10.09 - 03.10.23

The DERDEK project

Derdek or a collective leap towards performance.
Derdek is a platform dedicated to performance art in Morocco.
Derdek was born out of the need identified among Moroccan artists to take time out to reflect on and experiment collectively with performance art.
Derdek’s objective is not so much to define or limit this practice to a precise framework as to stimulate a momentum that is as much individual as collective, in order to encourage artists to take hold of it and help them to engage in a personal and singular form of writing.

Derdek is a platform dedicated to training, research, creation, production and dissemination of performance art in Morocco and internationally. The project seeks to bring together Moroccan artists from different backgrounds and disciplines (visual arts, performing arts, writing) and researchers, curators, cultural players, structures and art spaces in Morocco and abroad.

Derdek is first and foremost an open, unifying artistic movement that involves the public at every stage of its development, and aspires to make this platform a permeable space for reflection that continues to question its identity, its history and its aspirations.

Derdek was born in 2021 out of a meeting between Nezha Rhondali (Compagnie Irtijal) and Elisabeth Piskernik (Le Cube – independent art room), both of whom were convinced of the challenges and impact of performance art. They began the project with a performance production programme at Le Cube by Compagnie Irtijal.
Today, all Moroccan artists and those living in Morocco are invited to get together, think, experiment and take action.

The training course DERDEK 2023

DERDEK is based on an intensive, professional training course that brings together eight Moroccan artists, three international performance artists and a wide audience to discuss performance art over a one-month period.
DERDEK is a training programme based on both theory and practice, comprising three intensive modules and seven meetings with the public.

The trainers:
Romina de Novellis for the module ‘Gestes et contre-rituels: performer le rite’.
Romina De Novellis is a performer, visual artist and researcher. She trained in dance at the Royal Academy of Dance
in London), she studies the body from an anthropological perspective (EHESS Paris) and through the prism of Mediterranean cultures.

Loïc Touzé for the module “Être présent, Être en présence: ” Le présent est mémoire et anticipation ” Henri Bergson.
Loïc Touzé is a choreographer and teacher. His work is guided by the conviction that the gesture of a performance is an adventure in transformation and emancipation.

Fatima Mazmouz for the “PER FORME! Performative photography and video, the body in all its states”.
Visual photographer Fatima Mazmouz is a conceptual artist. The photographer has transformed her body into a political territory marked by feminism, post-colonialism, memory, resistance and the rewriting of history.

Nezha Rhondali for the closing workshop «Rêver. Du rêve individuel à l’élan collectif ».
Nezha Rhondali is an artist who combines dance and the visual arts, and is a committed teacher. She is the initiator and coordinator of the Derdek project.

Participating artists:
Soukaina Joual, Inès Abergel, Romane Piffaut, Oumayma Abouzid, Salima Moumni, Chérine Amar, Mouna Ahizoune, Sanaa Abouayoub

The parallel programme

Artist talk with Romina De Novellis
10 September, 5pm at Espace Moukhtabart

DERDEK meeting after Romina De Novellis’ module
15 September, 7pm

Artist talk with Loïc Touzé
17 September, 5pm

DERDEK meeting after Loïc Touzé’s module
22 September, 7pm

Artist talk with Fatima Mazmouz
24 September, 5pm

DERDEK meeting after Fatima Mazmouz’s module
29 September, 7pm

Closing & Celebration
3 October, 6pm