>> SUMMIT BETWEEN LAND AND SEA

co curated by Leyla Dakhli et Adnen El Ghali

The Mediterranean Sea, constantly transformed into a cemetery, can only be crossed through a logic steeped in violence and through itineraries of escape and panic it seems. It is, nevertheless, a commercial space traveled and traversed by goods, traveled, and traversed by military facilities, likewise. When the Suez Canal was blocked by a massive cargo, the entire world was counting the commercial losses prompted by this obstruction.

The Mediterranean is a multi-faceted flow. In this space of tension, we feel it is perhaps time we lingered a little to find buoys and to reflect on what ports are, starting from these points of departure and arrival. Ports are inhabited and haunted by presences inscribed in the territory, by links established with hinterland, by peoples who have come and gone and by social worlds that were born of them: infrastructures, markets, housing, cosmopolitism, and relationships with other near of far ports. They draw concrete geographies as well as imaginary links, they trace rapports of solidarity and conflict.

>>  PROGRAMME OF THE SUMMIT

                       > October 3rd 2022 10.00 am- 1.00 pm

Panel 1: Port Ghosts - The port-open door: the port and the city, extension or extraterritoriality?

The Port of Tunis is a shifting territory, it has moved according to the transformations of the fragile ecosystem that carry it and according to political changes. From Punic ports, a masterpiece preserved in the gulf of Tunis, to the industrial complex today called the harbor and currently managed by The Office of the Merchant Marine and Ports in the Goulette-Rades area, worlds have gone by, leaving behind ghostly presences. It is through this territory and its transformations that other changes which the city and the region in general underwent, can be thought about and understood. There are stories that can bring these links back to life, help understand the mutations of people and spaces, inscription, erasure, the traces of some visual and sound landscapes and certain smells which characterize these spaces of in-betweeness.

Adnen El Ghali (Tunisia): Moderator - architect, urban planner, graduate in political science and and PhD in history.

Eric Corijn (Belgium): Keynote - Philosopher of culture and sociologist, professor in Urban Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

Panelists

Hicham Bouzid (Morocco): Co-founder of Think Tangier. Hichem Bouzid is a cultural operator and independent curator. He has collaborated since 2010 with different artistic and cultural organizations in Morocco and abroad.

Wolette Thiam (Senegal): Architect and urban planner, graduated in 2010 from the University of Brasilia, specializing in urban morphology and building materials. Since 2017, Thiam has been in charge of Urban Planning, Compliance and Validations for the new cities of Diamniadio and Lac Rose.

François Gruson (France): architect, Doctor of Architecture and Professor at National School of Architecture of Paris-Malaquais, where he directs the Department of World(s) in Change. Gruson is a co-manager of OPERA Architects in Paris. Founder and president of La Fabrique in Senegal.

Safa Cherif (Tunisia) : architect graduated from the National School of Architecture of Tunis, with more than 9 years of experience in several national institutions and international organizations. Cherif is also member of the association Edifices et mémoires.

                      > October 3rd 2022 03.00 pm - 6.00 pm

Panel 2 : Stories and imaginations, remembering and inventing new mythologies - A space of struggle for dignity

Ports allow space for stories to be made, they are places where tales can be collected, and rumors circulated. In this space, which can seem chaotic, but which is nevertheless founded on precise rules and proceedings elaborated through the years, there is meaning. It cannot be subsumed under an idealized vision of the coexistence of diversities or a misunderstood cosmopolitism, it is also a space of experimentation with social divisions and hierarchies, a space of struggle.

Leyla Dakhli (Tunisia): Moderator - historian, specialist in the intellectual and social history of the contemporary Arab world.

Jocelyne Dakhlia (Tunisia/France): Keynote - Historian of the Maghreb and the Mediterranean. She is currently working on a book on the Sultanian Harems and the question of despotism. She has conducted research on languages and historical interrelations in the Mediterranean.

Panelists

Layla Baamara (Algeria): political scientist, specialist in the commitment and mobilizations in Algeria. She is a researcher at the Institute for Research on the Contemporary Maghreb in Tunis, a researcher associated with the ERC project Drafting and Enacting the Revolutions in the Arab Mediterranean (Dream) and the Mediterranean Center for Sociology, Political Science and History (Mesopolhis) of the University of Aix-Marseille.

Youssef El Chazli (Egypt): Lecturer in sociology at the University of Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis. His research focuses on protest mobilizations, infrastructure projects and the politics of nature.

                     > October 04th 2022 10.00 am- 1.00 pm

Panel 3: What does the Mediterranean border?

It is not so simple to answer this question if one does not believe in the idea of the neutrality of borders. The sea is as much a natural barrier as it is a means to move along and connect spaces. Yet, the territories of Southern and Eastern Mediterranean have become spaces of crossing in a world of walls, borders and camps.

