Background of the project:
“Waiting for Godot”,2012 is series of four photographs that highlight desperation during our difficult time when the crisis of fundamentals is too big to be handled, a chair comes instead of the human being, to denounce ascribe Machiavellian sense that the chair is assigned to.
I present in this project the chair as statutes of ordinary people overwhelmed by expectations and vain hopes.
Daily activities associated with a chair become almost impossible to make: a journey, work, or anything else will be always accomplished as an unfinished commitment.
Waiting for Godot# the traveler,2012
The Godot for me is not a being or a thing expected but it is the cause of the expectation, in other words, the chair wouldn’t make any achievement of any frivolous, so no matter how long we are going to wait, the chair won’t move. So Godot for me is the metaphor of the human’s error, an error that makes a man incapable of taking over his own grayness and to move towards, the Godot is the prejudices that we all use to argue our weakness, but the weakness itself.
Waiting for Godot#the swimmer,2012 Waiting for Godot#the worker,2012 Waiting for Godot#the homeless,2012
These photographs have a common point which is the wall that plays the role of the wailing Wall for the character “chair”, during his lamentations about the ruins of his life caused by the waiting and the inability to achieve the “chosen movement”, to surpass the monotheism of goals and purposes.
The chair, the metaphor, the wall, the clothes are just a pretext to touch the feeling of inability.So the chair becomes a hybrid identity for waiting, watching time running, and faking living life.
Evolution of the project since 2012
“Waiting for Godot while waiting for himself,2016” is the latest version of this ongoing project, that I have started in 2012, this new creation is an experimental theater project in collaboration with Associazione Culturale Laminarie and produced in DOM – la cupola del Pilastro, Bologna,Italy
Waiting for Godot while waiting for himself,2016 (still) password to view the video is: artdoer1987
“Waiting for Godot” has started with series of four photographs and since 2012, I have been working on this project in order to challenge it, so comes the performance in 2014 “Waiting for my Godot to bless me”, a performance that I’ve made in Morocco during a spiritual event in Sidi Ali, a pilgrimage to the sacred places where thousands of pilgrims are gathered in hope to be blessed in their daily activities and to be in peace with their inner “spirits”, the performance come as a response of what I have lived and I have seen during this gathering, my performance was a reflection on their inner practice where the “Godot” is waited to bless unaccomplished daily activities associated with despair that become accomplished as an unfinished commitment.
Waiting for Godot to bless me,2014 as performed in Moulay Idriss Zarhoune,Fez,Morocco
In 2015, the project has grown into an installation, it come as a development of the project, within this work, I aimed to capture the condition of the ‘Watchman” in his tasks.
Inspired by our daily life, the watchman’ s booth seemed to me the perfect metaphor of what the waiting and the incapacity can cause to us, in his small booth the watchman witnesses the time running and occupying a big space when the physical space where he is working stays unchanged.
Waiting for Godot#the watchman booth,2015 as installed at Les Abattoirs, Casablanca, Mo
During the past years, I have always seek other supports to present the project in order to contradict the stagnation aspects of the waiting.This ongoing project is on perpetual changes in order to seek new mediums.
From photography to performance to installation and theater, since 2012 it has continued to metamorphose itself in order to capture the essence of expectation and the feeling of stagnation.
Waiting for Godot# the workers, 2016
This new version that I have already started to work on in Rabat (Mo) August 2016, it is a try to put a finger on one of the scourges of our contemporary society, which is the unemployment.
I’ve begun to develop “Waiting for Godot#the Worker,2012” into a closer work in the context of my stay in Rabat,where I could document as much as possible the situation of non-workers who strike in front the Moroccan parliament.
I wanted to trace the lives of those people in a deeper and abstract way, to interact with them and let this interaction defines the medium of the presentation of this project.
Where are the strikers??! First visit at the place of the strikes
First days of my stay were calm and without any manifestations, as soon as I carried on walking in this area, I have noticed another category of the non-workers which is the blind unemployed , seeing them has triggered on my the willingness of changing the subject of this research, they have become the subject and the research, the complexity of their situation, the impossibility of the arrival of their Godot seemed to me so real.
