PUBLIC VIEWING

8 – 9 SEPT 2023 | 7:00 PM — 11:00 PM

The SEE DJERBA community exhibits an international selection of media artworks. On view are contemporary artwork working with still and moving images, animation, and creative coding contributing to the recognition of the cultural heritage of water and its universal significance for life.

FLOW The Water Challenge

The SEE DJERBA Community aims to present media artworks that invite visitors to delve into exploring its physical properties, its artistic qualities, its ecological challenges, and its socio-political dimension. With the means of the arts, we wish to ctreate public interest, debate, and action to address present challenges associated with water as a resource, a habitat, and a gap between the Global North and Global South.

ENDANGERED RESOURCE
FLOW is dedicated to the significance of water, and its profound impact on Djerba’s landscapes, culture, and people. The focus is on water urgencies, sparse water resources and the worsening impacts of climate change have combined to create a crippling water crisis not only in Djerba but all of Tunisia and beyond.

POLLUTED HABITAT
FLOW will present contemporary artwork address water ecologies, climate change, and the pollution of the sea that impact daily live and future livig conditions.

CRITICAL BORDER
FLOW aims to encompass the dramatic situation that the Mediterranean Sea has become a mass grave of refugees. Tunisia is both a transit and destination country for refugees. It is currently struggling with the impact of a political and economic crisis which considerably affects the daily lives of Tunisians, for whom migration is often seen as the only viable alternative to falling into severe poverty.

The screening takes place on the back wall of the former cinema in Houmt Souk on 8 and 9 September 2023, the selected works will be on view from 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM accompanied by activities of the local community.

PUBLIC SCREENING
All artworks will be presented as architecture projections.

PUBLIC DEBATE
All displays will be accompanied by information, discussion, and call for action.

SEE DJERBA
The international media art project is a community-driven initiative for media art in public space. It is home to Houmt Souk, the central city of the Tunisian island of Djerba. The island is on the east coast of Tunisia in the Gulf of Gabès. With 514 km² it is the largest island in North Africa.

The SEE DJERBA community realized two media projects in 2019 and 2017. This is the first initiative after the COVID crisis to reactivate the unique activity on the island. In 2023, instead of a decentral exhibition program, it consists of a one-site display for a multitude of media artworks for two nights.

COMMUNITY
The community consists of architects, artists, curators, designers, makers, and thinkers networked across Tunisia through public art activities, innovative crafts projects, socio-cultural workers, and activists featuring socio-political subjects, inclusion, diversity of gender identities, and furthering of human rights. Some live in Djerba, and some are born and raised there, for others it is an iconic site of cultural heritage, and for some, it is simply the place to be in the summer.

The community is linked by similar ambitions and a caring attitude for socio-cultural topics, innovative forms of cooperation, and an enthusiastic persistence despite precarious settings. There is no formal organization behind the productive network. The SEE DJERBA projects start with an open call by the directors dividing the tasks, coping with all of them collectively.

FEATURED IMAGE
Ingo Wendt. SEE DJERBA Houmt Souk 2019. Photo: Corrie Francis Parks.