- Port-camps : State of confinement spaces in Mediterranean ports ?

- Which directions do migrants take? Writing the story of migration by the South, looking at the territories emptied of population due to migration; watching real borders appear heading towards the South, and also remembering that migration has not always been in the same direction. 

Leyla Dakhli (Tunisia): Moderator - historian, specialist in the intellectual and social history of the contemporary Arab world.

Panelists

Ahlam Chemlali (Denmark-Morocco) : PhD at DIIS - Danish Institute of International Studies and the Department of Politics and Society at Aalborg University. Her research focuses on the local effects of European outsourcing in North Africa.

Farida Souiah (Algeria): teacher-researcher in political science at the emlyon business school. She obtained her PhD in political science at Sciences Po Paris (2014) and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Lausanne (2014-2017) and at Aix-Marseille University (2017-2020). Her research focuses on migration, the politics of migration, and social movements in Algeria and Tunisia.

Alfonso Campisi (Italy): Academician, University Professor of Romance and Italian Philology at the Faculty of Letters, Arts and Humanities at the University of Manouba (Tunisia); Professor of the first Chair in the world of Sicilian Language and Culture ; author of Memory and Tales of the Mediterranean: Sicilian Emigration in Tunisia XIX and XX centuries (Tunis, 2016).

Valentina Zagaria (Italy): anthropologist based in Tunis, working on issues of borders, migration and political change. Valentina is also the founder of the theater company Senza, with which she writes and directs ethnographic theater.

                    > October 04th 2022 03.00 pm - 6.00 pm

Panel 4: Spaces on the edge and in crisis

Being on the edge, the port is situated in a fragile territory, fragilized even more by the heavy infrastructure taking place. In a world threatened by significant ecological transformations, hence the issue of food sovereignty, the scarcity of water resources is increasingly alarming, what can be learnt from this edge?

- Mobilizations caught in the crisis ecological/economic/political.

Adnen El Ghali (Tunisia): Moderator - architect, urban planner, graduate in political science and PhD in history.

Panelists

Marine Calmet (France): lawyer in environmental and indigenous peoples' rights, spokesperson in France for the collective “Or de question” opposed to the project "Montagne d'or" and the mining industry in Guyana.

Habib Ayeb (Tunisia): geographer, teacher and researcher at the University of Paris VIII is our guest today on the theme "food security and the impact of the international health situation on the issue of food crisis".

Wahid Ferchichi (Tunisia): Professor of Public Law University of Carthage, School of Legal, Political and Social Sciences of Tunis.

Amal Jrad (Tunisia): Consultant in environmental law and sustainable development (Tunisia). Jrad is part of the Green Tunisia Network and coordinator of the Green Climate Fund project.

Yassine Turki (Tunisia): Urban planner, teacher-researcher. His work focuses on the development of urban public action instruments, particularly after the Revolution in Tunisia.

Francesco Bellina (Italy): documentary photographer. His artistic work focuses mainly on contemporary socio-political issues, with a particular emphasis on the theme of migration.

Stefano Liberti (Italy): journalist and filmmaker, who regularly publishes reportages in Italian and foreign magazines. His latest book is “Terra bruciata. How the environmental crisis is changing Italy and our lives. His latest documentary is "Soyalism" (co-directed with Enrico Parenti), screened in dozens of festivals around the world.

>> About BETWEEN LAND AND SEA

About BETWEEN LAND AND SEA BETWEEN LAND AND SEA is a political encounter and a pro[1]gramme of original artistic and theatrical productions  developed and presented between Palermo (Studio Rizoma), Tunis (Dream City Festival), and Bremen (Theater Bremen). It creates the first participatory and long-term artistic collaboration between the three port cities, acting as a bridge between Europe and the Maghreb and between the South and the North of Europe.

BETWEEN LAND AND SEA engages more than 50 artists, workers, researchers, migrants, fishermen, farmers and citizens from Palermo, Tunis, Bremen, Beirut, New York, Abidjan, Berlin, Hamburg, Brussels, Dakar, Bamako to examine and critically reflect the existing connections between port cities and their intertwined histories, linked by global migration and trade.

>> ARTISTIC PROGRAMME

In consonance with the conferences of the Between Land and See Summit, an artistic program will be held: creation and concert Rébétiko-Malouf by Nidhal Yahyaoui, performance and installation The Journey by Rossella Biscotti, the video Our Sea I: Choreography for a woman and a stone by Lily Abichahine, presentation of the project Gli Ultimi Pescatori by Francesco Bellina and the outcomle of the workshop on scenography by Decoratelier (Jozef Wouters and Menno Vandevelde).