School of Walking

School of Walking is a series of walks, conversations, and a collection of audio and video recordings, developed as part of the research project School of Casablanca. The School of Casablanca is a collaborative project that takes as its starting point the legacy of the Casablanca Art School and its innovative pedagogical methods and exhibition strategies in 1960s Morocco.

Walking is an act of resistance; a seemingly inconspicuous, neutral and everyday act of walking as a discursive act of freedom of thought. The process of walking cannot be controlled nor censored and carries the potential to weave relationships between urban texture and text in context of larger discussions of decolonization and modernization. The School of Walking is perceived as a dynamic curriculum that understands different narratives as (erased) parts of the archive of the city, and as the (re)materialization of old and new narratives. Point of departure are the connections between the Casablanca Art School and Souffles Magazine (banned in 1972), both associated with a revolutionary student movement at a time of sit-ins, strikes, and labour unrest. The School of Walking aims to create a political moment in exploring and opening perspectives in dialogue, on how ideas, concepts, and methodologies such as developed in the Casablanca Art School and Souffles can be re-activated and re-viewed today.

What is the effect of revolutionary movements on education, when considering amnesia, the larger capitalist, extractivist drive and the urban modernization processes that produce ruins, ruptures and gaps while moving on to the next swath of land to develop? How to encompass simultaneous realities in movement, while experiencing the city as an environment, an ecosystem where citizens appropriate this ‘live tissue’ daily? The walks, marking moments in space and time, are developed in collaboration with different makers, thinkers, activists and citizens. Participants include students architects, artists, local experts and passers-by.

Part of the research were meetings and discussions with various cultural actors: Bert Flint, Mamma Group/Lahbib El Moumni, Mohamed Rachdi, Kenza Sefrioui, Sabrina Kamili, Florence Darsi, Maud Houssais, Fatima-Zahra Lakrissa, Maria Karim, Mohamed Jibril, Mehdi Azdem, Eric Van Hove. So far, the School of Walking consists of videos of walks by Fatima Mazmouz, Hassan Darsi, Maria Daif, Manal Aziz & Hamza Boussedra, and Mohamed Fariji . In 2023/2024 new walks with filmmaker Nabil Qerjij and architect Imad Dhamani are added. Also in 2021, Bik van der Pol interviewed Bert Flint and created the film At the end of this long journey (November 2021, Marrakesh).

School of Walking - Schirn Kunsthalle

School of Walking, program Nov 2023-Jan 2024

School of Casablanca exhibition booklet

School of Walking, Imad Dhamani

School of Walking, Nabil Qerjij

5 questions to Salma Lahlou