“As part of the Islands of Time research project, the performance Nomadic Resilience took place in the Western Sahara territories, collaborating with El Boujdour Refugee camp, Escuela de Formación Audiovisual Abidin Kaid Saleh and the Resistance Sahara Documentary by Sidal Ergüder - Zero state productions Ltd. Nomadism as a form of migratory process, memory as a form of resilience - Western Sahara has been disputed since 1975 when Morocco claimed the territory as part of the kingdom, and the Polisario (Frente Popular de Liberación de Saguía el Hamra y Río de Oro) fought a guerrilla war for the Sahrawi people’s independence. Centred on the interaction between the Saharawis and their own living environment, the performance highlights the process of desertification as a representation of the Sahrawi’s nomadic culture deterritorialization process. The desert and its nomadic delimitations are imagined as an undivided epistemological unit, a territory in which the Saharawis are represented as an abstract entity extending beyond the boundaries of the confined community that forms it. The collected materials utilised during the performance act as embodiments of constructions of limits/boundaries, taking place through the denaturation of spaces, while spaces are redistributed, eradicating identities, and identities are subjugated by a control type of repression. The project traces those mobile limits that consolidate these confined communities’ “imagined” deterritorialization process through living archives and unwritten knowledge.” NM
NOMADIC RESILIENCE - Memory as a form of resilience. Location 01 / El Boujdour Refugee camp (MA/WS), Western Sahara territories. Performance photographic analogic documentation. Performance: 6x2m, Sahara’s sand, water, camp’s water, dust, pigments, and used engine oil on linen, 2019.
