Landscape of Care: a handbook for urban design engagement

Landscape of Care

Landscape of Care

A handbook for urban design engagement

This publication invites the reader to explore an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural project of urban design research conducted 2018-19 in the city of Tiznit, Morocco.

The project was initiated by the Netherlands-based creative platform Slow Research Lab and realized in partnership with the bureau of architect Salima Naji and the Naji’s nonprofit association Gardiens de la Mémoire, both based in Tiznit.

From these two countries and organizations, a core team of researchers and creative professionals came together to help conceive, develop, and facilitate the myriad facets of the project: Marijke Annema, Jana Crepon, David Goeury, Nika Jazaei, Salima Naji, and Carolyn F. Strauss. (See biographies, page 106.)

In addition to those main programming partners and team members, this project was enriched by an array of collaborators from Tiznit and beyond: municipal authorities; community associations and cooperatives; local artists and craftspeople; Moroccan and international designers; teachers and parents from the city’s creches and primary schools; an incubator for young creative entrepreneurs; plus countless program participants. We are grateful for their trust and commitment.

Substantial financial support for the project was administered by the Creative Industries Fund NL (Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie) as part of a four-year program funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs within the policy framework of the International Culture Policy (2017–2020), entitled Sustainable and Inclusive Cities Through Design.

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CONTENTS Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 eviving Wonder: the Artistic Immersed in Oases. . . . . . . . . . 18 R Salima Naji Thoughts on Care . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Carolyn F. Strauss KINDLING ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS p.32 Kindred Spirits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 David Goeury Standing With Two Feet in Complex Matter . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Cocky Eek CULTIVATING ARTISTIC RESPONSES TO CLIMATE CHANGE p.48 Immediacy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Maria Blaisse Weaving the Oasis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Amina Agueznay FRICTION, CURIOSITY, OPENING: PROVOKING A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE p.60 Oasis Memory: Reflections of an Urban Caretaker. . . . . . . . . 66 Omar Boumehdi

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CONTENTS Precious Things. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Linnemore Nefdt Notes from an Observer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Aimane Idhajji BUILDING A MORE OPEN MEETING PLACE p.80 Sharpening the Intuition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Nika Jazaei Threading Stones. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Marijke Annema ETERNAL RETURN p.102 Biographies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 List of Collaborators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Colophon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

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An olive tree meets a garden wall in the Targa oasis | photo: Jana Crepon

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Introduction

For more than a decade, architect and anthropologist Salima Naji has led a series of architectural rehabilitations and new building projects across Southern Morocco aimed at safeguarding the cultural heritage of the Amazigh people. Those projects transmit knowledge and vernacular techniques that have become increasingly valuable in the face of growing climate challenges, while emphasizing the equitable distribution of spatial and social capital among citizens of Morocco— especially women, the poor, and other disadvantaged groups.

This important work includes several key initiatives in Tiznit, a medium-sized city in the southwest of the country, where in recent decades the rapid pace of urbanization and top-down efforts at ‘modernization’ have stripped the local population of both their agency and a sense of belonging.

The project described in this publication set out to complement Salima Naji’s existing architectural initiatives in Tiznit with creative programming that reimagined certain tangible and intangible qualities of urban experience—thereby reawakening local inhabitants’ sense of place and nourishing their impulses to civic participation. Importantly, while this new programming was relevant to a cross-section of the local population, it especially aimed to involve women and children whose presence and participation are often marginalized in Morocco, especially in the public realm. Through a variety of activities, we hoped to nudge their proactive presence in public space—making their bodies, skills, and creativity more visible and vital to the urban fabric.

Dutch and Moroccan creative practitioners from fields including architecture, design, urbanism, landscape, and artistic research developed a series of programming elements to encourage new forms of engagement with the rich, yet often neglected offerings of the city. Our focus was on two interrelated sites that Naji’s association Gardiens de la Mémoire has designated as benchmarks of both the past and future flourishing of the city. The first of these is Aïn Aqdim, Tiznit’s original water source that centuries ago gave birth to the ancient city✳, and which was brilliantly restored by Naji’s bureau in 2015. Closely linked to that site is the Targa oasis, a green expanse north of the medina that prior to colonization was a productive agricultural landscape presided over by 11

✳ The history of Tiznit’s origins is linked to the discovery of drinking water by a woman, Lalla Zninia. This is reflected in the etymology of the place: both the name Tiznit and the girl’s first name (Zninia) are articulated around the same root tachelhit zni sni, an alliteration that refers to the body of water.

✳✳ The word Amazigh (plural Imazighen) translates as ‘free man’ or ‘free people.’ It is the endonym (self-designation) of people indigenous to North Africa and some northern parts of West Africa who to this day strive to assert their rights to language, land, and culture.

local inhabitants, which helped to ensure their sovereignty as ‘free people.’ ✳✳ Like the underground canal linking Aïn Aqdim and the Targa, our project flowed between the ancient urban center and the oasis, with the goal of (re-)weaving water and other vital material heritage into the consciousness and daily experience of local inhabitants—thereby strengthening feelings of connection to both natural and built environments. The series of creative interventions and encounters that the project facilitated included sensory and somatic exercises to amplify perceptions of the immediate environment, spatial and material experiments with a range of locally-abundant materials,1 the sharing of native plant traditions and stories, and construction of more durable architectural gestures to support the continuation of such explorations into the future.

Intense processes of research and the eventual unfurling of those various programming elements brought us ultimately to the title of this publication, Landscape of Care. This language refers to the sensitivity with which we approached the urban environment as well as to the delicate dynamics of human connection, including cross-cultural interrelating, that were navigated. Perhaps most importantly, the title reflects our hope that, over time, this project might instill in Tiznit citizens a renewed intuition of caring for their home city, while inciting awareness and action around more universal issues of social and environmental resilience.

Looking back at the project through the lens of Care also helps highlight the less-tangible attitudes and strategies that helped make the project a success. They include: — Deep and diverse practices of listening to and with people and place — Investing time and space on learning from perspectives, rhythms, and rootings that are different from our own — A commitment to dialogue, defined not as a linear, two-way conversation, but rather as a third space in which unexpected ideas and forms can begin to take shape — The embrace of uncertainty—and its discomforts—as a means to unfolding new trajectories of creativity and reaching deeper levels of (mutual) understanding 12

Introduction

For this publication, key individuals involved in the project reflect on those and other ‘Slow’ tools of our creative process.

The essays allow each of us to share personal stories and feelings born of this experience, to ponder how diverse facets of Care continue to inform our perspectives and practices, and to share how our professional lives have been enhanced through this opportunity.

We believe that focusing these pages on the more intimate dimensions of our experience—rather than merely describing what happened—is what makes this volume especially valuable as a resource for designers, architects, and other practitioners from the creative industries. Today we offer this publication to them—you!—as a handbook (and roadmap, of sorts) for more conscious and caring urban design engagement.

1 Bio-materials sourced directly from the Targa oasis include a wide variety of plant matter, animal remains, and earth.

Objects and spaces fabricated from these materials can be kept alive when continually taken care of or return to the earth without leaving a footprint.

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Water and sky at the reservoir of Association Abrinaz | photo: Nika Jazaei

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Awakening a deeper sensitivity to our surroundings | photo: Jana Crepon

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Reviving Wonder, Changing Mental Habits: the Artistic Immersed in Oases Salima Naji

Africa offers lessons in ecology and resilience if we know how to decipher the heritage. Yet how to heed these lessons when there is erosion as a result of ‘modernity’s’ influence, cutting us off from what we call ‘traditions’ and our ‘artistic fingerprints’? Have we lost an affinity for a particular world? How can we pass on what in northern cultures is called ‘art’? How can we rediscover the need for art and nature—especially for those who have grown jaded and disinterested—in a contemporary society that has essentially devitalized it, except in the case of artistic or highly-privileged environments? The idea was to show that by creating territorial specificity around the oases, we could highlight the environmental and heritage potential of the sites. And, more importantly, that in forging unique connections with the community on the receiving end of these efforts, we might rectify the current model of artificiality—instead offering the prospect of dignity to the citizens of Morocco. Building an alternative, the possibility of doing things differently, over time.

EVITALIZING A MEDINA: R THE EYE AND HAND OF THE ARCHITECT As an architect, I set out to remedy the sterile standardization of architecture in Southern Morocco. Repurposing or perfecting vernacular techniques for contemporary architecture in order to offer sustainable development anchored in the human and a deep knowledge of both geographical and cultural territories, particularly for public service projects like maternity wards, cultural centers, women’s centers, and schools. In Morocco, for the sake of pseudo-development, public spaces have essentially been sacrificed over the past ten years to make way for private spaces. The pervasive use of concrete, hand in hand with the standardization of processes and built forms, flattens cities without guaranteeing any expansion of well-being. This is particularly evident in Tiznit, where I set up my architectural firm in 2008.

Tiznit is an oasis city in Southern Morocco that was designated as a ‘garden city’ during the colonial period. In recent decades, however, its medina has experienced a strong population growth that has profoundly altered its historical 19

✳ The medina is crossed by a double dynamic that may seem contradictory, but which is reconcilable.

On the one hand, the inhabitants are driven by a passion for memory, hoping to preserve the historical framework (material and immaterial) of the place. On the other hand, they want to benefit from a level of comfort and the availability of amenities. Too often these two trends result in the preservation of a few symbolic monuments, which are intended to serve as anchors points of memory amidst the destruction of other spaces as part of a rushed 'upgrade.' With the exception of symbolic structures, the construction is standardized according to exogenous national urban standards of the city, often erasing all traces of traditional historical districts and their vernacular construction methods.

This phenomenon is accelerated by the subdivision of gardens and the verticalization of housing designed to accommodate modest or even poor households seeking very low rents.1

environmental qualities. A new model was needed. Even as the medina retained vital historical traces, it was being subjected to a process of architectural trivialization and impoverishment. These conditions incited us to propose an innovative strategy to promote sustainability in the city and oasis of Tiznit: one based not on barren analysis severed from reality, but rather that envisioned a real step of environmental consciousness as part of the safeguarding process, which we had recently reactivated, with raw earth in particular.

So, while the city was undergoing a supposed ‘upgrade,’ the urban development model proposed by our study was tailored to strengthen the spatial capital of the medina and its infrastructure in the interest of revitalization of economic activity, while encouraging the actors of civil society to move beyond the typical tradition/modernity dichotomy ✳ in Morocco.

It was a matter of promoting the symbolic dimension of a place by incorporating memory, environment and landscape.2 Reinforcing the idea that a revitalization of the historic center3 and its surroundings could be realized through implementation of a certain number of restored or built projects. Whereby each construction is an opportunity for advancing ideas, trying to improve the world, and expanding boundaries.

EARNING FROM TIZNIT: THE SOURCE AND L THE RENOVATED HISTORIC CENTER First, we had to make people understand the idea of starting with what already existed there, however damaged. There would be no brutal renovation (islah), as in the past, which most of the time in Morocco involves an erasure of ancient forms and local processes. Restoring the original water source, Aïn Aqdim, from whence the city originated, allowed for the garden to be returned to the heart of the old historic center, which had been hastily covered over in concrete in the 1980s and ‘90s. Creating a museum on the site of the adjoining citadel Kasbah Aghenaj allowed for reflections on questions of heritage around a specific object, thereby aligning the intangible cultural heritage (songs, music, theatre) with material heritage (buildings, techniques, objects).

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By favoring the expansion of quality public space to meet the immediate spatial needs of the poorest households, I wanted to establish the idea of restoring an architectural landscape for all inhabitants—defending a credible, constructive alternative anchored in modernity. In this way, the restoration of the ancient spring created an opportunity for both urban and agricultural issues to be discussed. Water embodies the origin of the city, gives structure to its historic core and, above all, irrigates the olive and palm groves. It aggregates different, overlapping representations. Treating the ancient walled spring as a monument in the heart of the ancient city helped to guarantee the overall protection of the site, and also secured the water supply of the Targa oasis further north. ✳✳

Reviving Wonder, Shifting Mental Habits Salima Naji

TIMULATING SOCIAL CHANGE S AND CREATING HOPE It is in this context that creative collaborations between North and South were proposed for enhancing the urban landscape. One of the many issues that concerned the initiating organization (Slow Research Lab) was to understand how to re-establish and deepen the link between human beings and the environment. The departure point was born of this question, which was shared with a group of exceptional women from The Netherlands in a Dutch-Moroccan bilateral cooperation supported by the Stimuleringsfonds. The project’s success is thanks to the unwavering friendship of Carolyn F. Strauss, director of the project, along with landscape designer Jana Crepon, architect Nika Jazaei, designers Marijke Annema and Cocky Eek, and importantly with the close cooperation of the exceptional Omar Boumehdi, a Tiznit farmer who heads the association Abrinaz in the oasis.

