At the end of this long journey

In dialogue with Bert Flint (November 2021 Marrakesh)

Where and how do times full of potential for change resonate today? What does this say about our world? Who decides what gets transmitted?

While the world was still under the influence of the corona crisis, we travelled to Marrakech in October 2021 to meet Bert Flint. A passionate observer and self-taught cultural anthropologist with a deep affinity for Moroccan and sub-Saharan cultures, he became a teacher at Casablanca Art School from 1965 to 1968. This dynamic school challenged European and Western education and aesthetics by assigning artistic value to the art of Morocco.

We were curious about his reflections because he had always insisted on the recognition of rural cultures in which he saw evidence of an experience of space and time that resonated with the way of life - nomadic or sedentary - and with the means of production. He argued that Moroccan art has its own genealogy rooted in the rural and reaching back to the precolonial era in the Saharan Basin, from Persian to North African art and culture. He also showed that populations from southern Morocco to the Sahel are all part of the same cultural community, with a similar natural environment and common traditions: different worlds with a shared cultural and artistic entity.

Emphasising the material expressions of rural culture, Flint's research and fieldwork helped shape the thinking of the school’s influential artists (Farid Belkahia, Mohammed Chabâa, and Mohamed Melehi) and the art historian Toni Maraini.

In his home in Marrakesh, Flint founded the Tiskiwin museum in 1996. Bik van der Pol conducted several interviews with Flint. Sadly, he died a year later, but what has remained are the recordings of our dialogue that unlocked his archive, his re-collection for us.

In the 35 min long video AT THE END OF THIS LONG JOURNEY (2023), the conversations are juxtaposed with a documentation of the Tiskiwin Museum after Flint’s passing, made by his cousin Joost Flint.

With gratitude to Salma Lahlou for bringing us in touch with Bert Flint and to Joost Flint for the footage of Bert Flint’s collection. Research, filmed and edited by Bik Van der Pol.