Collective Museum – Citizen Project for a Museum of Collective Memory

 

Discussion event

 

3pm, 2 November 2019

Speakers: Mohamed Fariji, L’Atelier de l’Observatoire, Thulani Ruchia, artist, Mike Small, Citizen Network.

 

To coincide with the opening of Fariji L’Atelier de l’Observatoire’s exhibition, Collective Museum – Citizen Project for a Museum of Collective Memory, Collective have invited three guests to discuss through their research and activism ideas of around collective memory. All the speakers are interested in who gets to tell the story of their city, who is left out of the dominant narratives and how they can be given voice. All three speakers will reflect on what a  Collective Museum could look like and what the conditions would be to produce it. 

 

Mohamed Fariji is based in Casablanca. Mohamed Fariji develops long term artistic projects which question the role of the artist and the individual in shaping his city and environment. His works, in a variety of media, questions the involvement of public officials and policy makers in this process. He established the Observatory (www.atelierobservatoire.com) located in the counrtyside near Casablanca. 

He has recently engaged in critical and collective reflection on the possible re-use of public spaces, including the investigation of the imagery and mythology surrounding the Abandoned Aquarium of Casablanca.

 

Thulani Ruchia is an artist based in Glasgow. His current exhibition sugar and bones at the Civic Rooms. This a site specific installation responds to the imperial architecture of the Civic Room and its surrounds and seeks to make an interjection about our collective memory and who we are as a city. Thulani is currently a committee member at Transmission.

 

Mike Small is a freelance writer, journalist, author and publisher. He has written for the Guardian, Sunday Herald, Sunday National, Open Democracy, Variant, Lobster and Z Magazine. He is currently working on two books, one on the ideas of Patrick Geddes and one on the recent history of Scotland.

He has edited Bella Caledonia since 2007.