TERRISTORIES #1: the territory where we are the heroes!

On November 8th, join the public discussion, listen, testify, speak out and use your stories and imaginations to tell the story of our regions in a different way!
Free entry, subject to prior booking

This event is part of the work carried out by AMU as a founding member of the Mediterranean Foundation for CCI (MIN4CI), which brings together Aix-Marseille Université, Avignon Université, Université Côte d'Azur and the Région Sud.  The MIN4CI Foundation is coordinating a think tank within the EIT Culture & Creativity entitled ‘New narratives for Territories’, alongside partners from Italy, Spain, Germany and Hungary. To inaugurate this series entitled TERRISTORIES, which aims to be replicated within our partner regional universities (Université Côte d'Azur and Université d'Avignon) and in the future by our European partners, we have chosen to look at cartography as an alternative way of writing about the territory.
 

For this first episode in the TERRISTORIES series, we have the immense pleasure of welcoming:

• Elsa Noyons: Artist-researcher born in Amsterdam and living in Marseille, whose work focuses mainly on the themes of habitat, our relationship with a territory, walking and the usefulness of the useless. Her artistic approach is rooted in research and understanding of the territories that surround her. In fact, Elsa Noyons' work always stems from an exploratory approach and is built on direct experience of encounters with the land and its inhabitants: drifting, collecting stories, taking to the streets... in the process, Elsa conducts an investigation into our relationship with the habitat - our habitats. Her ‘Déplier l'Ordinaire’ project, carried out between 2018 and 2020 in the Goutte d'Or district of Paris, was constructed as a real piece of research guided by meetings, interviews with residents, walks and personal observations. It resulted in the production of a series of narrative and sensitive cartographies organised around themes such as The Living, Time and Invisible Borders, tracing the complexity of urban life in the district and placing the visible and the invisible, the temporary and the immutable, side by side and on the same scale. She is currently continuing this work in the Noailles district of Marseille, which she sees as the ‘little sister’ of the Goutte d'Or. Elsa also teaches regularly at the ENSP in Versailles (Ecole Nationale Supérieure du Paysage) and organises urban walks with the Bureau des Guides in Marseille.

 

• Anna Guilló: Artist-researcher in the visual arts at Aix-Marseille University, where she heads the LESA arts studies laboratory. As a member of the "antiAtlas des frontières"-collective, she is particularly interested in alternative cartography and its political implications.  She is also responsible for the "antiAtlas des épistémicides" research project, and runs the journal Tête-à-tête, an art and aesthetics review featuring interviews.

Recent exhibitions:

- Blast, La Fabrique, Toulouse, 18/01/ - 14/02/2024
- Sur les bords du monde: Férales, fières & farouches, FRAC Alsace, Sélestat, 01/07 - 19/11/2023.
- Déplier le monde, Colysée, Maison-folie de Lambersart 08/04 - 27/08/2023.
Recent publications:
- 'Du Google Art au roman contemporain. Écriture, cartographie et géolocalisation’, in Phantasia magazine, Volume 13, “Décrire la carte, écrire le monde”, 2023.
- Satellite images and artistic creation: the best of all worlds’, in Images et mondes composites, Sens Public magazine, 2022.
- www.annaguillo.org

• Bahar Majdzadeh: Iranian artist-researcher. After defending her thesis in Art (Research and Creation) at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne in 2019, she spent four years as a Temporary Teaching and Research Associate (ATER) in Plastic Arts at the University of Aix-Marseille (INSPE). In December 2024 she will join the School of Visual and Media Arts at UQAM (Montreal). In its interdisciplinary approach, the exchange of content, concepts, methods and tools between art and the Humanities and Social Sciences has an impact on the creative process. This cross-fertilisation leads to the development of a critical approach that supports both a reflective stance and a concrete creative project. Analysis of the photographic image plays a key role in her approach, often serving as the starting point for her theoretical reflections and the development of her artistic practice.

