#le 18

"-Je crois que je me lasse un peu de Pa... -Comment? -Non rien."

QANAT: ON THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF WATER May 2017 till January 2018 Elements in Oblivion Since its foundation in 1071, Marrakech distinguished itself for its urban engineering and water cultures. The archetypical Garden-city, a “rose among palm trees”, while being included in the Unesco world heritage list, in recent times, its heritage has been subjected to intensified speculation and looting. Denouncing this urban waste, Mohammed El Faïz argues that the future of the city will primarily depend on its capacity to integrate its heritage within a strategy of sustainable development. The author furthermore highlights the historical importance of the city’s agricultural hinterland, the Haouz, and its mountains, the High Atlas, repositories of a unique water civilisation nowadays dangerously menaced by a Californian-style reckless graft.* Indeed, there is a shared need to start critically rethinking the legacies of the technics, technologies and cultures embedded in traditional systems of water management, as signalled by the recent conception of a museum dedicated to water in the city. As individuals, citizens and consumers, we are called to confront ourselves with our personal and societal use of this common, though taxable and scarce, good, and with our (lack of) knowledge on water-related socio-cultural and political economic stakes. Reactivating the Memory of Water: Between Socio-historical Reflection, Artistic Formalisation, Museological Practice and Spatio-temporal Experimentation The geo-historical complicity and dependency interconnecting the city of Marrakech with water was the entry point for the conception of Qanat, a curatorial multidisciplinary research project initiated by Le 18 in the context of the collaborative programme KIBRIT. Integrating a series of talks with performances, artistic residencies, an exhibition, collaborative researches, and participative walks and cartographies, Qanat investigates the spaces of water, its routes and (in)visible traces, exploring its spatial, sonic, olfactory and visual memories and embodiments.   In between the deep wells of urban memories, rural histories, ancestral traditions, contemporary practices and the policies shaping modernity, Qanat carries multiple knowledges and visions on the politics and poetics of water memory. Pouring in complementary narratives, the programme may be understood, on the one hand, as a thematic path, investigating the past and present of water’s presence, absence and distribution and its social, urbanistic, cultural and political effects. On the other, it may be read as a methodological network swinging fluidly between artistic approaches, socio-scientific researches and participative initiatives in order to reactivate the memory of the collective heritage embodied by the water civilizations of the region of Marrakech, while fostering an understanding of water as an essential common good. * Marrakech Patrimoine en Péril. Mohamed El Faiz. Actes Sud. 2002 Qanat is part of KIBRIT, a collaborative research and production programme dedicated to artistic and curatorial practices engaged in reflections on the reactivation of collective memories and cultural heritage. KIBRIT has been conceived by Le 18 (Marrakech), Rhizome (Algier), l’Atelier de l’Observatoire (Casablanca), Jiser and CeRCCa (Barcelona), Maison de l’Image (Tunis) and Ramallah Municipality. www.kibrit.org curator Le 18 18, derb el ferrane - Riad Laarouss - médina - Marrakech