New project : Elephant in the Mediterranean

We are delighted to announce that our project “Elephant in the Mediterranean” is selected by MADAR for the regional grant scheme.

About the project 

Moroccans live with new configurations and transformations generated by the presence of new communities of migrants  in their daily life and public space.  At the same time, migrants may be the “disturbing foreigner” (Freud, 1919) and the object of a double representation : pity or a source of danger.
“Elephant in the Mediterranean”, as a research-action project, goes back to Aristotle’s Poetics to try to reconstruct catharsis through the two emotions that constitute it: horror and pity. They constitute the guiding axis of the research as two categories of representations forming the hypothesis of a research that focuses on a category of cohabitants who share the same territory, daily life and space, but who are nevertheless carriers of other identities, different referents and cultures, within the Moroccan context.
Horror and pity constitute, at the same time, two elements of the artistic direction of a street theater play, whose main character is a giant elephant puppet (4x3x1,5m), carrying inside actors, telling stories, anecdotes and experienced situations. And above all by bringing to the surface of the public debate the elephant in the Mediterranean, questions around migration, alterity, racism, …with the aim to deconstruct discourses contributing towards stereotypical perceptions of migrants.