The encounters facilitated by this project have brought about real success in terms of society and art: confronting various realities between them, as they ‘rub’ against each other, as they are forced to consider each other, and accept one another, while offering moments of surprise and discovery of unusual things—unexpected within a space not intended for this, but which suddenly becomes a very beautiful setting for new ‘activities.’ It’s never easy. Never won.

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✳✳ In Morocco, a palm grove that no longer produces agriculture might be transformed into a housing project devoid of trees and of any awareness of the importance of preserving historic garden spaces.

An important part of the redevelopment of the ancient spring in Tiznit involved the restoration of the underground canal (and lifting station), which guided the water to the gardens of the oasis at the periphery.

Especially when faced with people and a culture that are not accustomed to either the demands or the results.

The contact with nature was very important. Without the Targa oasis’ exceptional setting, all of this would have been much more difficult to carry out. Discovering associations and developments that refer to the world of childhood, the world of wonder, and world of thought remains a highlight and is made stronger by today’s conditions of containment and inescapable boundaries.4

✳✳✳ Maieutics (from the ancient greek ‘μαιευτικός’ that literally stands for the art of midwifery), sometimes referred to as the Socratic method, is a dialectic method of inquiry that consists in questioning a person well to evoke (give birth) to knowledge already residing in his or her depths. This method was adapted in the 1950’s by Italian pacifist, sociologist, and educator Danilo Dolci in his activism against poverty and social exclusion in Sicily.

Unlike the unidirectional Socratic method, Dolci believed that the maieutic approach is ‘reciprocal’—whereby new knowledge arises from sharing—and considered it a prerequisite to creating a more open and responsible civil society.5

Throughout the process, I often have pondered the relevance of the funding organization from the Netherlands, whose investment stimulated cooperative activities that would be extremely complex to organize otherwise.

I feel very grateful for what this could gradually bring about. For these exceptional women who gave so much. Their small but meaningful cluster of holistic methods—including a willingness to look beyond differences—is a maieutic approach ✳✳✳, a midwifery of sorts, through which hope might be born again in the hearts of the disillusioned. Closing the great gap between different worlds on the margins of action, on the margins of politics, and on the margins of social life.

The concrete reality of the workshops and the stimulus that this has created on different planes, for different generations, and for different fields of investigation has made it possible to expand boundaries of understanding and of practice. Making things happen gradually. Bringing people to a new way of seeing. Forcing actions that they don’t do any longer (or never did) while shining a light on the agricultural situation or, at the very least, engendering a renewed respect for the environment.

There is still so much to do, but a first stone has been laid.

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1 Cf. Architectural study and planning and safeguarding plan for the Medina of Tiznit (PASM). First phase: Sector analysis and diagnostic report. Second phase: Synthesis and programming document, Development scenarios. Notebooks of architectural prescriptions. Third phase: Consultation documents, variants of the development and safeguard plan, Facade scheduling plans. Action program and execution schedule, Draft regulation of the ‘Architectural Charter’ development and safeguard plan, List of integrated projects. Fourth phase: Documents intended for the instruction and approval procedure. Local technical committee & Public inquiry and deliberation (Contract n ° 14/2010), Ministry of Housing, Urbanism and city policy, Urban Agency of Agadir, 2012-2015 implemented within our architectural firm.

2 Cf. Chapter 4 of our book Architectures du Bien commun. Ethique de la préservation, (Geneva: Métis Presses, 2019).

Reviving Wonder, Changing Mental Habits Salima Naji

3 Naji Salima, ‘Faire émerger l›idée d›une requalification du centre historique de Tiznit (Maroc) : Du projet associatif au projet collectif : la mise en oeuvre d›un projet communal,’ in Les Quartiers Historiques, ed. Etienne Berthold, (Quebec City: Presses de l’Université de Laval, 2013): 209-225 4 As one of the farmers in the palm grove recently said to me with a hint of nostalgia: ‘Re-doing what you organized would not have been possible under this pandemic. We were fortunate to have time, weren’t we?’ For now, as the garbage again accumulates, this time of hope is only held in memories.

5 ‘Reciprocal Maieutic Approach,’ Centro Sviluppo Creativo Danilo Dolci, accessed October 24, 2020, https://en.danilodolci .org/reciprocalmaieutic/

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Thoughts on Care Carolyn F. Strauss

For a number of years Care has been a central topic of investigation at Slow Research Lab, the creative research and curatorial platform I initiated in 2003 and still direct today. ‘Slow research’ in and of itself is a caring stance in that it sees the world through an expansive lens. It invites us—implores us— to slow down so that we might open up, look more closely and listen more deeply, and, by so doing, that we come to more fully acknowledge the complexity and interconnectedness of our world. Care goes hand in hand with that approach in the quality of attention and intention it brings to the myriad ways our lives are entangled with other species and spaces, tempos and temporalities, histories and materialities. Within that dynamic field of our being and becoming, even the most subtle expression of Care can play a significant role.

There is a tendency to frame our ‘projects’ with parameters of time and geography, by naming who was involved, and providing details of the events that transpired. The one that is chronicled here took place in Tiznit, Morocco in 2018-19, bringing together a unique constellation of individuals and organizations, and with their collaborations yielding an array of discoveries and quantifiable results. From a Slow research perspective, however, one could say that this project stretches out across a much longer time span, is linked with many more places and lives, and is informed by the accumulation of life experiences that each person involved brought to it.

In these ways (among others) our ‘new’ initiatives in Tiznit can be traced back through ecologies of knowledge and lineages of practice, as well as unfolding processes of gestation and emergence. ✳ I am cognizant of such intricate webs in my own evolving life—including the presences and teachings of countless people from around the world that have contributed to Slow Research Lab’s programming in recent years. During the project in Tiznit, I thought especially of those from whom I have learned different facets of Care: as an embrace of not-knowing over certainty and discomfort over the norm;2 as a balm for the troubled processes of encounter through which we truly become collective;3 as a tender reminder to take the time that’s needed, and to give time rather than spending it;4 as a vital 25

✳ ‘The word 'emergence' derives from 16th century Middle French émerger and directly from Latin emergere.

Both describe a bringing to the light, a coming forth or coming into view, a rising up. In botany, an 'emergent' is a plant whose root system grows under water while the shoots, leaves and flowers grow above. In contrast with certain dominant (western and modern) conceptions of ‘the new,’ the concept of emergence firmly embeds that which is rising up in a thick web of visible and invisible relations.’ 1

imaginative act—and sometimes also a political one;5 and as an incitement to ‘practice, practice, practice!’ along the pathway to resilience.6 An interest in Care is part of what had drawn me to the work of Salima Naji several years prior to the initiation of this project. To each of her extraordinary projects, Salima brings the anthropologist’s critical eye and depth of knowledge, the rigor and unrelenting attention to detail of an architect, the shrewd calculation of a chess grandmaster, and the generous touch of an artist.7 These attributes of Salima’s approach were our entry into the ‘landscape’ of Tiznit as a place composed of political, historical, social, emotional, and psychological layers. Her projects clearly demonstrating that the contours of Care in such a place are both tangible and immaterial, overt and subtle, expressed in individual acts, enshrined in collective covenants, and intricately linked with past, present, and future. What Salima refers to as the ‘genius of place’ is a function not only of heritage and tradition but also of how people are engaged and committed today. It refers to a landscape populated by ‘caregivers’ from every possible corner of society.

Salima’s depth of insight and the strong support of her team were essential to the success of our collaboration. Their masterful handling of its many moving parts, personalities, and bureaucratic hurdles must be mentioned. I am grateful for the respect and space they gave to our unorthodox modes of creative inquiry, while working hard to keep the project on course through twists and turns that only they, with their profound understanding of the context, could mitigate.

In reflecting back on these experiences, I realize how lucky I was to have gained the trust of so many people and how much they were willing to share. From the beginning, it was important to me that everyone involved view this not as an assignment, but as an opportunity for reflection, for deepening and exchanging knowledge, and thereby for the expansion of both personal and professional horizons. I hoped it would be a process not only of seeding an atmosphere of care among others, but also extending it to ourselves—by giving space to 26

Thoughts on Care Carolyn F. Strauss

our questions, challenging our habits and assumptions, opening to new ways of seeing and being in the world.

For our Netherlands-based group’s first trip to Morocco, I choreographed a sequence of visits that would allow us to experience the natural and built environments at different scales and intensities, and that at the same time would be a chance for us to get to know each other. The unique affordances of such a trip—including its luxuries of space and time away from our busy lives back home—I hoped would make it possible to more deeply exchange ideas, to share our diverse disciplinary perspectives and methods, and importantly to grow trust and friendship.

Leaving Marrakech by car, we travelled southeast over the Tizi n’Tichka pass through the High Atlas mountains, following an ancient caravan route to Telouet and the fortified city of Aït Benhaddou. From there, we turned west to visit several of Salima Naji’s projects in Tata and Guelmim provinces and the Anti-Atlas (Akka Ighane, Ksar Tiskmoudine, Grenier Isserghine, Aït Ouabelli, Agadir Id Aïssa, and Grenier Aguellouy), meeting community caretakers at each place.

Finally, the last three days were spent in Tiznit, focused first on Salima’s main projects there (Aïn Aqdim and Kasbah Aghenaj) and then exploring related structures and conditions of the urban environment—not least the Targa oasis, its water management facilities, and community-run associations.

A critical piece of my personal contribution to that very first phase of our research was encouraging the others to resist the habit of going immediately into work-mode when encountering these places for the first time. There would be plenty of time in the weeks to come for in-depth study and analysis, but on that initial trip, during those first days of ‘arrival,’ I insisted first and foremost that each person shift to a softer focus: opening herself to allow a spectrum of impressions to seep in, seeing what impulses those first imprints stirred up, noting how the body responded, letting intuition take the wheel. This had nothing to do with naiveté or exoticization of the culture, but rather was an exercise in dropping the thinking mind in order to just ‘be’ in and with a place. Not dissimilar to what Zen Buddhism calls shoshin (beginner’s mind), I knew from 27

✳✳ ‘Some mysteries can only be penetrated with a relaxed, unquesting mental attitude. Some kinds of understanding simply refuse to come when they are called. […] Knowing emerges from, and is a response to, not-knowing […] the seedbed in which ideas germinate and responses form. To undertake slow learning, one needs to feel comfortable being ‘at sea’ for a while.’ 8 —Guy Claxton

experience that giving space to the Slow-er, more nebulous parts of one’s self is a practice that can yield new territories of perception and trajectories of knowing. ✳✳ It was during that initial journey we began to understand the cultural symbolism of the ‘threshold,’ to appreciate the significance of in-between collective places, like the open air theater and outdoor kitchens that Salima often included in her heritage restorations, and to recognize the creative potential of neglected gardens and ruins. Through these experiences, we began discussing the concepts of ‘porous architecture’ and ‘softscape’ as means to inciting agency and participation in the urban fabric—both of which later became cornerstones of our project’s more ‘caring’ approach. When we ascended Agadir Id Aïssa in Amtoudi, meticulously restored by Salima, it was touching to see the reconstruction even of stone niches that welcome bees to build their hives within the structure, reserving space for those small yet essential members of the community.

We found evidence of Care everywhere, but we also saw where it was lacking: in the crude concrete buildings that blight the countryside, in the dearth of public green in cities, and in the myriad of spaces (urban and rural) that are dominated by men. In the weeks and months that followed, as our understanding of these challenges grew—especially how they play out in Tiznit—so too did the conviction that our contributions might help move people in a different direction.