 

• Samia Chabani: As a sociologist by training and general coordinator of the Ancrages association, Samia Chabani runs the project dedicated to the cultures and memories of exile in Marseille, created in 2000. An active member of associations, she has been involved since the 1980s in the struggles of the immigrant social movement for equal rights. Her work combines anti-racist and feminist struggles with the promotion of cultural rights. She holds a Master's degree in Migration, Development and Exchanges in the Mediterranean, directed by Claude Liauzu, a French historian specialising in the history of colonisation, and her career has alternated between training in the humanities, social work and community involvement.  Today, from her base in Marseille, she is pursuing a range of initiatives to promote and pass on the heritage of exile, revealing the hidden stories behind it, notably through her work as a journalist and through writing and cultural programming in the public space (urban walks, exhibitions, etc.). The idea is always to disseminate scientific knowledge in a historical perspective of diasporas in France and Marseille in particular. For more than twenty-four years, Ancrages has been developing a range of cultural mediation and popular education activities (heritage walks, educational workshops, travelling exhibitions, etc.) and encouraging local players to gain qualifications in the field of archives, documentation and research, as part of a participatory approach involving local residents.

 

• Emma Vilarem: PhD in cognitive neuroscience, co-founder and director of [S]CITY. Emma Vilarem is co-founder of the [S]CITY agency. She holds a doctorate in cognitive science from the Ecole Normale Supérieure. In the course of her research, she became interested in the perception of emotions within public spaces, and the actions that these emotions provoke. After 5 years of research, Emma co-founded [S]CITY and now devotes her time to studying the impact of the urban environment on our experiences and our health (mental and social), particularly among vulnerable groups. She also works to raise awareness and provide training on how to take account of human functioning in urban projects (France Culture, Le Monde, PCA Stream, World Design Conference, etc.).

 

• Julie de Muer : Author and local resident. Co-founder of the Bureau des guides du GR2013 and the Hôtel du Nord cooperative. After developing a number of innovative cultural projects and venues in Paris (the Guinguette Pirate, the Batofar), Julie de Muer moved to Marseille in 2003, where she ran the cultural radio station Radio Grenouille and the sound design workshop Euphonia until 2009. There she developed her taste for hybridity, using media tools to bring together artistic, scientific and civic approaches to local issues.  From 2009, she became a freelance writer and producer, deepening her work around the interactions between art, heritage and territory. Walking became one of her favourite tools. In the context of Marseille-Provence 2013, European Capital of Culture, she supported or co-founded a number of local projects with artistic teams (Agence touriste with Mathias Poisson, GR2013 with walking artists, Les promenades sonores with Radio Grenouille) and local residents (Hôtel du Nord cooperative). She now works mainly for the Hôtel du Nord cooperative and the GR2013 Guides Office, and is regularly involved in social innovation (27th region) and training (FAI-AR, Université de Provence, Conseil de l'Europe, École du paysage, architecture, etc.).

 

• Dalila Ladjal: Artist and co-founder of SAFI - Du Sens, de l'Audace de la Fantaisie et de l'Imagination. SAFI is a collective of visual artists founded in 2001 by Stéphane Brisset and Dalila Ladjal, who have since been joined by a number of fellow artists. Between the city and nature, SAFI works, learns, dreams, shares, imagines and transmits through plants. Not preserved nature, nor domesticated nature, but the more complex nature of fallow spaces, the boundaries of the city, where play remains possible while raising the challenges of urban development. The collective explores resources, draws on encounters, takes the time of residency, wandering and experimentation to take the pulse of the territories it crosses and highlight the intimate conversation between people and their environment. Based on a repertoire of fundamental gestures: walking, smelling, listening, eating, cooking, tinkering, gardening... SAFI invites the public to cross forgotten areas, to practise collective gestures and to (re)discover unsuspected riches.  These are often sensitive experiences, vernacular gestures that reveal what is hidden from our eyes, perhaps because of habit, and tell us that a ‘weed’ can be an astonishing plant, a culinary delight, a material of the future or a precious remedy... and constitute a real heritage that helps us understand our environment and connects us to each other. We cultivate the conviction that to make headway in the complexities of the world, everyday actions need to be taken. They nourish us, put us on our feet, fill us with wonder, make us curious and inspire us...

 

• Giulia David: Illustrator and graphic facilitator. She will be visually recording our discussions throughout the day and sublimating them in the form of a fresco drawn in real time! To discover her work, click here.