Rivering Together mobile

The final outputs included a performance by Imane el Kalbi and Amin Dhioui, a moving image work with stories, songs, and personal archives shared by Khadouj and Najma Batta. Additional contributions included writing by Matthijs Mantel, poetry by Fatiha El Hallaj and Francesca Castagnetti, and a moving image work I made in collaboration with dancer el Kalbi. Randa Toko contributed photographs, an infusion recipe and meditation, all texts and photos were included in a zine edited by myself and designed by Asma Boumahdi. Photos of the event were captured by Salomé Adèle Aïcha El Joumri.

Related projects:

Rivering Together (publication)

Roll, Jordan, Roll (performance)
Roll, Jordan, Roll (publication)

Blue-Black Liver

Funeral at the Edge of Drought

Rainbow Moon

Summer, God, Rain

Grids, Ghosts and Glitches

Mapping Cairo

Rivering Together - Workshop The Collective Workshops at Dar Belarj, Marrakech, Morocco, 2024

A river is not merely composed of its flowing waters; it is a terraforming force, a site for ritual and bathing. It allows raindrops to gather, feeding through its collected waters factories, fauna and flora, birds, fish, rocks, golf courses, humans, and other beings, allowing these forces to converge, intermingle, flourish, decay, enmesh, and intertwine. Landscapes surrounding rivers are, therefore, spaces of relation, allowing us to perceive the river as an integral part of a broader tapestry. Over the course of ten intense days, I taught a workshop at Dar Bellarj in Marrakech where participants and I rivered together, taking as our starting point the expansion of the city of Marrakech to the South and its relationship to its Ourika River and surrounding Oueds. We explored this river and its extended ecology including its connections to khettaras. In the first half of the workshop, I prompted the group to share personal stories around bodies of water which became the blueprint for works made later on. We read texts and discussed embodied and decolonial ecologies. We discussed drought, commons, and the politics of water distribution in the city. We watched documentary films and video works related to water bodies, examining their narrative structures, aesthetic conventions, and environmental imaginations. We went on contemplative walks, experiencing, thinking, and feeling our surroundings through walking and improvisational movement prompts. Ethnobotanists in our group shared insights on the plants that could be foraged in the oueds and their medicinal properties. Women from the Dar Bellarj community shared their personal histories with river spaces in and around Marrakech.

Video link

all projects

Rivering Together - Workshop The Collective Workshops at Dar Belarj, Marrakech, Morocco, 2024

A river is not merely composed of its flowing waters; it is a terraforming force, a site for ritual and bathing. It allows raindrops to gather, feeding through its collected waters factories, fauna and flora, birds, fish, rocks, golf courses, humans, and other beings, allowing these forces to converge, intermingle, flourish, decay, enmesh, and intertwine. Landscapes surrounding rivers are, therefore, spaces of relation, allowing us to perceive the river as an integral part of a broader tapestry. Over the course of ten intense days, I taught a workshop at Dar Bellarj in Marrakech where participants and I rivered together, taking as our starting point the expansion of the city of Marrakech to the South and its relationship to its Ourika River and surrounding Oueds. We explored this river and its extended ecology including its connections to khettaras. In the first half of the workshop, I prompted the group to share personal stories around bodies of water which became the blueprint for works made later on. We read texts and discussed embodied and decolonial ecologies. We discussed drought, commons, and the politics of water distribution in the city. We watched documentary films and video works related to water bodies, examining their narrative structures, aesthetic conventions, and environmental imaginations. We went on contemplative walks, experiencing, thinking, and feeling our surroundings through walking and improvisational movement prompts. Ethnobotanists in our group shared insights on the plants that could be foraged in the oueds and their medicinal properties. Women from the Dar Bellarj community shared their personal histories with river spaces in and around Marrakech.

Video link