Like the prick of an acupuncturist’s needle that recalibrates the flow of energy in the body, we imagined the creative interventions we introduced stimulating old and new channels of citizen engagement.

Sometimes Care is prickly.

My overtures to Care would be incomplete if I failed to mention here how the term has become somewhat of a buzzword lately, or to decry the unfortunate ways that it has been co-opted by the forces of capitalism.9 And it feels especially important to acknowledge how routinely ‘Care’ has been used as sugar-coating for neocolonial exercises performed under the guise of so-called sustainable development. Our project in Tiznit easily risked falling under all of these trappings, 28

Thoughts on Care Carolyn F. Strauss

especially the last. From the outset, I harbored uneasiness about this and particularly questioned the incentives given to this project by the Dutch government, which itself still has a fair amount of colonial reckoning to do. I asked myself and my Netherlands-based colleagues: is our involvement a form of complicity with those forces?

That initial (and ongoing) questioning of the appropriateness of our presence in the context, our right to be there, and especially our desire to develop a project that would ‘benefit’ the citizens of Tiznit, was crucial to our process. What was required of us was not only study and discussion about the site’s history of colonial intrusion, but also about the roles of contemporary design and designers of public space who too often want to dominate the narrative of the places they seek to engage. It felt imperative that we avoid doing the same.

Our Moroccan partners welcomed our critical reflection, even as they reassured us that projects like ours could help to advance their own ongoing initiatives in the city. They were generous in their celebration of our efforts, while gently (but firmly) managing our expectations and critiquing our missteps.

Reflexivity and critique also are qualities of Care.

Midway through the project, when attempting to translate the word Care from English to French, our then-project intern, architect Montana Gray, proposed the term ‘affection’: a word that speaks to attachment, tenderness, devotion, and friendship. Those are most certainly feelings that I developed over the course of this project, especially for my closest collaborators Nika, Marijke, Jana, Cocky, Salima, and David. I am honored to share these pages with them and a few others of the extraordinary individuals who graced our little project with their presence and commitment. Care permeates the methods and experiences they describe in this volume: expressed through practices of humility and vulnerability; found in unscripted moments of discovery; and wrapped up in intimate encounters with self and other, when fragile uncertainties gave way (slow-ly) to breakthroughs in understanding.

In and through their essays, we come to know Care as witnessing, as porousness, as adaptability, as solidarity, and as a partner in (co-)creation.

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1 Carolyn F. Strauss, ‘All in Good Time,’ in The Future of the New: Artistic Innovation in Times of Social Acceleration, ed. Thijs Lijster (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2018): 55-67 2 Cf. Siobhán K. Cronin and Maria Blaisse, ‘Form As Passage’ in Slow Reader: A Resource for Design Thinking and Practice, eds. Ana Paula Pais and Carolyn F. Strauss (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2016): 173 3 Cf. Jeanne van Heeswijk, ‘Preparing For the Not-Yet,’ ibid: 49 4 Uzma Z. Rizvi, ‘Decolonization As Care,’ ibid: 93 5 Cf. Fernando Garcia-Dory, ‘A Different Rhythm,’ ibid: 201 6 Alessandra Pomarico, ‘Situating Us,’ ibid: 220-221 7 When I read on Salima’s blog her comparison of a rammed earth surface to the color fields of Mark Rothko, I knew she was someone I needed to meet.

8 Guy Claxton, Hare Brain Tortoise Mind (London: Fourth Estate Limited, 1997): 6-9.

9 The idea of ‘self-care’ has become a lucrative means to selling products and services on the consumer market, often emphasizing superficial goals of personal wellbeing over collective responsibility. In a similar vein, corporations offer their employees yoga, meditation, and massage as tools for augmenting productivity and competitiveness, ignoring the meaningful traditions of which these practices were born.

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Thoughts on Care Carolyn F. Strauss

Kindling Environmental Awareness Salima Naji

Open-air environmental awareness workshops led by Cocky Eek in the Targa oasis opened up the vastness of the artistic field for children and their parents, while offering them a chance to discover an unknown part of their city.

For almost a week of mornings, Cocky shared with about sixty children (ages 4 to 12)1 the importance of listening to trees and birds, lying on the ground, and feeling all kinds of sensations. She guided them in embracing the special conditions of the palm grove, getting to know plants, collecting materials to be turned into artworks, and even looking at garbage—which is taboo.

Immersed in the oasis, the children were delighted to discover their ability to explore and experiment with many different manipulations of the materials for the creation of masks, disguises and sculptures. They learned to refrain from replicating harmful behavior towards Nature, while the local farmers who had made space to welcome them discovered that natural materials previously viewed as waste, garbage, or feed for livestock could be used to make new objects. The children’s works, although ephemeral, were displayed in their schools and on several occasions in the oasis itself until the end of the cycle.2 These children, whose capacities of self-expression are so routinely dismissed, now garnered looks of admiration.

Wonder lit up their faces.

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The most intense of these special moments with the children took place in June 2019 for the closing of Tiznit’s Week of the Environment. The group from the Netherlands returned to the city to celebrate the culmination of a year of workshops and combined effort. They were joined by children that had previously participated in workshops, gathering together in the Targa once again to create a gigantic collective work of masks and pom-poms and musical instruments. Led by a kind of long dragon, the procession of children left the oasis and crossed the city, their art becoming street art as it moved out to face the urban environment. Adorned with jewels of olive leaves and bells, their festive dress was as sonorous as it was colorful.

1 The beneficiary schools were crèche Amal (medina) and Lalla Meriem (Place du Méchouar) under the convention of the Tiznit Ministry of Education, achieved with the help of the L’blend collective (Tiznit). Special thanks to the exceptional Mr. Gaboune, Director of l’Ecole Lalla Meriem.

2 In February and March 2020, during an exhibition organized in the Tiznit Museum, new workshops around architecture and natural materials were organized for these same schools, co-financed by additional organizations including the Prince Claus Fund and Global Heritage Fund.

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Trash to treasure: creativity unleashed in the oasis | photo: Marijke Annema

Connecting to the nonhuman world | photo: Marijke Annema

Kindred Spirits David Goeury

At the heart of the palm grove, a monster of plastic and bark rises up. Awakened by the children of the medina—kindred spirits with painted faces, adorned with plants, snails, cardboard, and plastics—summoning vital connections with the waste that litters the ground. Thus animated, the beast slowly clambers out of the oasis, undulating towards the old medina, accompanied by a rhythmic rattle of stones in abandoned bottles, and arriving finally at the ancient source.

There, it circles the water, emitting a primal cry of life and respect for the environment. Until, exhausted, it heaves to a halt within the fortified walls of Kasbah Aghenaj. The monster slumbers again. Until when ‌?

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Standing with Two Feet in Complex Matter Cocky Eek

My creative practice consists of designing synaesthetic experiences. Synaesthesia is the domain that deals with the interplay of our senses such as sight, sound, touch, smell, self-motion, and taste. Through the multisensory integration of our senses we are able to experience and interact with our environment.

I create specific synaesthetic experiences in which our inner landscape interferes with the landscape that surrounds us.

I was born and raised in the Dutch polder, one of the flattest open fields in the world. As a child, I loved to hang out there every day and often played on my own with the elements surrounding me. The wind was my favourite. I loved to find my own center in the midst of the biggest storms, it challenged me and I really could find my joy right in her midst.

I prefer working outdoors, where one is exposed to the elements. When our porous bodies are directly exposed to the natural elements they open up more easily and flow in and out with the direct environment. I like to immerse participants in spatial compositions to induce the feeling that they are not moving through space, but rather that space moves through them. One strategy I often implement is altering or blocking one or more sensory input channels of our vision, hearing, or sense of balance. Through this process, the body is forced to find a new equilibrium and new channels are opened, thereby widening the sensorial spectrum to experience the world around us.

Those experience designs come into existence in collaboration with the landscape. For example, I developed the project Landing Sites for the Oerol festival on the island of Terschelling in the north of the Netherlands. The work arose from a beautiful feeling that came over me every time I visited a specific spot along the Dutch coastline: it surprised me, as if I landed on Earth again for a while. ✳ And I wondered if somehow I could enlarge such a feeling to others. I began working along the coastline with simple prototypes to test things out. I visited this place every Monday for about two years, in all kinds of weather, and slowly but surely I started noticing things I did not notice before and I continually received feedback from the place. Along the way, I also invited diverse people on a regular 41

✳ Landing Sites took place at two dynamic inter-tidal sites in the Netherlands. First at the Zandmotor, a coastal landscape created in 2011 as a defense against coastal erosion. Expected to disappear within 15 years, the Zandmotor uses the natural movement of the tides, wind, waves and currents to replenish the beaches of South Holland. The second stage was in the so-called ‘walking dunes’ on the island of Terschelling.

basis to try things out. So my design starts with a question, or a wish, and from there evolves in a reciprocal process between humans and the landscape. The design is clear the moment I am convinced the participants are really experiencing something meaningful in relation to that specific context.

In all my projects I start from zero and from a wondering about basic fundamental principles. I ask myself for instance what it actually means to be a human being standing with two feet on the ground. By walking around in different environments and by doing extensive synaesthetic exercises that I invent myself, I understood more and more that simply standing is not something I can do just by myself. I do this really together with the ground below me. Basic physical principles like gravity can really blow my mind: meaning my brain can not fully comprehend it, but somehow my body is able to sink into it with ease.

In the same way, I came to realize that lying down is something I really don’t do alone. I do this together with my mattress. When I lay down on my mattress and the more I intend to make a deeper connection with my mattress—with each and every body-part(icle)—the more I feel supported by the mattress. There is definitely an exchange happening.

A mattress is made from soft matter and as its supporting surface is greater than its height it does not stand straight up, but is laying down. And when I lay down on my mattress, we instantly have an intersubjective reaction. I perceive my body, my body with the mattress, and therefore my observations in the body of the mattress.

A LANDSCAPE OF TRUST In 2018, I got the invitation from Slow Research Lab to go to Morocco to work with children in the palm grove of Tiznit.

Together with Carolyn, director of this initiative, we talked over the main focus and intensities of the project. The most valuable thing she gave me is that I really felt her trust in me, as I did not know exactly what I was getting into. I was entrusted to step into an unknown territory. Guided not by any preconceived ideas of the place or culture, but rather by a trust for a deeper sense of knowing.

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Standing with Two Feet in Complex Matter Cocky Eek

Operating in an unfamiliar terrain gives me the opportunity to free myself of everything I ‘know.’ When I am walking in a rocky place I don’t fixate my focus, but focus more lively. I am very careful and attentive to the execution of every movement I make, navigating the rocks by tuning in with everything and everybody around me and by trusting my intuition.

Normally I work with students of age 21-31, so before leaving to Morocco I called my friend Devi to ask her how do you actually work young children? She told me that it is exactly the same as working with adults. Period. They have to feel that what they do is meaningful. They want to see the bigger picture, to understand what they are doing it for. Once they find their own fascination within this bigger whole and you succeed at slowing them down, then they can enter a timeless concentration.

The main equipment for my journey was a small notebook. I scribbled on the first page ‘trust your own direct experience’ and tossed it in my suitcase before leaving. And there I was: standing in Tiznit without speaking any word of Arabic or the local Berber language. The place was slow, very slow, as if the whole city was filled with one endless deflating sound: pfffffff… Beautifully aligned women covered in thin fluid chadors were flowing gracefully through the streets carrying various balancing stacks above their heads. Their slowed down pace calmed me instantly. It felt like home.

For the workshop, I was accompanied by Aimane, a young local poet. I felt happy in his company. We strolled together to the open arena in the oasis, which soon would be filled by kids, and I nearly forgot there were still a few things to prepare.

A FIELD EXTENDS TO ALL YOUR RELATIONS The great thing about working outdoors is that the whole body automatically comes in a higher vibrant state when exposed to the rich continuum of the interconnected layers extending from our organism inward and outwards. The Targa oasis in Tiznit was a much denser field compared to the more vast open fields in which I normally operate. But the principles of operating remained the same. Feeling my own two feet connected to the ground below me enables me to operate 43

from my core. From this gravitated, embodied position I take everything that surrounds me in on my inhale and let go on my exhale. Then everything starts to flow with and through numerous other animated events. The field gives very direct feedback and asks you to take a position in the midst of complex matter.

