I was born in Paris in 71
and I grew up in Tangier
And Im bi-national
because I was born in France
My French passport is my most important document
I come from a country where the borders are
closed since 1991 now
And so Im a very lucky,
privileged dual citizen
I can go to any Arab country,
which you cant do with a Moroccan passport
The title of the project is A Life Full of Holes
And the subtitleit was about the
Strait of the Gibraltar
and its called the Strait Project
The strait became a very important place for me
It was a place where what was at stake
there in the particular place and time
had a lot of meaning for me
for other places of the world
It was a place where historically,
Hercules separated Europe from Africa
Torn
The strait was the colonial border
The holes in the project A Life Full of Holes
were initially about the absence of state,
because there was no responsible government,
for thirty years, that was taking care of Tangier
Tangier and the zone of Tangier
was an abandoned place in the north
Abandoned to drug dealers, abandoned to
For various reasons
It was a place that was non grata
This is the border between the Spanish city
of Ceuta on the Moroccan territory
And its it is the border
Its a place where people cross in both directions
all day long, the people who
Both economies depend on that place
Fuel that is sold cheaper,
all the goods, the contraband,
all the smuggling goods go from there
Both military and the police from both countries
see that all day
Its a very corrupted, interesting place
And you can see refrigerators floating on the sea
There are just people under,
picking up refrigerator
I never got that shot,
but Id love to get it
You have people who learned
how to throw things over the fence,
because the fences become very
So you have kids that are training all day
to throw things on the other side of the border
The more there is strategies to close it,
the more you have solutions that are invented
It just makes it more dangerous
Thats what the result of more closure is,
of the border
The choice of the Strait of the Gibraltar was,
of course, a way of talking about a particular place
mine, my hometown, my familiar territory
But it happens in many other places
The interesting malaise that is taking place
in these border zones
ours or the Mexican or with populations
that have completely different economic situations,
and with circulation happening, goods or people,
in one way or the other
what I find very interesting is the creativity
that comes from these places
The We know that no one can close
a border In America, you know that
The holes are everywhere
Im in a position of incredible power
because of my ability to leave
Id say that possibility changes everything
My ability, because of my work,
to try to articulate things,
thats another privilege
To name the disease and to point at the symptoms
Id say, yeah, I just lift a rock
and the termites and the holes are everywhere
My role is to transfigure them
through what I can do
Happens to be art
I have the perception,
but the perception is nothing
unless you do something with it