CULTURE / MARSEILLE
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The next port of call Marseille is a city in flux with a wave of art and cultural projects heralding its history and rejuvenating its image words by Alexa Firmenich photography by Grégoire Bernardi
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Shimmering, suspended in mid-air, the silhouettes of people and moored fishing vessels hover in Norman Foster’s L’Ombrière, a large upsidedown mirror on stilts installed in Marseille’s VieuxPort. Until recently the quayside was off limits to pedestrians, reserved instead for teeming lanes of highway traffic. However, things are changing fast in France’s oldest city. The 5km swathe of seafront stretching from the VieuxPort to the Arenc dockland has been opened up for the first time in decades; abandoned buildings have been transformed and new ones erected all around the city. Much of the gentrification is due to a €7bn Euro-Méditerranée project, revamping neighbourhoods that have been home to a melting pot of nationalities for generations. This year though, lending some extra shine to the city’s multicultural roots and 2,600-year history is the 2013 European Capital of Culture, a year-long event set to spruce up a dusty cultural scene. The hope is it will entice people from around the Mediterranean to visit a city that may have lost touch with its ability to foster local artists (past residents include Paul Cézanne and Pierre Puget). On the J4 Pier, where jazz was welcomed to Marseille in 1920, two notable developments were inaugurated in June. The Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée, with its unfortunate abbreviation of MuCEM, is the world’s first museum dedicated to Mediterranean cultures: its collection boasts a million artefacts from Spain to Israel, via the Balkans, Turkey and North Africa. Its façade is an undulating lattice shell inside which you can wander through multiple passageways where the sunlight falls in dappled patterns and the sea reflects off silver balustrades. The Galérie de la Méditeranée on the museum’s ground floor tells the story of the gods and the invention of agriculture (complete with stuffed penguin), while upstairs “The Black and The Blue” exhibit extols the age-old notion that there are always two sides to the same story. “When
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people get talking about their common histories and start looking at the past from different points of view, they begin to understand each other,” explains museum director Bruno Suzarelli. A few metres away on the pier is the Villa Méditerranée, a towering wooden auditorium and series of conference halls. An imposing cantilevered building extends over a pool connected to the open sea, part of the architect Stefano Boeri’s aspirations to “bring the sea into the building”. The current exhibit, an audio-visual maze by Bruno Ulmer, meanders through simulations of the ports of Istanbul and Algiers.You get lost, backtrack, return to rooms already travelled – not too far removed from the experiences of just-off-the-boat immigrants. Artist-residency La Friche, a former tobacco factory, is the kind of place you might expect to see in a project that’s all about “conversations” and the tracing of the many routes that have been taken to, from and around this port city. Miniatures Officinae reunites performers from Cairo, Tunis, Marrakesh and Ramallah to travel to one another’s countries and perform a short solo dance. Another project, Contemporary Arab Dramaturgy, translates, publishes and performs little-known theatrical texts by young playwrights from 10 Arab countries; art video group Instants Vidéo helped Casablanca set up its first festival in 1993 and then went on to do the same for the Palestinian Territories and Damascus. As founder Marc Mercier points out, the possibilities here are endless: “The beauty with these types of collaborations is that they’re open to a whole new crowd; a genuine tool for expression.” Marseille hopes this new crowd of tourists and residents will sustain the dynamism that has so animated the city during the Capital of Culture, pointing to the ripple effects seen in former hosts Lille and Bilbao. “It’s a very motivational moment. We’re tired of being known as the city of football hooligans and crime-ridden banlieues,” says Sarah Nawi, a Moroccan furniture seller in Le Panier. The big question is whether the city can capitalise on its changing image, its cultural comeback, and position itself once more as the key link between the Mediterranean’s two shores. — (m)
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Switzerland France
Italy Marseille
Spain Balearic Sea 13
32|mediterraneo
01 Norman Foster’s L’Ombrière in the Vieux-Port 02 View of the MuCEM from the Fort Saint-Jean 03 Villa Méditerranée’s ‘Beyond the Horizon’ exhibit by Bruno Ulmer 04 Galerie de la Méditerranée exhibit in the MuCEM 05 ‘The Black and The Blue’ exhibit in the MuCEM 06 The Villa Méditerranée
07 MuCEM director Bruno Suzarelli 08 Sarah Nawi in her store Place Lorette in the Le Panier district 09 The Mamo contemporary-art space on Le Corbusier’s rooftop 10 Comorans from the Noailles area 11 MuCEM’s rooftop 12 View of Marseille’s Vieux-Port from the Fort Saint-Jean 13 Photographer and street artist JR’s work at La Friche