Once I had a young cat. The first days we had him, we were instructed to keep him inside the house for a couple of weeks so he could get used to his new home. The cat was very wild inside the house, he was sort of untamable. I never forget the moment we brought it outside to our garden, the cat completely changed: his eyes were wide open, his ears were standing out to the maximum, and his whole fur was reaching out. You could sense his whole body was in an alert state.

From all directions there was input: moving leaves, some falling blossom petals, ieniemienie insects, tiny seeds, pollen, and all other kinds flying around, a pigeon and another pigeon, dangling branches, a breeze passing through his fur combined with odors nearby and far, a river of noises from over the roof, a closing window on the other side bouncing off its light. And there he was standing on his fours in the garden, totally charged and challenged to take his place in a thick, sentient world.

Every morning when the air was still cool, I entered the oasis and said Good Morning, walking around and tasting the day a bit before the strings of kids started to buzz in to their nice, open and safe learning place. And every morning Omar, the grand host of the oasis, placed some big mats on the earth for the children to sit on. We rotated the mats clockwise during the day to find a proper suncover under the surrounding palm trees. The field’s soft borders were spilling over to the harvested olive orchard of the neighbours, which in their turn were connected to other patches and so on, all together forming the Targa Oasis.

Mmm, let’s ask this landscape: who are your relations?

Standing in this place with my eyes closed and by extending my ears, I hear the city of Tiznit on the south side. To the north side I have to stretch my ears much further to pick up 44

what possibly could be there. And is there any sound above me? Below the ground, I can tap into rotating rhythms of the ancient underground water veins flowing between the Oasis and the perimeter of the City. I continue by sticking my head in the blue sky…

We practiced these kinds of exercises as a group and the children did it with full devotion, reporting among other things that they heard snakes deep down in the Earth or that they could not find words to describe their sensations.

Standing with Two Feet in Complex Matter Cocky Eek

Imagine you’re a stone… and you lie on the ground with your eyes closed. You are very very still and you are lying there already for a very long time.You are lying very comfortably on the ground, adapted to the temperature under you and also to the temperature above you. You are still so that you can hear everything. You can hear all the things close by and also far away and even further away, and you can even hear the sounds inside you. Sometimes there is a tiny insect that crawls over you, but you don’t mind, because stones don’t mind. They are very still, lying there in the field already for a long long time.

In the morning we collected our ingredients for the day: harvesting materials found directly in and around the palm grove. We carefully picked thick cactus disks of the prickly pear and found a long hairy-skin of a dried goat cadaver behind some debris. Tiny yellow flowers of abundant blooming ‘weeds’ were massively collected by the little boys and girls, and pockets of tiny trousers were bulging with the white empty houses of invasive snails. Black and shriveled leftover olives were picked from the ground. An old found pair of trousers, already halfway decomposed into the ground, was a real treasure. The strong, sharp pins from the palm tree’s stems became one of our basic tools. Paper boxes, colored thread sponsored by a beaming owner of the local yarn shop, some pieces from old worn out family fabrics, and glue, lots of glue, were brought in from the city.

With these materials, the kids began creating masks, sooo accurate and with such tiny fingers! Slowly but surely all the soft greyish-green cactus disks were getting eyes, mouths, 45

noses and a few hairy goat beards grew on the disks. One by one the kids placed their designs in front of their faces. It was truly amazing to see that each mask reflected the character of each child so strikingly and so exact, yet in such an unpredictable manner. Each and every cactus-child brought a smile to the face of the whole group. And in these moments I felt it was not only me or the group that were smiling, actually the whole field was smiling.

The Targa oasis was a nourishing place to connect to the non-human world, to move our bodies freely. It bridged our different cultures with ease. I remember one morning we were all sitting on the ground in tinkering mode. As if from nowhere a girl with Down syndrome silently settled herself next to me. I felt her soft body through her terry cloth, and it was strange but my whole body just melted, our bodies were melting together while my hands were still tinkering.

Everyone was moving from a place of full trust and intuition and the trees were silently standing around us having their slightest opinion. We all felt propelled forward by the energy of the collective and there were these magical moments where it seemed that the whole field was in sync. The project felt like a true process of co-creation.

Every day, when leaving the field I thanked it and wished it Good Night. See you tomorrow!

WANDER WALKS Since my return to Amsterdam, I take daily walks in the park close to my house where I visit my friends: the trees, the weeds, the air, the ground, the flows, the smells, and so on.

Before my Moroccon journey, I already did my daily walk in the park, but then I did it in a more functional way. I walked in sport clothing to keep fit: walking an hour a day is good for the body and the mind. Now, in the same park, I am trying to tap into other rhythms besides a human-constructed rhythm.

Now I practice ‘wander walks,’ which easily take me into the zone beyond clock-time and are full of attentive observations and explorations. I still wear my training gear, because it legitimizes me to try out my somewhat peculiar exercises. Day by day these walks really take me by surprise.

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Standing with Two Feet in Complex Matter Cocky Eek

After hesitating for some years, I’ve decided that the next course with my students is to go walking together for a week.

We will stray without a plan, and go wherever our feet will take us.

It’s relatively early in the morning, wind still and the sun is not sky high yet. With our backs facing southeast we are looking up at the bright blue sky stretching out above us.

Now, I ask you to focus on a specific piece of that blue sky.

You don’t have to look very hard, but rather more soft. After a while you may notice that this piece of blue is not one unified color, but that it possibly has some gradual tones. And you may well notice that this piece of blue is not really standing still, but that it is somehow moving.

Now close your eyes very slowly. And while you look at the top of your nose you let this blue matter flow through your eyes into your body. You fill yourself completely up with this blue substance: in your head, neck, chest, arms, hands, belly, your back, legs, feet. Then open your eyes and look again at that same piece of blue sky.

Close your eyes again and pour it in yourself once more and now also fill the spots in your body that you forgot.

Finally, do this procedure for the last time and make sure everything little part of your body is completely filled and maybe it is even spilling over a bit .

Now slowly and carefully open your eyes. You can look a bit at other things, but make sure you really stay this blue matter. And with your blue-substance self very carefully take a few steps, moving until it has vaporized from your body back into the sky.

Shall we give it a try?!

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Cultivating Artistic Responses to Climate Change Salima Naji

As with the workshops for children, artistic encounters with adults brought a more tender look to the city’s manhandled oasis and medina—again encouraging the inhabitants of Tiznit to rediscover and reunite with these encumbered, distressed places.

The workshops co-hosted by Maria Blaisse (Amsterdam) and Amina Agueznay (Casablanca) aimed to merge different fields of reflection around art in the Targa. Fifteen local and international participants were invited to creatively interpret pressing environmental concerns linked to water, waste, native vegetation, and food sovereignty. Experimental processes with materials sourced directly from the oasis yielded a range of poetic objects, temporary interventions, and performances.

Each work carried within it the images or emotions aroused by the powerful presence and guidance of Amina and Maria who animated the space by day and presided over long discussions in the evenings.

As this unfolded, the people of the Abrinaz Association tapped into a world they had never approached so closely.

They were touched by their guests’ interest and commitment to highlighting the agricultural gesture and making the palms of the oasis sacred—such as when a pair of palm fronds became the wings of a choreographer from New York.

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This workshop period facilitated an understanding of the depth of the action—the force of the artistic undertaking—in opening windows to other functions, to other ways of doing and of approaching the world. In the simple process of shaping local materials with their hands, the participants unknowingly left a completely new imprint in the public space, creating a sense of belonging through civic participation.

Not all of the resulting works were spectacular—sometimes for a lack of experience on the part of the participants, or for a lack of time, or for a lack of planning—but they were moving: cultivating a new perspective on the world.

Had the project included only experienced artists who were accustomed to artistic circles, the workshop would have been disconnected from the social context. Perhaps richer in terms of the artistic forms produced, but less rich in terms of societal changes.

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A broken mirror reflects the palms of the Targa | photo: Linnemore Nefdt

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Exploring form through a study of dried plant matter | photo: Louise Rietvink

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Immediacy Maria Blaisse

in nature on many different levels simultaneously the exactly right form is being formed in the most direct way in which function and beauty are the same. it is an energy that is connecting, creating coherence when we experience these glimpses and we get an idea of the awesome powers around us, how things are unfolding which one can experience with deep concentration becoming silent, being in contact with oneself and the material we are working with.

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Weaving the Oasis Amina Agueznay

As an artist and designer, I tell stories, and help others to voice theirs, often working with artisans in collective projects.

My training as an architect has made me deeply aware of the space in which those projects take place. The concept of space, whether open air or defined by walls, remains the same. It is how we occupy space that interests me.

In January 2019, I came to Tiznit to lead a design workshop with Maria. We were joined by a dozen participants, each from our own corner of the world. And so we began the creative process of activating the landscape around us, this oasis that is alive, breathing, and welcoming us.

To enter an oasis is to enter a space that is atemporal and cumulative, where past and present co-exist, inhabited by those who pass through it. The word itself conjures legend, yet it is like any other—urban, semi-rural or rural—place, both subject and setting for individual stories. This is the way we humans appropriate space, by incorporating it into our stories.

We inhabited the space in different ways, gradually forming our relationships to it and to each other. Tables were moved in and out of the welcome shade cast by trees, closer together, further apart.

We learned to respect each other’s individual process within this field of unconfinement, in camouflage, outdoors, part of a whole yet, no, still ourselves. We immersed ourselves in the language of the place, the sounds of nature, listening carefully, hungry for its gifts. It is a generous space. Nature calls out to the natural within us, calming us, opening our eyes to the beauty around us. Our bodies became invested in the space and interacted with the materials that spoke to us, and there in that pastoral dissonance we could put aside the urban shell protecting our most vulnerable selves, and fully enter the intimate process of creation.

We wove this space into our individual stories, and wove ourselves into its own. Every morning we would leave our homes in the medina to gather at the stone walls of Aïn Aqdim, the water source that feeds the oasis. We would follow the water beyond the city gates and into the oasis. This ritual, 57

one of many, formed spontaneously, as natural as the space around us. We began each day with meditation, shared our noonday meals, and afterward lay down together on woven mats to contemplate this place, opening all of our senses to it. We manifested our individual stories as we created, side by side, and when the workshop was complete, we began the choreography of sharing our stories.

So the rituals, thus engrained, formed the work produced within the context of the workshop and informed the transition to presentation. We had entered the space and taken inspiration and materials from it. We left some of our work there, and took the oasis with us to perform the experience of it elsewhere: in the medina, at the basin, at the museum. The ritual of departure was carefully woven into this sequence. First, our work tables were removed, and a tree was planted in their place. Choices were made, to leave the work to sustain itself in the oasis, or to transport it to another space, a performative space. Only then did we leave, tracing our path back to AĂŻn Aqdim, to the medina, to the walls of the kasbah and its museum.

As our bodies moved through the gates and into the ancient city, we left sky and soil behind, following the water, flowing from moment to moment and place to place.

Flowing through time and space.

Weaving time and space.

Weaving the oasis.

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Weaving the Oasis Amina Agueznay

Friction, Curiosity, Openness: Provoking A Different Perspective Salima Naji

The lively hive of activity in the oasis amazed the local bystanders.

It turns out that the farmers as well as other people associated with the oasis invented all kinds of alibis to come to the Targa to observe the amazing events that were going on.

Suddenly, the space was animated by visiting artists performing a kind of meditative ballet as they focused on the creation of objects and artistic research. At first, the strangers were observed with what can only be called suspicious glances, but the initial distrust and cynicism gradually gave way to an admiration that was colored with gratitude.

The place came alive through these artistic interventions—transforming perspectives on what had previously been a despised space—sanctioning it anew in the eyes of the people of Tiznit. Many of them had never even crossed the boundary connecting them to this other side of the city walls, which was so close. Their curiosity piqued, citizens suddenly were coming there for a walk… initially looking on hastily from a distance, then coming a little closer… less stealthily and with less reluctance. Each day new people would pass by, and then, because things would change the following day, they would pass by again. They became less and less fearful and dared to engage.

