March 13– 24, 2024.
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TALES OF A NOMADIC CITY

Christian Vium, Med Lemine Rajel, Kathrine Fremming, Rikke Tambo/ Denmark, Mauritania

‘Tales of a Nomadic City’ is an immersive, multi-platform project chronicling the city of Nouakchott in Mauritania.

Together with citizens, organisations, and institutions as well as authors, artists, and filmmakers, we rewrite the history of the city, affording new narratives for the future.

Since its ex-nihilo construction in 1958 as capital of the independent Republic of Mauritania, Nouakchott has spawned into a dynamic urban organism.

The city is a kaleidoscope through which we may comprehend the extreme social transformations in a country that was formerly entirely nomadic.

Through its experimental form ‘Tales of a Nomadic City’ conceives of the urban as an archipelagic and nomadic territory with a collaborative assemblage approach that challenges linear and progressive models of history and dramaturgy.

The project explores urban history by breaking it into poetic everyday fragments and re-framing these, opposing the dominant historical continuum with jumps and fractures, inviting audiences to challenge occidental conformism.

Assembling a diverse selection of official and vernacular archives, oral histories and audiovisual mappings, and XR components , the project presents an immersive digital archive that aims to become a template for similar community-based projects in the future.

The project consists in :

1) an interactive online platform assembling oral histories, vernacular archives, rare and unseen local archival film and photographs, as well as short VR films accessible to the public via smartphones and tablets and inviting people to upload their personal stories to the living digital archive.

2) a series of immersive VR short films inviting audiences into private homes, and local neighbourhoods across Nouakchott, constituting a contemporary mapping of the city in short everyday scenes that provide an intimate and personal documentary blueprint of the city as it appears today, 65 years after its birth.

3) a site-specific exhibition in Nouakchott consisting of large-format banners (4x3m) with archival photographs made in the exact same locations across the city, inviting inhabitants to reflect on the transformation of the city, and to share personal stories in local workshops organized in conjunction with the exhibition.

4) an ethno-fiction feature documentary envisioned as a ‘conversation’ between the city and its inhabitants enacted through collaborative scripting and critical reframing of unseen archival material juxtaposed with community sourced material and new film recordings.

Project director Christian Vium is Associate Professor in anthropology and a visual artist specialized in co-creative multimodal methodologies and archival research. He has conducted recurrent fieldwork in Nouakchott for two decades and his monograph ‘Ville Nomade’ was awarded the Prix HSBC. During fall 2023 and spring 2024, Christian Vium, is a research fellow at Harvard University’s Film Studies Center and Sensory Ethnography Lab, where he will edit material and further develop the project.

Co-director Med Lemine Rajel runs his own film company in Nouakchott, and has worked for among others AFP, Al-Jazeera, BBC, and the UN and as cinematographer, line-producer, translator, and editor on several documentaries including The Last Shelter (Ousmane Samassekou, CPH:DOX main award 2021). During the project period he will be local lead in Nouakchott.

Christian Vium

Director and Lead Artist, Overall project responsible

Biography:

Christian is an artist and Associate Professor in Anthropology at Aarhus University (DK), where he directs the Multimodal Anthropology Lab. His work has been exhibited in 30+ exhibitions. He is PI on the projects ‘Tales of a Nomadic City’ (Wenner-Gren, 2023), and ‘Nordatlantiske Hverdagsfortællinger (VELUX, 2024-27). His monograph ‘Revisited’, will be published spring 2024 by SPECTOR books. He is finalizing his award-winning project ‘Departed’ on a Carlsberg Monograph Fellowship. In 2023-24, he is research fellow at the Film Studies Center, Harvard University (US).

Med Lemine Rajel

Co-director and Cinematographer, Local Lead in Nouakchott

Biography:

Rajel (b. 1980, Mauritania) is a filmmaker and cinematographer with his own film production company based in Nouakchott, Mauritania. With more than ten years of experience as a freelance video- and photojournalist working for clients such as AFP, BBC, Aljazeera Documentary, the UN, Alaraby, DMI, the Goethe-Institut and GIZ. Founder of the Teranim Popular Art Center in Nouakchott, and cinematographer, editor, and producer on several award-winning documentary films, including ‘The Last Shelter’ (CPH DOX main award 2021). BA degree in Sociology, Université de Nouakchott, Mauritania. Fluent in English, French, Arabic and Hassaniyya.

Kathrine Fremming

XR Producer

Biography:

Kathrine is a business developer at Khora Virtual Reality, looking to establish innovative and creative partnerships with businesses, that are interested to investigate how XR immersive technologies can create value wide across different sectors. With an MSc in Visual Culture and Business Administration, she is currently Dissemination Lead for Khora Contemporary on the EU Creative Europe project Manifest, uniting 12 artists in residence to produce XR artworks adressing collective memories of the transatlantic slavetrade.

Rikke Tambo

Film Producer

Biography:

Rikke is a producer from Copenhagen, Denmark, who has been working in the film industry for more than 10 years. She holds a BA in Film and Media Studies and an MA in Management of Creative Business Processess as well as graduating from the Danish Film School Super16 as a producer in 2016. Rikke works with both fiction and documentary. In 2018 she became a member og the EAVE Network and in 2019 Rikke was chosen to be part of the Cannes Producers Network and Berlinale Talents. She is CEO of Tambo Film.