In this presentation I explore how modernist mass housing and urban planning in the Maghreb is a central site not only in the global history of architecture, but also for the exploration of the links between aesthetics, built environment and political constitution. Building on the argument present in Colonial Modern: Aesthetics of the Past, Rebellions of the Future (2010) the first part of my paper examines how mass housing architecture simultaneously emerges from colonial capitalism in North Africa and frames the decolonial process. How do bidonvilles participate in movements of political self-constitution? How do brutalist apartment buildings become instruments of nation-building? The second part of my paper explores how contemporary artists from the Maghreb engage the aftermath of these buildings and life in modernist built environment. Why do artists like Kader Attia recreate bidonvilles in galleries? What does it mean for a Moroccan architecture association (MAMMA) to create merchandise like posters and mugs documenting brutalist office buildings and mosques? What do videos of life in high-rise buildings in the www.this-was-tomorrow.net project work to communicate about the past and future? I hope to show how the Maghreb was not only a key element in the global history of mass housing, but should be read as a central site of discussions of its future.

Since the end of the past century, France’s pull factor for Maghrebi migrant-hopefuls has gradually weakened. In turn, there has been an increase in migrations at the margin of the traditional Maghreb-France axis, to neighboring countries such as Spain, Italy, Belgium, etc. These ex-centric migrations also include return migrations of retired migrants and, surprisingly, also of their offspring who were born in Europe. The Maghreb has indeed become an Eldorado of sorts for disillusioned European citizens of Maghrebi descent living in countries north of the Mediterranean. The centering of the Maghreb has taken form at many levels, including identitarian, economic, professional, infrastructural and geopolitical. For example, since the financial crisis Morocco has made it on the world’s radar as a place of successful start-ups offering professional opportunities to Europeans who have migrated south. The kingdom has also become a host country to a growing number of sub-Saharan Africans who, instead of viewing Morocco as merely a place of transit, have instead settled there. Infamous for being the site of departure for thousands of migrant hopefuls embarking on rickety dinghies and perishing in their attempts to cross the Strait of Gibraltar for the last forty years, Tangier engaged in the Pharaonic project of expanding its harbor with the aim of turning it into a mega marina and one of the major sites of attraction for cruise lines in the Mediterranean. I argue that ex-centering migrations and the recent centering of the Maghreb have interested artists who have imagined or (re-)presented the Maghreb as an immigration site, thus questioning common conceptions of it exclusively as a set of “sending countries.” After discussing the evolution of ex-centered migrations (away from France) I will illustrate my contention that the Maghreb has been conceptualized as an alternative pull center with examples of real-life southward migrations to Morocco and Algeria as well as through literary and cinematic analyses and analyses of songs within two musical genres, namely, the established Algerian-Moroccan Raï and the more recent Maghrebi-French Raï N’B, which have both often condemned emigration, embraced patriotic and nostalgic sentiments and advocated for a return “home.”

As part of a larger ongoing project, Capitalizing Morocco, I am exploring the research of Yasmine Berriane and the art of Yto Barrada, as they address the current politics and geopoetics of the environmental patrimony in Morocco. Capitalizing Morocco, a work in progress, explores the modernization of Morocco and its recent development of non-Arabic (especially Anglophone) print, digital and economic literacies, “capitalizing” its geo- identity. In her artwork and practice, Yto Barrada has explored the natural history of Morocco and its ecological patrimony, creating sculpture, prints, books and films about the botanical and geological history, about land use and loss in development. In her book A Guide to Trees; for Governors and Gardeners 2011 (limited, numbered, signed edition of 350+25A.P.), Yto Barrada speaks of Morocco and also to Morocco, posing questions about land and landscape, power and capital. In her sculpted world map Tectonic Plate (2010) and with her Lyautey Unit blocks and dinosaur on wheels (2010), she plays with geography, colonial history, and geological history, challenging the revaluation of Morocco’s natural patrimony in a world market. The research work of Yasmine Berriane, informed by political science and ethnography, also explores the natural heritage of Morocco, “with an emphasis on power relations, practices and institutional changes in these contexts where neoliberal reforms and norms are introduced. “ Yasmine Berriane describes her current project “on the link between the intensified commodification of land and the emergence of new forms of protest and negotiation, and of processes of differentiation in the Maghreb.” This work extends her earlier work on indirect forms of rule, in intermediary spaces of participation and movement against unequal land rights. Examples from the Moroccan south focus debates about land rights, water rights, and archeological and ecological patrimony in the Sahara, contraflow mobility and the renegotiation and capitalization of natural resources. Inspired by the work of Yto Barrada and Yasmine Berriane, I will explore nuances of Morocco’s re-positioning through recent local case studies that I have been following: with rainfall fluctuation not only shaping the PIB/GNP but also re-introducing nomadism in consistent if still limited ways, and with drip-irrigation creating new agricultural products for European markets; with solar panel development and the marketing of power to other African nations; and with the flux of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, return and reverse migration from Spain, and the relocation of Saharawi from Tindouf.