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For the young artists of Tiznit who participated in this experience, it was a shock. Most of them came from extremely disadvantaged backgrounds, with neither profession nor stable income and in difficult circumstances. They had chosen art in a country where such expression exists solely in very high level social circles, where there is no real art education nor places dedicated to art (outside of the big cities). It was difficult for them not to self-censor, to produce freely, and exercise independence.1 This was confronting for them. There was often apprehension and not always full comprehension, and they were by turns anxious and amazed as they suddenly found themselves penetrating unknown worlds.

The governor of the city was invited to the closing session in the Targa. He had not visited the oasis because he was too disliked, but now his presence was suddenly appreciated and the members of the association were happy about it. They decided to recognize that day by planting olive trees together to symbolically mark these achievements, and they gave the governor the first shovel. The government thus contributed its share of blessings to the site.

It is clear that this kind of activity is needed and also requires still more sessions, more people, and more gatherings to transform the behaviors of these people from a small town and largely enclosed in a very narrow world.

1 The fundamental truth about creating with the hand, which people who use it too little must face, is that they need to develop a part of their body which up to that point has been underused. All of a sudden, several of the local participants in Tiznit were required to be in touch with themselves.

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Continuous unfoldings of life in the oasis | photo: Linnemore Nefdt

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One of many spaces of the Targa that have suffered from neglect | photo: Carolyn F. Strauss

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Oasis Memory: Reflections of an Urban Caretaker Omar Boumehdi

I grew up around the oasis. My parents were farmers and so were their parents. We have always been self-sufficient and never strived to make it a business. I grew up with the understanding that farming is a line of communication between the soil and us. We need to listen: when it needs to rest and when it needs to be watered. This is not done blindly. There is a pattern to the respect. âœł When I left school after my baccalaureate, I tried to combine commerce with my work at the oasis. However, the time I spent working in a shop was very hard. I realized I was not made to stay still in closed spaces. I am a free soul. I find peace in nature, below the palm trees, and in between olive trees. I could not imagine myself living in a big city either. I need this simplicity and the freedom that comes with it.

I think I am very lucky with the choice I have made. It was a very easy choice to make. If I were not to take care of our family’s land, no one else would. My siblings have all taken different paths in life and I, the youngest, am very lucky to be born for this, and to be able to find such pleasure in it. It is a beautiful coincidence (if we may call it so) to find myself under the honorable obligation of serving our land, the heritage, and the traditions.

The oasis is a heritage. A cultural, environmental, and urban heritage. rban: For it unites the founding tribes of Tiznit, U equally sharing water at the oasis. nvironmental: For it represents a green stripe E around the old medina and now, as it has always been, offers a breath of fresh air to the whole of the city. We take our pride from the fact that it has remained a virgin landscape in the face of materialistic invasions. ultural: For all the agricultural techniques, the C chants, and the vocabulary, which you can only find at the oasis and between its community members.

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âœł Oases are powerful symbols not only of productivity, but also of human agency. They attest to the ability of humans to build a viable and livable environment for centuries despite extreme climatic constraints. And they are spaces that offer opportunities for reflection on the inheritance, the present and the future of human societies.

Caring for the oasis transcends the physicality of water, soil, and animals. It is caring for our collective memory.

Caring for the oasis transcends caring for what we have in the present moment. It is a continuity of assuring a decent and healthy future for the people in and outside the oasis, for the plants, and for the animals, today and every day.

Caring for the oasis, as poetic as it is, is also a fight that we lead on a daily basis.

At the oasis, I am not just a farmer taking care of my own land. I am the president of Abrinaz, a community-based organization that both cares for the land and advocates against real estate lobbies. I mentioned earlier how we pride ourselves on keeping our oasis free of materialistic invasion.

We do that with the very little means we have. Real estate lobbies are supported by their money and politicians. We, on the other hand, are supported by the people.

I am not the only one tending to the oasis. I am but a member of a community that has chosen to dedicate its life to looking after it as part of our city’s urban landscape and collective memory.

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Oasis Memory Omar Boumehdi

Precious Things Linnemore Nefdt

it was winter, i was depressed and looking for a way out when the workshop weaving an oasis in the southern moroccan town of tiznit presented itself, led by one of my design gurus maria blaisse and the new to me moroccan designer amina agueznay.

BEGINNING the call for participation was so intriguing—the programme, the place and the people—that i overcame my concern about immersing myself in a creative process for 10 days with mostly complete strangers. i’d had a very difficult year and decided that opening up to this experience could just give me the reset i needed and move me into maker mode—reconnect my head through my heart to my hands. on site i realised that the project could unite some of my passions, of cultures and sustainability. the workshop leaders expressed intentions connecting fragility of place, reconnection to the source—literally that of tiznit and figuratively to one’s personal source—in a process involving the senses and a waiving of judgemental attitudes. i loved that the coaches had such opposing approaches, maria’s deep and concentrated formal focus and amina’s expansive conceptual orientation. i gravitated towards amina with my similar narrative. she understood me well as we bounced off each other, exchanging imagery and ideas. this resulted in collecting concepts like atar anass (traces of what humans leave behind), nidam (order) and achwa-e (chaos). the differing approaches also meant that plans were constantly revised and reconfigured. sometimes that was a challenge and i realised that i was less flexible than i thought. accepting this organic form with lots of slow contact with each other and being immersed in the flow/non-flow of things proved a valuable part of my process.

TIZNITING inspirational architect salima naji, her husband david and team, and picturesque, slow little tiznit with its source and 71

oasis proved an enriching combination. a very special opportunity to get to know a little known part of morocco, it’s people, and their battle for a creative and sustainable environment more intimately. as partners of the project, salima and david are an engaging and complex couple with a deep love for and knowledge of the place. great to be privy to david’s stories of the history, customs and battles with local authorities and salima’s impassioned talk on her work at the impressive tiznit museum and kasbah. one of their team, rachid, proved to be a daily guardian angel and fixer. going from the source bleu in the old town, along the stone marked water path that reminded me of the similar demarcation of the wall in berlin, through the bab to the bordering oasis was a blast of aesthetically exciting old and new orientalism. so photogenic in it’s careful decoration until the rude shock of the piles of rubbish dumped on the ‘no man’s land’ between the city walls and the targa oasis.1 in all this i felt a great freedom to follow my nose and roam the oasis, foraging for clues to its secrets.

FORAGING i found life and death, invasion and protection in thorn bushes, snail colonies, plastic grain bag remains and dead snail shells. i found engagement and disengagement, textile-like weaving, gathering and unravelling in natural and plastic form. correspondances in form and forming too. i mused on the lifespan and attraction of plastic brights between dusty dead vegetation and their relative decomposition processes. i mused on inner and outer, purpose and form, in a vertebra and a hip bone, symbolic of the inner skeleton holding up a body and the exoskeleton housing the body of a snail. the one allowing flexibility, the other rigid protection. i found dissipation, treasures going to waste, turning into trash. human (in)capacity in an intelligent but discouraged young man, the vast original oasis only partly cultivated, the too lofty date palms left unharvested, the city garbage collection efforts thwarted.

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i found unexpected beauty in all of this too, a little girl doing her homework during the harvesting lunch—an answer to the disintegrating pages with curious markings i’d found— and how plastic (grain) bag remains created interesting shapes in between the natural rubble. how old bags and bits of cloth and rope gently swinging in the breeze created an intriguing demarcation / scarecrow line bordering a little plot of land.

WEIGHING atar anass, and nidam and achwa-e. and a re-cognition of the preciousness of all matter. both the organic and the synthetic are in fact of the planet, come out of the earth, only formed by differing agency. both deserving respect, to be handled with care and knowledge. i love plastic but the cradle to cradle thinker in me wants it metabolised safely in a human system and not the natural one. old knowledge and practices of disposal created a minefield of troubling combinations in the targa. was there a way out? i focussed on these combinations in photographic studies of the found objects and in a coupling of the formal and conceptual values and their narratives.

Precious Things Linnemore Nefdt

MAKING half an orange colored plastic grain bag, gathered together at one end like a skirt and a thornbush branch in similar form joined forces in my mind and formed the basis of my theme. both also reminiscent of protection long gone but renewed in that the one protected my gathering hand from the other. trash and treasure / trash to treasure emphasizing the precious with amina’s gold thread, malika’s fine crochet work and my hand stitching. collaging the natural and the man made into suggestive partnerships of material, color and form. creating fetishes/amulets/talismans, monsters, in strict cradle to cradle sense, symbolic of our complex relationship with matter and planetary future.

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precious things to hang on a line inspiration from the demarcation/ scarecrow line bordering the plot we walked by every day, hung with swinging remnants of fabric and plastic bags. dematerialise the line create a floating sensation, objects animated by the breeze between tall supple bamboo posts dug in firmly by omar the guardian of the oasis. 3 posts, 7 amulets/talismans, 2 lines. wear the line claim the treasures like amazigh jewellery, embody the talismanic line and take it back to the city to be dealt with appropriately. *other bubbling ideas for water, mud, movement, stasis and the body needed more time and a better place so i let that go for a possible following workshop.

CONCLUDING all in all i am thankful for this unforgettable experience of ways of being, thought and creation. and that i accomplished my goal of head through heart to hands. i came away feeling better about myself and what i had accomplished, realising that this short period of practice needed a follow-up to get me to where i want to be. not that i completely know what that is‌

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Precious Things Linnemore Nefdt

1 david had stories to tell about the why —distrust, suspicion and sorcery—people not wanting others to look through their garbage in case that could be used as evidence against them or to bewitch the family.

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Notes from an Observer Aimane Idhajji

Allow me to start from the end.

The closing ceremony day was, to me, the proof of the project’s success. The bond the kids and Cocky were able to create through the week manifested in gifts and hugs and kisses that brought tears to my eyes. It was utterly beautiful and honest.

If impact is what we are seeking in such projects, there isn’t a more lasting impact than that created by example, and Cocky has been an example to all kids. She has demonstrated how to be the best version of oneself: smiling, being aware of what surrounds us, listening to everyone and everything, from people to nature.

The oasis that has been an unknown territory to most children of Tiznit has now turned out to be a place where their artistic talents were unleashed. And also where their curiosity was triggered: asking about names and origins of materials, asking about English translations in efforts to directly communicate with Cocky, suggesting ideas, and working to solve problems they faced during the process.

Every workshop started with a listening and feeling activity.

Then they were asked to describe what they heard and felt.

Some expressed their inability to find the words for the emotions that arose. Mr. Gaboune, the principal of Lalla Meriem primary school, took the initiative to explain to the children how natural it is to feel that way. He told them that it is through art that such feelings can find their way out.

After that ‘spiritual’ opening came the time to create.

Instructions were given with as much freedom as possible and the kids started working. Cocky never interfered but always guided. Noticing that the kids were comfortable using industrial glue, she suggested instead binding their creations with natural fibers, which was a better fit for the spirit of the whole project. It was an effortless shift that I believe will make the kids reconsider the choices they have in the future. Some immediately picked it up; some probably need more time. In all cases, there is the potential for long term impact.

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To close each workshop day, there was a collective cleaning session. Those sessions were just as beautiful to observe as the creative exercises, with the kids monitoring each other and holding each other accountable for how tidy everyone’s spot was.

What more needs to be said?

Only that I am grateful for having been part of this journey.

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Notes from an Observer Aimane Idhajji

Building a More Open Space of Encounter Salima Naji

In a final phase, we tackled the space, reviewing and renewing the concrete headquarters of Abrinaz with its wire mesh and broken glass on the top of the walls to deter trespassers: so ugly, so disembodied, so sanitized by a 'modernist' and closed worldview.

Archival images taken prior to these crude constructions were unearthed and discussions ensued about how to improve this locale, forcing the men of the association to reconsider their ideas and attitudes about the place. All of a sudden, there was an outside perspective and the opportunity to receive something new, something of quality and at no cost to them.

(These more or less good motivations should not be ruled out.

They are a reality.)

