Cultural and artistic movements are highly emphasizing on the need to look inward to focus on capacities from within to understand imagine, create, and dialogue. This is very this is crucial that and that's a major trend. It's we can call it patriotic nationalistic - or identity-oriented but it boils down to the idea that while Europe is is closing frontiers, while we have a return of walls today, while migration is very selective, while there are new new warfare imperialism, more conservatism, and and return of some fascists political traditions in in these countries you feel that. Okay let's concentrate on which we can produce. Let's concentrate on our traditions. Let's concentrate but also let's dialogue with the world but let's have a take in the world from what we have from inward. That's a major point and I think it's this is a crucial crucially political point. The third element I that and here I come to some shortcomings is the is about dissemination and ways out. Actually there are lack of venues, even if I'm talking about all these, we should consider the lack of that there is a lack of venues. Well let's take Morocco we move for in beginning of the 80s to today from 250 cinemas to 50. So we have fifty, more than fifty thousand mosques in Morocco but we don't have more than twenty working theaters, not more than fifty bookstores that are really giving visibility to outlets. So this is this is a big big big point. The second point is censorship - instrumentalization of culture as a political medium - this is still the way from ministries of culture from authorities. We are also silo logics making different spaces and dynamics isolated nuts interconnected and nice and of course sorry fragmented and paradoxically mobilizing virtual space. This is very important. I mean when you know how high connectivity is how connectivity is high in North Africa and how actually the lack of public space we were talking about common space is now creating something like virtual public space but virtual public spaces because we should go into different areas of public a virtual space but it is mobilizing because that's what is creating a counter a counter force in public space. We have viral breakthroughs through art forms and here I want to show you this this drawing by a visual artist in Morocco ... While they were there was lately an affair about abortion and an imprisoned journalists for for illegal abortion and actually it was a political case it's not it was not about abortion and ... came with this with this drawing. Her her artistic work is on her website etc no that's not what I'm talking about. When she came out at this she put it on social social networks it became viral and it has been sort of one of the main images used with by people who are campaigning to free ... the hashtag was ... and actually we realized in all these countries that there are random connections. I say random connections between whistleblowers, citizen journalists, artists, and human rights organizations. It's not organized but it's working it happens to work. Now, none of all what I have been saying so far is political per se but potentially engaging high political stakes when we find that what I like to call organic connectors. I am not sure the notion of organic intellectual as somebody who cares takes time going back to what I said before. Listen to what is going on in praxis and that the share of hegemonies is completely lost. In a highly horizontal and imbricated configuration of actors he's meant to connect the organic connector who is to me the new figure is mending non-connected spaces. He's at the crossroads of dynamics - patient and disruptive; he sometimes leads in art space open to public interests connecting with civil society, creating debate around common issues, and using art as a pretext. He's sometimes an orchestra man you remember ... I was talking about a moment ago he's sometimes an orchestra man, multiplying his areas of intervention between journalism, writing, and activism, music, art, etc. He's more surprisingly connected to biopolitics through collaborative economic models, neighborhood dynamics, and international networks of solidarity. That's another type of figure. In all this configuration, there is common ground. Political reform is no more matter of rulers and elites. It needs to be culturally built up because it is beforehand a matter of very values ideas tastes an open dialogue. This needs while classical ways of doing politics are coming to a dead end to look at undisciplined practices and actors in the sense of being undisciplinary beyond formal interdisciplinarity and unconcealing even insubordinated disobedient and as such capable to go beyond institutional discursive burries and care about what is real at the heart of daily lives and people's dreams. When you see on the media insurrection insurrections manifestations they are just the visible part of invisible dynamics. That's what I'm trying to look at. Thank you.