THE PATH OF THE SUN OR THE BARE LIFE © Mohamedali Ltaief
Exile in Arabic is “Eghtirab”, Moghtareb which means, the person who walks towards the sunset Ghouroub. The exile is a utopian counter-place in a whatever diaspora as Michel Foucault says in the Utopia of the Body:« My body is like the city of the sun, it has no place, but it is from itself that emerge and shine all possible places, real ones or topical ones ».
The Path of the Sun or the Bare Life is a performative and visual research project inspired by „Sonnenallee“. The street was once a part of “Berliner Mauer” and eventually became the meeting point for the “Arab diaspora”. Crossing Berlin-Neukölln, separating North and South, „Sonnenallee“ brings together cafés, popular restaurants, and shops, distinguished by oriental/orientalist aesthetics. The visual approach is to collect and recompose the exotic, kitsch, and foreigner allegory and signs: in the showcases, in the fantastic products, and in the delights of the Orient. To understand the peculiar, and petulant aesthetic of the street of “Sonnenallee” that developed in the spatial habitus of the Arab diaspora; we must understand how the phenomenological process of remembering and forgetting in its spatial resonances. To unravel and decipher the codes of Self-Orientalism we need first an aesthetic recontextualisation.
The work on which the research is based is “Homo Sacer” by Giorgio Agamben. Homosacer in ancient Roman law, is the one who is excluded from civil society, and stripped from juridical rights. He is not worth enough to be sacrificed to the gods but whoever kills him will not be condemned. The life that cannot be sacrificed (because it is not valuable enough), but which is, nevertheless, exposed to naked murder, is the « holy life ». Anyone who has been declared a « Homo Sacer » can only save himself by fleeing, seeking refuge in a foreign country, for he is exposed at any moment to the threat of murder. He is constantly concerning the biopolitics that has banished him. The living Homo Sacer is both excluded and trapped, he is a freedman and a prisoner.
Mohamed-Ali conducted research during his residency in Tunis on the market of Chinese products: the Boumendil market in the Medina of Tunis. In particular, he investigates the impact of the Chinese market on Sidi-Boumendi street history of the present and explores with Omar Karray their particular soundscape.
Madrasa El Achouria. Medina of Tunis, Tunisia. 2021
with Omar Karray and Rindala Pereverzev
video: Imed Aouadi
sound: Omar Karray
video performance: Slim Baccar
voices: Marina Resende Santos, Ayed Fadhel,
Rindala Pereverzev and Mohamedali Ltaief.
Production of L'Art Rue Tunis
Dream City Residency supported by Goethe-Institut Tunis and AFAC Beirut
Research grants in the field of performing arts/dance 2019 Senate Berlin