Together with architect Nika Jazaei and designer Marijke Annema, we designed a meeting place, using a traditional stone walling technique to create benches and a shaded canopy within the courtyard adjacent to the water reservoir. From this, the idea emerged that the association could open its own little cafĂŠ as a gesture of good neighborliness in this area of the city still ‘underground.’ With mud brick and rammed earth, we also constructed a small-scale aedicula, designed to reconcile safety and wonder by giving people a place to securely look out over the water.

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Close by, in a protected area of the palm grove, landscape architect Jana Crepon’s cherished idea of a nursery came to fruition. An unused, walled-in oasis plot was built out to accommodate small groups with masonry benches and portable modular tables. Today it is a site for presenting works by children or artists, with plans still to be realized for planting, for delivering the water to explain the workings of the seguia (irrigation canal), and to discuss the challenges of climate change.

Into the future, we would like to extend this further still: to include offerings for children and teenagers. Drawing and model making workshops. Agriculture workshops. Bird nesting workshops. Workshops about the water in an oasis.

Workshops to evolve ideas around architectural realization in the city, experimenting with plant knots and alternative furniture typologies. And workshops to carry on the previous research about ambient surroundings.1

1 The restoration of the ancient spring AĂŻn Aqdim was followed by a qualitative research study led by Marc Breviglieri and Imen Attia Landoulsi that aimed to show how certain forms of appropriation of public space gradually contribute to the phenomenology of an atmosphere.

The preliminary research focused on sound experiences linked to the water and generated by children playing in the space. See Carnet de recherches Zerka https://zerka.hypotheses.org/category/ ain-zerka 81

The raised throne invites people to climb up for a peek at the water | photo: Carolyn F. Strauss

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A hole can be a place where function and poetry meet | photo: Nika Jazaei

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Sharpening the Intuition Nika Jazaei

I am an architect and urban designer who has worked on projects at a variety of scales both in the Netherlands and abroad. I started this project not long after I stopped working in a design office focusing on interiors, having decided to take a break from full-time work and freelance instead. After two years of designing curtains and exhibitions it was time for me to redefine my career through slowing down and zooming out, in order to find some meaning and significance in what I do and engage with. My intentions were to reconnect with architecture and urban scale projects and to get challenged by the social and cultural aspects of them. I needed inspiration to sharpen my tools, refresh my knowledge and test new methodologies.

Leaving a full-time job was a scary decision and I felt all the insecurities of a fresh starter. My decision began to feel right when Carolyn approached me to join forces in developing ideas for a project collaboration in Morocco. Her idea was to team up with a female architect who she knew called Salima Naji. To understand Salima’s work better, I studied her writings on Berber culture and some of the architectural typologies she had restored in Southern Morocco. I began to draw an image of her in my mind. An architect who is a master of earth architecture. An anthropologist with a mission to guard memories of places. A warrior of cultural heritage.

And so I was in the project.

ACROSS THE ATLAS MOUNTAINS The project began almost immediately after it was chosen by the Stimuleringsfonds. We (the team from the Netherlands) were all briefed by Carolyn about her plan to start the project with a trip. A journey through Morocco, to visit Salima’s work sites, observe the landscape and people, get inspired and begin to come up with ideas for the project, and finally meet Salima in Tiznit. This meant having open eyes, open heart and of course clear intentions of our own input along the way. I remember sitting in the plane to Agadir, staring at the map of the route we were going to take across the Atlas mountains. All those cities with names that I could barely pronounce, where Salima had renovated a granary, a public square, or had built a 87

museum. All projects that an architect would dream of. And all very challenging considering the context and historical value of any building one would touch.

I wondered, in search of my own intentions for this project: How can one be in all these places? How does one find the ‘genius’ of the place (as Salima sometimes refers to it) and how can one expose it? How does one see the potential of a space to regain its former public spirit and energy? How can the ‘sense of place’ of an urban space, an abandoned building or a village be revived? How does one find back the lost memory of all these spaces? If architecture is meant to safeguard the cultural heritage, then how do all these places simultaneously adapt to a new program? What is the significance of these places in the modern time? How do bodies and energies turn a non-place into a place?

LANDSCAPE OBSERVATIONS Crossing the mountains and deserts I observed the landscape, searching for answers. Reading Salima’s writing on Berber culture helped me to look around through a different lens.

In the landscape I found diverse colors of earth, stones, and indigenous plants. Valley after valley we found water, then an oasis, a palm grove with a village or a city that grew next to it. In each city we found different cultures, languages and colors. Colors of earth and stones, architecture, people and their clothes. I wondered at a fertile landscape that could grow both palms and cultures, with vernacular architecture rooting through them in harmony.

The granary in Amtoudi, one of the ancient sites restored by Salima, is standing alone on top of a mountain, overlooking the valley where the village is. This majestic structure rising out of the stone was formerly a vibrant collective place woven into the fabric of daily life. Staring up at it, I wondered how this place functioned in the past and encouraged social behaviors. How and why had the public culture demanded such a place for their existence? What was the story of these people and what were their beginnings and ends? I learned that in such places every form and space serves a purpose and every sign or pattern has a deep cultural 88

Sharpening the Intuition Nika Jazaei

meaning. These meanings are kept and transferred generation by generation through the mediums of architecture, objects, textile, and cultural rituals.

Down in the valley, where the village is, past and future are clearly recognizable by their looks and material, divided into two different clusters of urban fabric. Contemporary citizens have imported their take of modernization through building soul-less concrete structures. These structures pop up in the landscape like aliens, disrupting the natural harmony and stealing the identity of the place. However, one can still observe little efforts taken by the same citizens aiming to compensate for the lost identity and charm. Efforts like using plaster and paint on concrete walls to mimic the clay color, drawing a sign on the doorway or shaping a window into an Aïn. ✳ All efforts that prove the locals’ understanding of the necessity of keeping the material and cultural heritage of these places.

I know several architects who have dedicated their career to vernacular architecture, renovating historic structures, buildings and ancient villages, but what makes Salima’s work exceptional from them goes beyond her dedication to details of architecture. It is how she knows the language, the culture and so connects with people. She works with those who care about their landscape and she works to cultivate that appreciation in others. These are the fine artisans of the region who are later given credit for the work by mentioning their names and putting their pictures in panels displayed at the project sites, creating a sense of community participation and pride.

She respects the originality of the customs with a certain consistency that is informed by her deep knowledge as an anthropologist. She understands that it is only by putting bodies with historical knowledge and techniques into work that cultural heritage can be kept truly alive.

BUT WHAT IS THE PLAN? Living and working in the Netherlands, I have learned that in Dutch culture planning is a mindset and a lifestyle. No matter if you are grabbing a coffee with a friend or doing an urban project, having your agenda at hand is crucial. Planning culture 89

✳ Aïn (‫ نيعلا‬in Arabic) literally means eye or spring. It designates any water point, but also may refer to the ‘evil eye.’ Throughout the Atlas mountains, this motif is found on doors, marking each entrance and important passage of an inhabited place with a sign of protection.

This is also true for the trapezium and diamond shapes on the surfaces of granaries—the locations containing goods, tools and wealth for the year—, inscribed on the architectural body like tattoos on a human body: covering and protecting.1

guarantees efficiency and therefore higher chances of success.

It has many positive sides and saves a lot of time and energy on non-essential decision making. On the other hand it can often seem like inflexibility, making the process rigid and the content too dry.

Starting with this trip, I realized how years of working in Dutch design offices has made me dependent on making plans ahead and how difficult it is to let go of them. On the contrary, working on a project in Morocco can be very unpredictable and plans can change on a dime for many reasons: It could be a religious holiday, changes in power governance (and so taste and decisions)… but what I think of as ‘unpredictable’ also has to do with a different pace of work, cultural perspectives, perceptions of time and management. Through the second phase of our project, we experienced at least two major changes of plan. Adapting to these changes—with a team partly based in Morocco and partly in the Netherlands—we experienced lots of frustration, but it is definitely a process that we learned a lot from and should be proud of. As one of our team members (David Goeury) described, we had to be like the water in the landscape we were making: able to flow in and out, changing direction when necessary.

‘Clayground’ was the name that Marijke and I came up with for our workshop in the second phase of the project. With our workshop we intended to explore material culture and the potential of a collective activity in the Targa oasis to revive its sense of place. We imagined the palm grove as a public place with spatial qualities and an endangered sense of belonging.

Our aim was to gather all bodies and energies together and facilitate activities between different generations, local artists, and artisans to share knowledge and experience.

Our ideas for the workshop came about from studying different techniques of working with clay in the North African context, and also by looking at Aldo van Eyck playgrounds—a modern interpretation of these techniques and a little touch of Dutch design. Clayground would offer temporary grounds to explore clay by making products in two scales of micro (objects) and macro (architectural elements).

Earlier in the project we had found porous or in-between 90

architectural conditions in urban spaces very interesting, and also noticed how simple elements in space could enhance social and public qualities. The macro scale task of our workshop was the creation of a threshold—or ritual point of entry—for the Targa oasis, and at the micro scale to create some furniture and clay pots.

We headed to Morocco in March 2019 to realize our plans, but arrived to find that all we conceived would not be possible. Due to a combination of school holidays and bureaucratic hurdles, we lost the opportunity to work with the youth and the weaving women’s cooperative for our workshop. Unfortunately we had to give up on some of our ideas for the micro scale, but this opened up time to instead apply our macro scale ideas around ‘porous architecture’ to larger-scale building projects. A change that ultimately would help us to ensure the sustainability of our initiatives into the future.

As two young foreign women working together with the local artists and artisans, we triggered some curiosities in the city, which in turn encouraged some citizens to visit our work site every day. We managed to draw the attention of men, children, and even the weaving women to the places we were working in. We had the chance to talk about those new places-in-the-making and introduce their purpose of generating new spatial qualities for the city.

Sharpening the Intuition Nika Jazaei

HY HALF A CIRCLE WHEN YOU CAN HAVE A W CIRCLE : MY STORY WITH ABDULLAH I had drawn half a circle as a seating element around the tree, I showed the image to Abdullah on paper, to be sure that he understood my design. I also poured gypsum powder on the ground, the trace of half a circle going around a tree in the nursery. He smiles, says something in Berber and begins to work with stones to build the base of the seating element. I leave to check the water observation point and come back in an hour and I find the base of a complete circle. I warn him: Abdullah! Nesf al’dayerat! (Half a circle!) He answers: La! La! Dayerat! (No! No! A circle!). At this point I ask Salima’s studio assistant Rachid to step in and save the situation by 91

communicating to Abdullah that the seating needs to be half a circle and not a circle. Rachid starts speaking in Berber and it seems to me that Abdullah disagrees with my idea, beginning his sentence with ‘La la la!’ He gives his counter-idea to Rachid, which reading from his face he seems to find rational.

Rachid turns to me and says: ‘Yes, but Nika why half a circle when you can have a circle?…’ And all of a sudden this question sounded so deeply philosophical and my half a circle so incomplete.

This story sums up my experience of language barriers, communication problems, the translator and personal touch (spirit) of an experienced artisan. Obviously this was not my first experience of misunderstanding with a builder on a work site, but this time was different. Abdullah didn't just make a circular seat around a tree, he also made me think about what that circular form represented. Is that circle a lack of strength in my design? Why was I so concerned that the form follow my drawing? Who was I designing for?

Salima once criticized one of my sketches by saying, ‘You design for you, you should design for them’—and by them she meant the children, the artists, the owners, the association, and the oasis. An underestimated challenge! We were all supposed to be learning from each other no matter how different our views and paces were. And to do that, I had to learn to let go and listen to all the energies that had gathered and gotten involved and to trust the flow of our workshop.

What defines the flexibility and boundaries of our design is definitely beyond the lines on paper. It is happening in the place.

THE LEGACY Traveling to Morocco was the beginning of a journey that helped me look deeper into contextual aspects of architectural and urban projects. It also helped me revisit my skills as a designer and develop a new understanding of working in different landscapes and cultures. Throughout the two phases of our project I was challenged to reconsider methods and processes that I had been working with for years. As architects we claim to be spontaneous, flexible and open to inspirations.

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Sharpening the Intuition Nika Jazaei

That is what creativity means in our profession, and yet in the midst of the process it becomes really difficult to slow down and truly open up.

