THE PATH OF THE SUN OR THE BARE LIFE © Mohamed-Ali Ltaief
Exile in arabic is ‘Eghtirab’ Moghtareb which means the person who walks towards the sunset (Ghouroub). Exile is a utopian counter-place, as Michel Foucault put it in L'utopie du corps: “my body is like the city of the sun, it has no place, but it is from itself that all possible places, real or topical, emerge and shine”.
The Path of the Sun is a performative and visual research project inspired by Sonnenallee, a street that was once part of the Berlin Wall and eventually became a meeting place for the Arab diaspora. Running through Berlin-Neukölln, dividing North and South, Sonnenallee brings together cafes, popular restaurants and shops with an orientalist aesthetic. The project seeks to study, collect and deconstruct the exotic atmosphere, to rethink conceptually and reflect on the allegories of the foreign in the display cases, in the fantastic products and in the delights of the Orient. To understand the peculiar aesthetics of the Sonnenallee developed in the habitus of the Arab diaspora, we need to understand how the phenomenological process of remembering and forgetting works in its spatial and biopolitical resonance. The work on which the research is based is 'Homo Sacer' by Giorgio Agamben Homo-Sacer a term used in ancient Roman law; is the one who is excluded from civil society and deprived of legal rights, he is not worthy 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 subject to naked murder, is the "holy life". Anyone who has been declared a "Homo Sacer" can only save himself by fleeing.
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.