As an exterior witness of their situations, I may have a shallow points of view on this problem, I wanted to know more about their daily life, their struggles, I wanted to dig deep inside in order to come out with a work that will give exposure the this problem without being too obvious, I wanted only to tackle and not to give rise to provocative quality of work.
the strike, Rabat (Mo)
the gathering, Rabat (Mo)
After spending a good quality of time with them, watching them on the streets striking or trying to gain their life by selling tissues or holding wooden boxes where the passers can put a penny or two to help them.
livelihood
The outcomes of the research:
Zouhair “discussion with one of the unemployed”, Rabat(Mo)
From the multi discussions that I have with them, I have gathered some pointing sentences that seemed to me so deep and true.
I wanted to safeguard these sentences and put them in the right context and by “right” I mean relevant support so I have chosen to use the tissues as support.
I have translated some of the sentences in braille.
Waiting for Godot# the workers (testimonial),2016 (I’m an unsolved solution)
Waiting for Godot# the workers (testimonial),2016 (I’m a dishonored commitment)
Some of the phrases are coming from “Waiting for Godot while waiting for himself,2016” the performance’s monologue.
The use of the tissues was inevitable, these tissues are their livelihood, I couldn’t stop myself to commit to their issue, I wanted to help so I’ve started an immaterial aspect of this project which is making myself a Godot for them:
I became a Godot among others for them, day after day I was visiting them and buying religiously all the tissues, and each day I noticed that their number was doubled in the places where I used to pass by.
So in that way I’ve made myself a Godot, a kind of Godot that appears for a few days and disappears again (end of stay).
This was and still the main point of this project (the definition of Godot) this new idea about Godot makes it someone or something that used to be with us and stopped being as such.
I was a Godot, because for a few days, I was the ear that they needed, the consideration from outsiders, I was the non-blind society’s look, I was some few money that they needed to earn their day.
The tissues bought form the unemployed during my stay in Rabat,(Mo)
I aim to produce a big box from these tissues, box that relates to the ones hold by the blind unemployed, box hold by the ones who unfortunately cannot invest in tissues.
Waiting for Godot#the workers (Pillars of a life), stuffed tissues forming pillars (collage showing the outcome of the installation)
The installation took the fact of the livelihood of the tissues and makes then subtil and fragile pillars for a space.
Sample of the boxes hold by the unemployed (Contribute with your brothers the unit association for the Blind unemployed graduates God reward you with good)
Waiting for Godot#the workers (supportive system), 2016 ink on paper
Waiting for Godot#the workers (supportive system), 2016 ink on paper
Waiting for Godot#the workers (supportive system), 2016 ink on paper
Waiting for Godot#the workers (supportive system), 2016 ink on paper
Waiting for Godot#the workers (supportive system), 2016 ink on paper
I’ve used the boxes as a metaphor if not an abstraction to those people, what I see in those boxes is a supportive system, a manner to hold on each other, a kind of rumination too,a rumination for the past.
The use of dotting in the drawings is a try to activate a common point between us (Sighted) and the blind, a common that we have lived once, which is the learning to write as first step, where dotting were the most easy way to learn how to write except that for us (sighted) there was many ways to learn but for them it is the only way.
The use of braille technique and dotting is a reminder of what they used to dream of back in school and what they are doing now.
Working on the boxes drawings
Waiting for Godot#the workers (supportive system), 2016 Perforated Paper
Waiting for Godot#the workers (supportive system), 2016 Perforated Paper
Among these plastic research comes the installation, that would be boxes and inside each box will be an iPod is playing the blind unemployed’s confessions, the viewer will use the headphones and while he is connected to the box he can understand the the confessions translated in English and written in a perforated way on the paper so he can read by touching the paper surface.
Waiting for Godot#the workers (confessions),2016 (sketch /audio boxes)
In this project, Godot has taken another form and also my artistic mediums have been challenged, the confrontation and the time spent with the blind has given me an urge to pursuit for the other definitions of Godot.
If Godot is a work for those people, or an opportunity to be capable to serve the society in a productive way, I m sure that there will be another Godot more complicated than this “right” (the right to be employed).
How it’s possible to spend years waiting for a “Right”! A work, how a can it change into a daily humiliation, how Godot for those people can be translated into a job, a desire to not be an encumbrance anymore.
Their waiting is not about an unrecognizable wish, their Godot is a work, a chair instead of the small one that they use while selling the tissues and holding the boxes, a productive chair that will guarantee their dignity and make them overcome the society’s blind look that sees them as worthless disabled.