This journey not only enriched me personally and professionally, but also was an opportunity to break from the rigid frameworks that I was used to. It reminded me to open up to alternatives, to allow my intuition to help guide the process, and thereby to find the magic of place. I’m proud to say that our project has left a legacy for the city of Tiznit and I hope it paves the way for future initiatives, keeping the heritage and ‘genius’ alive.

1 Cf. Salima Naji, ‘A Protection Aesthetic.

Berber Art, between Permanence and Prophylaxis,’ in Cahier du Musée berbère, n°1. (Marrakech: Fondation du Musée Majorelle, 2012).

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Threading stones Marijke Annema

I am walking on the beach on the west coast of Morocco. My eyes scan the strips of shells, stones, seaweed and pieces of plastic that have settled in the sand. I find a stone with lots of holes in it and take it in my hand to have a closer look. One hole pierces right through the sandy body, other holes twist and turn and find each other in the middle and yet others lead to a dead end. A little further I find another stone with holes, another one and another one. I am on to something. The finds follow each other faster and faster. My hand is filling up.

Fortunately, I find a piece of unraveled plastic rope and take a thread out of it. On one end of the string I tie a stone and with the other side I look for a hole in each stone to pull the filament through.

As I continue on my way, threading the stones, the gentle memory of a poem from my childhood emerges.

Ik heb een touw om vast te binden alles wat ik mooi kan vinden alles waar ik veel van hou bind ik vast aan mijn slingertouw 1 I have a rope to bind everything beautiful that I can find everything that I love a lot I tie to my sling rope As a child I spent several holidays camping with my family at the Alabaster Coast in Northern France. Every day we searched for fossils on the clay banks that were exposed at low tide. My father taught me that a fossil is a remnant or a trace of a once-living thing that has turned into stone a long time ago. Are these holes in the stones on my chain also traces of life? Perhaps worms or plants made tunnels under the ground, which then filled with some other material and then the earth around it petrified.

Back in the Netherlands the fossils were stored in a cabinet in the hallway of our home. We lined the slim wooden compartment drawers with paper towels and organised the fossils according to type and size. A fossil 95

reference book was put in the bottom drawer. Once in a while my siblings and I would open the cabinet to show our collection to friends. But however interesting those many millions year old things might have been to them, they could of course never feel the warmth of our holiday memories.

Symptomatically, over time some fossils would pulverize under the influence of the climate of our house, which was so different from that of the sea.

Peculiarly, my way of being on the beach in Morocco resembles my work in the archive of the architects Aldo and Hannie van Eyck. By scanning and archiving thousands of drawings, photographs and texts and spending time in their home full of artifacts from all over the world, I slowly absorbed their ideas.

Nothing that I found in books could compare to being with the real materials and letting them pass through my hands.

Like my family’s fossil cabinet, an archive stores tangible traces of life. The body of things made and collected by Aldo and Hannie offers a unique window into their life and time and is a rich source of inspiration for the future. I safely stored the items, so as to delay their decay, and entered them in a searchable digital catalogue. But that systematic approach seemed so far off from the messiness of the everyday lives those items were rooted in. As with the fossils, again there was this sense of loss in realizing that the thing is not the lived experience.

‘Man still breaths both in and out, when is architecture going to do the same?’ 2 —Aldo van Eyck.

I am a designer engaged with the meaning of home. At home, in our usual relating to things, we can find poetry and assign function. We can find meaning in the open space between matter. A stone with a hole becomes a bead. An empty pot is waiting to be filled. Shaping matter, whether in architecture or design, needs to create an entrance for people to make sense of the in-between. Aldo apparently understood this 96

too. He believed that architecture should assist people’s homecoming. ✳

Threading Stones Marijke Annema

Aldo’s question about ‘breathing’ buildings kept me occupied since our first trip in Morocco in spring 2018, driving from Marrakech through the Atlas mountains down south and west to the city of Tiznit. We heard the sound of singing children channeled through the labyrinthine corridors in the ksar of Tiskmoudine. We hiked up to the granaries of Amtoudi, built from carefully stacked stones and whitewashed roofs with here and there a pronounced hole to let light, air and spirits flow. We were invited into delightfully cool houses with porous walls made of clay. These buildings were breathing.

I was open like a sponge, not knowing what I was looking for, often not having words for what I was seeing, but being drawn to these works in which function and poetry were so skillfully united. In the months following that first trip, I was often unsure about how I could position myself as a designer in this foreign context. Wringing out my impressions of traditional Moroccan architecture and silently guided by Aldo and Hannie, I began to ponder on porosity.

Porous materials have the quality of being able to absorb and release substances like air or water. Similar to transparency, also an interesting physical quality, porosity is about openness. But where transparency is intangible and revealing, porosity is palpable and protective. When it comes to human interactions, transparency suggests we have no secrets, while porosity provides a safe place for things we want to keep to ourselves, without hermetically sealing them.

Nearly a year after the first trip to Morocco, I experienced both physical and social meanings of porosity as we set out to make the courtyard at Abrinaz, the water association of Tiznit’s oasis, a more welcoming place to women and children.

The existing concrete building, consisting of a fenced patio, a walled water basin and a small indoor space, called to be softened and opened up. Close at hand materials like clay, stones, bamboo, and palm, were collected and prepared by local builders and artisans. Salima sketched an observatory for 97

✳ […] ‘Never cease to identify whatever you construct with the people you are constructing it for—for those it will accommodate. Identify a building with that same building entered—hence with those it shelters, and define space—each space built—simply as the appreciation of it.

This circular definition has a purpose, for, whilst it excludes all abstract academic abracadabra, it includes what should never be excluded but paradoxically generally is: I mean those entering it, appreciating it— people. […]

Architecture can do no more, nor should it ever do less, than accommodate people well; assist their homecoming. The rest—those signs and symbols one is worrying about far too much—will either take care of themselves or they just don't matter.’ 3 —Aldo van Eyck

visitors to look at the water in the basin from a safe distance: a high throne made of raw clay, with steps leading up to an opening in the wall.

When Nika and I started working with the builders and artisans we were confronted with the obstacle of words. We did not speak any of the local Tashelhiyt and only a few words of Arabic and French. Talking was insufficient and even when we had Salima’s assistant Rachid to translate for us, we missed a direct exchange. So we all had to tap into a more universal, bodily language: gesturing size and distance, demonstrating techniques, and mimicking people and animals. This improvisation evoked a more immediate presence and of course led to a lot of funny moments.

The clay structure of the observatory needed to be anchored to the concrete wall with huge plugs of rock. The builders Abdullah and Ibrahim roughly estimated the placement of the plugs and steadily began slashing holes into the wall with a pickaxe. Once the rocks were fixed, Abdullah showed me the backside of the wall where the rocks were boldly jutting out.

He stuck up his thumb and raised his eyebrows to ask: Is this good? I had not expected this, but supposedly this was how it was done. Then I looked up to the sky. Birds ‌ we made seats for the birds! I looked at Abdullah, pointed to the rocks and flapped my arms.

My walk on the beach came after a festive closure of a week of workshops in Tiznit that June. Each day a singing chain of some twenty-five children walked from the medina to meet Cocky and me in the oasis. On an empty plot we formed a big circle holding hands. Cocky guided us with different exercises to tune into the elements and creatures around us, from birds to plants, from stones to sky. Then we spread out in smaller groups to collect all sorts of things: snails, lots of snails, leaves, branches, seeds, pieces of cloth and string, bottles, flowers, bones, and plastic trash.

Every treasure was carefully contemplated. How did it look, feel sound or taste? What could one piece tell us about the whole world? A girl was holding a curvy green leaf with red ends adorned with tiny shiny translucent pockets. She showed the rest of us how it looked a bit like a tongue and 98

Threading Stones Marijke Annema

when you scratch and lick it you could taste its salty juice. Her mother had told her that you could use the leaves like water and soap when rubbing them between your hands. All the while Cocky and I understood that we needed to stay in the background, to assist rather than direct, just observing and curiously listening to what the children had to say.

One day we encouraged the children to find a friend in the oasis. A boy came back with a beetle with only five legs. He held the injured animal in his hand so cautiously and lovingly and looked after it for the rest of the afternoon. When it was time to leave, he considered for a moment if he could take his new friend home and continue to care for it. But no, however strong that desire was, he knew that the beetle belonged there in the oasis.

I could relate to the boy’s longing. During the course of the project, I myself had experienced having to let go of something very precious. Now a year later I still haven’t fully accepted it, but I do find comfort in the thought that the hollow traces of life moving through us make us a little bit more porous. Being porous can feel vulnerable, but it also means that we are more receptive to the world around us. Which, as my dance teacher Connor Schumacher ✳✳ reminds me every time, is our natural state of being—and a condition for creation. ‘ Everything opens and closes, in all directions.

Our heart opens and closes, in all directions.

Our lungs open and close, in all directions.

What can you do when your heart is racing uncontrollably?

What can you do when you are losing control of your life?

If you want to take control of your life, take control of your breath.’ 3

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✳✳ Connor Schumacher is a dance artist and artistic leader of Stichting ARK, the foundation with which he organizes movement classes and raves and creates performances. He is interested in everything dance was, everything it has become, and everything it can be in the future. Because somewhere in there is a key to revolutionary thought.

1 Biemans, Ienne, Ik was de zee (Amsterdam: Querido, 1989).

2 Van Eyck, Aldo, ‘There is a garden in her face,’ Forum, no. 3 (August 1960): 121.

3 Address delivered on receiving a honorary doctorate at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, 25 May 1979.

Source: Van Eyck, Aldo, ‘The Ironbound Statement,’ Spazio e Società, no. 8 (December 1979): 43-78.

4 Schumacher, Connor, from the performance Funny Soft Happy & the Opposite, 2019. Each movement class by Connor that I have attended at Dans Ateliers in Rotterdam started with an exercise guided by words along these lines.

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Threading Stones Marijke Annema

Eternal Return Salima Naji

There is still so much to do, and most importantly to continue giving hope and nurturing moments through workshops where there are exchanges, periods dedicated to nature or caring for oneself and others.

In a culture that is closed, very prone to criticism, and easily withdraws into itself, we had no time to lose in the short period of these encounters.

It will be very interesting to continue with what has emerged during these rich days that have been so conducive to acts of creation and were too quickly over. We have the venues, we have trained a handful of organizers, and now we must continue to create even more fertile events like these 1 and to find other budgets.

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1 Certain programming elements continued in 2019, serving children from five communities in the Anti-Atlas within a radius of 500 km during visits to different ancient granary sites by EPFL Lausanne, ENA Agadir, Sorbonne University, and Global Heritage Fund.

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An ancient fertility symbol reimagined by artisan Mustapha Lbahaoui | photo: Louise Rietvink

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Biographies of Contributors

Amina Agueznay is a multifaceted artist whose practice crosses borders of design, architecture, fashion, and traditional weaving techniques. She studied architecture in Washington DC, earning a BArch while also training as a jewellery designer. After returning to Morocco, Agueznay began partnering with government agencies to support artisans in new fields of innovation under the theme ‘Curiosity. Sharing.

Transmission.’ That work exploring traditional forms and locally-sourced materials were an important source of inspiration for her designs, including experiments with wool that scale from the body to architectural space and the creation of monumental installations.

