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The Greenhouse
2014 -
A platform for experimentation at the crossroads of contemporary art and botany.
Project history
Installed at the Atelier de l'Observatoire in Laasilat, a rural area in the Bouskoura region, the Greenhouse seeks to recreate the ideal conditions for artistic and cultural development, in an environment often hostile to such initiatives, just like vegetables and flowers housed in a recreated universe favourable to their growth. It has been converted to play host to performances, experimentation, workshops and interventions by artists, researchers, botanists and scientists throughout the year.
From 2015, the greenhouse has functioned as a mobile space. It has been installed in urban and suburban public spaces for in-situ projects, inviting artists and participants to approach a certain independence in their thinking processes and creation by freeing themselves from all-too-often constraining exterior influences, and to develop outside of these imposed constraints. The Greenhouse seeks to support – and question - artistic and cultural production, independent of political, economic and social constraints.
The greenhouse has been installed at the following locations :
Centre Culturel les Etoiles de Sidi Moumen, Casablanca – November 2014
Arab League Park, Casablanca– May 2015
Cyber Park, Marrakech – February 2016
Forthcoming locations :
Hay Mohammadi, Derb Moulay Cherif, Casablanca – May 2016
Théâtre des Brigittines, Bruxelles – June 2016
The Greenhouse
The Greenhouse is an open and participative ephemeral space measuring between 150m2 and 200m2 which is installed in the public space. which seeks to welcome and support the development of nex projects, voices and ideas, sheltered from dominant visions. The Greenhouse invites the general public, artists, students, researchers, cultural operators, scientists and local residents to collectively invest this shared space, to carry out and participate in meetings, screenings, listening sessions, project presentations, workshops, radio shows and other artistic interventions.
The Greenhouse includes a library, a meeting and screening area, workshops, a photo studio, a listening point, and a small café with wifi and picnic rugs.
The Greenhouse is an artist project by Mohamed Fariji, developed through the Atelier de l'Observatoire since 2014.
News
2014, Casablanca
In 2014, the Greenhouse was installed at the Etoiles de Sidi Moumen cultural centre (on the outskirts of Casablanca), with the aim to collectively rethink the city and its functions, and to seek to recover urban and suburban spaces. Taking the form of workshops, research, collective creation and contemporary artist interventions with local inhabitants (making and throwing seedbombs, collective reflection on green spaces now used as rubbish tips or parking lots, cartoons, design, recycling, creation of a shared garden, culinary design, mini-publications, etc), the Greenhouse took its first steps within Casablanca.
The Greenhouse, Arab League Park
May 2015, Casablanca
In 2015, artist Mohamed Fariji invited a group of artists, curators, researchers and filmmakers to set up and inhabit the Greenhouse, conceived as a semi-secret and ephemeral space measuring 150m2 at the heart of the Arab League Park in Casablanca. The Greenhouse was made up of a space for co-working and meetings, a free refreshment area, a library, a “young creative” space and a photo studio. Every day, permaculture and guerrilla gardening workshops, performances, on-site installations, and also the presentation of utopic/impossible/dream projects by artists, researchers and filmmakers were carried out for an audience of passers-by, students, school children, associations and Casablancan citizens. A radio show and Greenhouse newspaper documented the project throughout.
February 2016, Marrakech
In February 2016, the Greenhouse was set up in the centre of Marrakesh during the Marrakesh Biennale, with a library of texts, images and sounds open to all, in addition to a program of meetings, lectures, performances, screenings and workshops. The Greenhouse, implemented by a group of institutions working in Morocco such as Afrique in visu, le 18, Saout Radio, le Cube and l’Observatoire, becomes in this way an alternative space in which to collectively reflect on modes of production and the dissemination of art projects, and to present works in progress.
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