Sahara Chronicle | 2006-2007
A COLLECTION OF VIDEOS ON MOBILITY AND THE POLITICS OF CONTAINMENT IN THE SAHARA
Video collection containing an undefined number of short videos documenting the present sub-Saharan exodus towards Europe. The piece examines the politics of mobility and containment which lies at the heart of the current global geopolitics and takes a close look at the modalities and logistics of the migration system in the Sahara. Unlike the networks facilitated by lasting material infrastructures such as rails or fiberglass, the trans-Saharan migration network is a vibrant process of spatialization performed by the psychic dynamics of anxiety, fantasy and desire, a web made of obstinacy and vulnerability.
The material is gathered during three fieldtrips to the major gates and nodes of the trans-Saharan migration network in Morocco, Niger, and Mauritania. In their loose interconnectedness and their wide spread geography, Sahara Chronicle mirrors the migration network itself. It includes documents on Agadez in Niger, capital of the Tuareg and gate to the Saharan basin for the main migration routes coming from West Africa; Nouadhibou, the northern port of Mauritania located on the border to the Polisario Front / Western Sahara from where migrants leave on boats to the Canary Islands; Oujda on the Algerian border where desert crossers enter Morocco; and Laayoune in the Western Sahara, departure point for boats leaving to Spain.
Sahara Chronicle has no intention to construct a homogenous, overarching, contemporary narrative of a phenomenon that has long roots in colonial Africa and is extremely diverse and fragile in its present social organization and human experience. No authorial voice or any other narrative device is used to tie them together, the meaning is produced by the viewer who has to extract it from the interstices between the videos, i.e. from the connecting lines between the nodes where migratory intensity is bundled, which is the stretch most invisible to the eye. Dispersing the viewpoint acknowledges at the same time the multiple and cooperative process of knowledge produced on the way.
SAHARA CHRONICLE is part of THE MAGHREB CONNECTION. It is the expansion of AGADEZ CHRONICLE which consists of the first 4 videos relating to the migration hub Agadez in Niger which was produced for the exhibitions of THE MAGHREB CONNECTION in Cairo and Geneva 2005/2006. The full version of SAHARA CHRONICLE was first exhibited at Arnolfini, Bristol in the context of Port City in September 2007.
01_DESERT TRUCK TERMINAL 13' 00"
02_DESERT RADIO DRONE 5' 40"
03_INTERVIEW ADAWA 10' 20"
04_URANIUM MINE 3' 46"
05_TUAREG BORDER GUIDES 3' 47"
06_IRON ORE TRAIN 2' 56"
07_FISHERY IN EEZ 7' 20"
08_OCTOPUS PROCESSING PLANT 3' 35"
09_RED CRESCENT CAMP INSPECTION 7' 25"
10_OUJDA FRONTIERLAND 7'10"
11_ARCHITECTURES OF MOBILITY 3' 35"
12_DEPORTATION PRISON LAAYOUNE 5' 46"
TOTAL DURATION 76 ‘