Agueznay’s work was first shown at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris in 1999, and since then has been featured in exhibitions in Casablanca, New York, Rotterdam, Berlin, and Marrakech, among others. She continues to lead workshops and research initiatives in Morocco, as well as at Domaine de Boisbuchet in France, and the DIMAD Center in Spain. www.loftartgallery.net/en /artists/30-amina-agueznay/ Marijke Annema is a designer who examines the relation between people and their everyday environment. She studied at Design Academy Eindhoven, department Man and Living (2011, BDes) and Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam, department Material Utopias (2015, 107

MDes). Central to Annema’s work is the notion of ‘home making’—a sensual relating to space. Accidental discoveries and the intrinsic qualities of materials are paramount to her search for the tension between function and poetry. Whether in the form of an interior design for a hair salon, a cleaning performance or a coiled pot, her work always pleads for the human scale in design. Besides her independent design practice, she has become closely involved in the Aldo+Hannie van Eyck archive in Loenen aan de Vecht. By archiving thousands of drawings, photographs and texts while being in the architects’ house she got a unique look into their world. Recently Marijke started as a teacher in ceramics and textile at Bouwkeet, a social makerspace in her own neighborhood in Rotterdam. www.marijkeannema.com Maria Blaisse is an interdisciplinary artist and materials innovator who investigates the structural systems in nature and applies them in design. She has collaborated with fashion designer Issey Miyake, pop star Paula Abdul, and choreographer Frédéric Flamand, among others, and has had exhibitions in Kyoto, Paris, Perth, London, Amsterdam, New York, and San Francisco. In 2014, a comprehensive retrospective of Blaisse’s career, The Emergence of Form, was exhibited in the Rijksmuseum Twente in Enschede (NL). Her book of the same title was

published by NAi010 Rotterdam in 2013. She regularly gives lectures and leads workshops, sharing her dynamic explorations of material, form, and movement with students and faculty from international universities and creative academies. She lives and works in Amsterdam. www.mariablaisse.com Omar Boumehdi is the director of Association Abrinaz, an association of users of agricultural water in Tiznit. Born into a local farming family, Boumehdi has dedicated his adult life to the association’s mission of defending and promoting the city’s oasis and especially the historic irrigated perimeter of Targa n’Oussengar. The association is involved in all actions aimed at maintaining agricultural activity within that perimeter, including management of the basins and canals dedicated to daily irrigation and ensuring proper functioning of the pumps that complement the traditional systems in place. Abrinaz is open to all beneficiaries of the perimeter wishing to have a share in the collective water from the ancient source Aïn Aqdim.

Jana Crepon is a broadly experienced landscape designer. She graduated with an MA in Landscape Architecture at the Technical University of Dresden and completed her education at the Edinburgh College of Art. In 1995 she began her career in Amsterdam

as part of DS landscape architects, winning first prize in an international competition for two parks at the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. In 2007, she joined the design office Inside/ Outside where she leads the landscape design team, working on projects of different scale and scope in Qatar, China, Taiwan, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the US. Next to her design work, Crepon has become deeply involved in the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, teaching architecture, urban design, and landscape architecture students, leading projects, serving on examination and interim juries, and mentoring graduation students. Crepon regularly lectures about the practice of landscape architecture at conferences and universities. www.insideoutside.nl/Landscapes Cocky Eek is an interdisciplinary artist. She is interested in lightweight spatial compositions, floating and flying experiments, voluminous forms that explore human perception, and synesthetic spatial compositions in relation to the human body. Her work has been presented at DEAF (Rotterdam), Ars Electronica (Linz), Le Lieu Unique (Nantes), Oerol Festival (Terschelling), AxS Festival (Los Angeles), ISEA Albuquerque (New Mexico), the Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai), and Sonic Acts (Amsterdam). Since 2001, she has been a member of FoAM, an international 108

cultural laboratory in Brussels, working together with scientists and media designers to develop spatial designs for responsive environments. She co-founded FoAM-lab, Amsterdam, and received Honorary Mention at the 2011 Prix Ars Electronica for the urban foraging project Boskoi. Since 2009, she has been a core teacher at the ArtScience Interfaculty at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. www.cockyeek.com David Goeury is a researcher in geography at the Espaces Nature et Culture laboratory at Paris IV-La Sorbonne and associate researcher at the Centre Jacques Berque in Rabat. He questions the challenges of new forms of governance, particularly the interactions between NGOs and public authorities.

Since 2002, he has been participating in the ‘Preservation of Sacred and Collective Oasis Sites (Morocco)’ and he is also working on the adaptation of innovations to specific contexts through the reuse of urban wastewater for oasis agriculture.

Currently, he is leading the ZERKA research program, ‘The urbanization of Southern Mediterranean oases,’ a project based on detailed analysis of urban evolution in the city of Tiznit and applied to other cities south of the Mediterranean. The program looks at one of the founding myths of the city linked to the blue spring (Ain Zerka or Ain Aqdim), questioning the profound changes in the symbolic conception of 109

water, in its social management and also the power issues it raises in this urban environment in transformation. www.zerka.hypotheses.org Aimane Idhajji is a cultural activist who believes in the power of art to create social change. He is the co-founder of L’blend, a start-up NGO based in Tiznit that works to promote art, technology, and entrepreneurship in order to help local and regional youth make the leap from a situation of socioeconomic inactivity to one of productivity. The organization is host to lectures, workshops, film screenings, and educational programming that foster a more equitable environment for all genders and backgrounds. www.lblend.org Nika Jazaei is an architect and urban designer at MVRDV architecture office. She completed a BArch at Azad TUTehran (2002-2007) and a European Masters of Urbanism (2008-2010) at the TUDelft. She has been building up her career in the Netherlands by working in some of the most prestigious Dutch architecture and design offices such as Inside Outside and MVRDV. Jazaei has been active as an independent architect/designer parallel to her office work since 2012, she has gained experience in different fields of architecture, landscape and urbanism throughout many projects around the world. Each project has challenged her

beyond architectural practice, giving her insight into different cultures, climates, and ways of communication through design. www.linkedin.com /in/nika-jazaei-05b2a31a Salima Naji is an architect DPLG (École d’Architecture, Paris-La-Villette) and Doctor of Anthropology (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris). In 2004, she won the Young Architects Award from the EDF Foundation, in 2008 she was named as one of the ‘Inspiring Women Expanding Horizons’ by the Mosaic Foundation in Washington DC, and in 2011 received the Holcim Sustainability Award. In 2013, her program ‘Preservation of Sacred and Collective Architectures of Moroccan Oases’ was shortlisted by the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. In 2016, the Royal Academy of Morocco featured Naji’s work at the COP22 climate conference as a model for achieving environmental and social sustainability. In 2018 she was decorated as Chevalière des Arts et des Lettres. Naji is a member of the team that guided the creation of the Berber Museum in Marrakech and continues to be a full member of its scientific committee.

She is a professor at École Nationale d'Architecture in Agadir, and is an associate researcher at the Jacques Berque Center in Rabat as well as at the CRESSON laboratory on urban environments in Grenoble.

Linnemore Nefdt is a cultural researcher and design innovator. Born in South Africa, she studied fine art in Cape Town before pursuing a degree in fashion at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam.

She started her career as a designer, launching her own small brand label, and ended up in education, teaching at the Amsterdam Fashion Institute (AMFI). During her 25 years there, she helped build it into a front-runner in sustainability, ethics, and social issues, and since her retirement she has continued coaching about circular sustainable fashion systems, socially engaged art, and creative youth empowerment. Currently she is part of the core development team of the Camissa Museum in Cape Town, a new museum that offers a decolonized history of the peopling of the Cape by revealing its rich ancestral identities and cultural heritage. www.linnemorenefdt.com/ Carolyn F. Strauss is a curator, educator, and creative facilitator working across the fields of architecture, design, contemporary art, and emerging technologies. She is director of Slow Research Lab, where she develops local and international research activities—exhibitions, publications, workshops, and immersive study experiences—in collaboration with academic, institutional, and nonprofit partners. Strauss is co-editor of the publication Slow Reader: A Resource 110

for Design Thinking and Practice (Valiz 2016) and was a contributor to I Read Where I Am: Exploring New Information Cultures (Valiz 2011) and Future of the New: Artistic Innovation in Times of Social Acceleration (Valiz 2018), as well as to journals such as CRISP (Creative Industry Scientific Programme) and OffRamp: journal of the Southern California Institute of Architecture. In 2017-18 she served as one of the main mentors of the De Appel Curatorial Program in Amsterdam. She is host of the podcast AI Murmurings about intersections of contemporary art and artificial intelligence. www.slowlab.net Association Gardiens de la MĂŠmoire is an association for the safeguarding and rehabilitation of both tangible and intangible cultural heritage of southern Morocco. The association enables the study, protection and enhancement of key elements of the built environment at its societal and anthropological foundations, including technical and scientific intelligibility. It supports a myriad of cultural/heritage projects and related pathways to cultural discovery, as well as support for cultural interpretation. And it invites direct participation of public authorities and civil society in the protection of vernacular heritage and local traditions.

The association currently is engaged in a series of architectural restorations of major heritage sites across southern Morocco, while also developing new 111

sites of cultural significance relating to art, education, and women’s health and welfare. Formed in 2015 by architect Salima Naji, the association is based in Tiznit, Morocco.

Slow Research Lab is a multidisciplinary research and curatorial platform offering an alternative space for theory and experimental practice. Contributing thinkers and practitioners are designers, architects, artists, ecologists, technologists, and activists whose experimental, often speculative forms of practice challenge the conceptual, methodological and experiential boundaries of their varied disciplines. The platform invites them into dynamic, cross-disciplinary processes of dialogue, yielding artifacts that range from ephemeral, (im)material experiments to largescale urban interventions. Past programming partners include the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Holland Festival, Marres House for Contemporary Culture, Pratt Institute, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, among many others. Founded in New York in 2003, a European office, Stichting slowLab Europe, opened in Amsterdam in 2008. www.slowlab.net

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Boumzgou, Ahmed, David Goeury, and Salima Naji, Tiznit, Ain Aqdim, la source à l’origine de la ville. Rabat: DTG, 2016.

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Goeury, David et al, ‘Carnet de recherche Zerka.’ Accessed October 24, 2020. www.zerka.hypotheses.org/zerka -2015-2016 Goeury, David and Naji Salima, ‘Revitalization of the Medina of Tiznit, the new foundation of the oasis.’ Accessed October 24, 2020. http://www.planur-e.es/articulos/ver/ revitalizaci-n-de-la-medina-de-tiznit Naji Salima, ‘Faire émerger l’idée d’une requalification du centre historique de Tiznit (Maroc) : Du projet associatif au projet collectif : la mise en œuvre d’un projet communal.’ In Les Quartiers Historiques. Pressions, Enjeux, Actions, edited by Etienne Berthold, 209-225.

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List of Collaborators

Partners Slow Research Lab Gardiens de la Mémoire Team Marijke Annema Jana Crepon David Goeury Nika Jazaei Salima Naji Carolyn F. Strauss Community associations and schools Association Abrinaz Centre El Mers Cooperative Féminine Amendil Crèche Amal Ecole primaire Lalla Meriem Municipal Authorities Commune de Tiznit Delegation Ministere de l’Education Nationale Contributing artists Amina Agueznay Maria Blaisse Cocky Eek Project assistants Malika Ben Moumen Montana Gray Rachid Ouadelli Louise Rietvink

Workshop facilitators Aimane Idhajji Youness Siddouim Mustapha Lbahaoui Ahmed Ben Ahmed Karim El KAhia Ilham Aghoujdam Ilham Fariss Amine Ouchahoua Coline Kieffer Charlotte Astaes Fatima Ouakhzan Samia Gouafka International workshop participants Vilma Andre Alexandra Goldberg Linnemore Nefdt Ruby Pluhar Jessica Priemus Maaike Anne Stevens Vivien Vuong Thanks / Remerciements Heartfelt gratitude to Lahoussaine Gaboune, director of Ecole Primaire Lalla Meriem, for his generosity, curiosity, and support, as well as to the school’s wonderful parents association.

A special shout out to Yasmin Kursun and Zineb Seghrouchni of the Creative Industries Fund NL for their support throughout the project.

COLOPHON Editor Carolyn F. Strauss Contributors Amina Agueznay Marijke Annema Maria Blaisse Omar Boumehdi Jana Crepon Cocky Eek David Goeury Aimane Idhajji Nika Jazaei Salima Naji Linnemore Nefdt Louise Rietvink Carolyn F. Strauss Graphic design Zuzana Kostelanská www.zuzana.xyz Typeface Bradford LL Publishing Consultant Pia Pol, Valiz, Amsterdam www.valiz.nl Translation and acknowledgments Translation of Salima Naji’s texts by Gigi Branch and Montana Gray Translation of David Goeury’s text by Carolyn F. Strauss The contribution of Omar Boumehdi is based on a conversation with Aimane Idhajji, who also composed the text and translated it into English.

Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND The contributions in this book are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercialNoDerivativeWorks license. For more details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/