Dream City 2015

Winding around the Medina of Tunis, the fifth edition of “Dream City 2015 – a multidisciplinary biennial of contemporary art in public space” (4-8.11.2015) addressed the issue “art and social ties" and offered artists from the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa), South Africa and Europe a creative platform on which to fully engage with the more pressing problems of contemporary society through a intense dialogue with the inhabitants and buildings of one of the oldest districts in the capital.

A little less than five years after the Jasmine Revolution, Tunisia is still a society undergoing reconstruction and not surprisingly, this edition has been realised based on the notion that art can be a tool for facilitating social cohesion and inter-cultural dialogue. To broaden the debate on the role of art in a country that is still seeking its full identity, choreographers Selma and Sofiane Ouissi, creators and artistic directors of “Dream City” on behalf of the association Art in Rue – that since 2007 has been organising this biennial in public space – invited for the first time the external curator Jan Goossens, artistic director of the Royal Flemish Theatre KVS in Brussels who has been involved for some time in the development of artistic projects dedicated to the populations of Sub-Saharan Africa that have been emerged from discussion and debate with social and territorial contexts.

In Tunisia, perhaps more than elsewhere, art can be the cement of a new society, a constructive and dynamic practice that contributes to living together in a complex way, at times through provocation or conflict but with the advantage of creating authentic spaces of democratic debate. Precisely for this, unlike previous editions, this edition of “Dream City” has been based on artistic residencies that have brought various artists from South Africa, Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, United Kingdom, Belgium, Italy, France and Switzerland to the Medina, urging them to retrace, interpret and interact with the complex social ties that are woven together in public space.

Starting with the notion that the big questions today, fundamental and partly international, require in-depth responses that are well-anchored in the local dimension, fifteen of the artists involved in this edition of “Dream City” worked through residencies that helped to define site-specific works built with the total involvement of the inhabitants of Medina and in particular its children. The artistic residencies were developed in two stages, the first a period of immersion and research lasting from 3 to 17 May, offered artists a chance to get to know Medina, exploring places and social ties and meeting the inhabitants, the second step, in September, instead regarded the creation of diverse projects with the involvement of local residents who then actively participated in the construction of sets, costumes, art installations and videos.

Through this close dialogue with the Medina of Tunis, the artists addressed its consistency and urban fabric and interpreted testimonies and fragments of the past to build a shared future. This constructively utopian vision of space as a place in which the memories of the community and its projections for the future can coexist, finds further confirmation in the attention that this edition of “Dream City” has dedicated to radical architecture. Among the works presented within the framework of this fifth round it is important to mention the exhibition of the project for the Medina of Tunis developed in 1959 by Yona Friedman who, with this work, began his research Ville Spatiale, a three-dimensional structure, raised above ground able to contain and articulate a way of inhabiting the city organised around the principle of flexibility.

Drawn up to coincide with an international competition to create a large avenue that would have had to cross the Medina causing the partial destruction of the old city centre, Friedman's project solved the issue of the dialogue between the past and the future by proposing a chain of suspended spaces made up of rings assembled in a three-dimensional perspective. As stated by the artist himself in the presentation of the exhibition "since then, I have used this technique in various projects and more recently for what I call iconostasis and the Museum Street that are part of my new theory, architecture without buildings”.

After the fear and sense of isolation that has crossed Tunisia, shaken by the dramatic attack of Sfax the need for open and in-depth exchanges that regard artistic and human perspectives, constructive social projects, creative ideas and emotions is more pressing than ever. Not surprisingly, with the theme “Art and social ties”, most of the works presented over the course of this edition have placed the accent on human relationships articulated around urban space, involving in the construction of the residency projects children, women, men, young and old in an exchange aimed at become acquainted with the history, the present and the future of the local community and its relationships with the international dimension.

Friedman has never considered himself an artist, even though his approach coincides with the orientation of relationship art in which the engagement between spectators, artists and the objects that they produce is total, driving – sometimes – a reversal of roles. The presence of the theorist of Utopies Réalisables in this new edition of “Dream City” appears therefore emblematic of the desire to promote a dialogue between different people, times and spaces with the aim of determining a positive response to the challenges of the contemporary world.
Whether working in the Medina of Tunis or another city in inland Tunisia, the basic idea of this biennial, that brings various artistic disciplines into public space, is that to open the way towards the future there is a need for the involvement of artists who know how to make visible and legible these complex realities, acting through the various levels of interpretation offered by visual arts, music, theatre, dance and architecture.

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