TALES OF A NOMADIC CITY

by Christian Vium and Med Lemine Rajel

Tales of a Nomadic City is a long-term col­lab­o­ra­tive research project span­ning two decades. Cen­tred on Nouak­chott, the cap­i­tal city of Mau­ri­ta­nia, it assem­bles oral his­to­ries, ver­nac­u­lar archives, rare archival film and pho­tographs, a fea­ture doc­u­men­tary about the city, as well as a VR expe­ri­ence. The mate­r­i­al is pro­gres­sive­ly given form and pub­lished in books, exhi­bi­tions, and online, meet­ing var­i­ous audi­ences and invit­ing people to revi­sion the his­to­ry of the city.

For this instal­la­tion at the Freiburg­er Film­fo­rum, film excerpts from the archive are pre­sent­ed along­side an immer­sive VR expe­ri­ence co-direct­ed by Chris­t­ian Vium & Med Lemine Rajel, accom­pa­nied by a newsprint pub­li­ca­tion, a cas­sette, and a lim­it­ed-edi­tion poster.

Nouak­chott was con­ceived and by French colo­nial politi­cians, archi­tects, and urban plan­ners, con­struct­ed ex-nihilo in 1958 as the future cap­i­tal of what was to become the inde­pen­dent Islam­ic Repub­lic of Mau­ri­ta­nia. Little more than a clus­ter of houses and two wells in the late 1950s, the city is now home to approx­i­mate­ly two mil­lion people, many of them former nomads orig­i­nat­ing from the sur­round­ing desert. In the 65-year period fol­low­ing inde­pen­dence, it is esti­mat­ed that the per­cent­age of the total pop­u­la­tion living as nomads in Mau­ri­ta­nia dimin­ished from 85 per­cent to 5 per cent. The annual growth of the city between 1977 and 1988 alone was esti­mat­ed at 15 per cent. In the after­maths of the first ’Great Sahe­lian Drought’ of 1968-1973 and the severe droughts of 1982-1985, the number of nomads is con­sid­ered to have dimin­ished by 50 per cent. As else­where in the Sahel and the Sahara, the droughts were dev­as­tat­ing, cat­a­pult­ing the coun­try into a fun­da­men­tal crisis. This made its mark, not least on the cap­i­tal city, with a rural exodus, which con­tin­ues to this day. Tales of a Nomadic City inves­ti­gates the com­plex socio-cul­tur­al trans­for­ma­tions, pro­vid­ing a com­pre­hen­sive and lay­ered anthro­po­log­i­cal nar­ra­tive of this little-known city.

Nouak­chott is a prism through which we may com­pre­hend the extreme social trans­for­ma­tions in a coun­try that was for­mer­ly entire­ly nomadic and cur­rent­ly facing the com­pound­ed chal­lenge of cli­mate change and increas­ing polit­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty in the West African region at large. Engag­ing with the porous inter­sti­tial spaces that emerge at the inter­sec­tion between nomadic and seden­tary worlds, or desert and urban worlds, the project takes a cue from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guat­tar­i’s reflec­tions on ‘nomadol­o­gy’, and the con­fla­tion of smooth and stri­at­ed space. Tales of a Nomadic City presents a mul­ti­modal map­ping of a city in per­pet­u­al transformation.

Chris­t­ian Vium (b. 1980, Den­mark), is Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor in Anthro­pol­o­gy at Aarhus Uni­ver­si­ty (DK). In addi­tion to time-based media, he works increas­ing­ly with large-scale immer­sive instal­la­tions inte­grat­ing pho­tog­ra­phy, films, sound, and archive mate­r­i­al. His work has been exhib­it­ed in 40+ nation­al and inter­na­tion­al exhi­bi­tions. Vium is Prin­ci­pal Inves­ti­ga­tor on the research projects ‘Revi­sion­ing the African City from the Periph­ery’ (Inde­pen­dent Research Foun­da­tion Den­mark, 2025-2028) and ‘North Atlantic Every­day Sto­ries’ (Velux Foun­da­tion, 2024-2027).

Med Lemine Rajel (b. 1986, Mau­ri­ta­nia), is a film­mak­er and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er with his own film pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny based in Nouak­chott, Mau­ri­ta­nia. With ten years of expe­ri­ence as a free­lance video- and pho­to­jour­nal­ist work­ing for clients such as AFP, BBC, Aljazeera, the UN, Al Araby, DMI, the Goethe-Insti­tut and GIZ. Founder of the Teran­im Pop­u­lar Art Center in Nouak­chott, and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, editor, and pro­duc­er on sev­er­al award-win­ning doc­u­men­tary films, includ­ing ‘The Last Shel­ter’ (CPH DOX main award 2021) and ‘The father Prob­a­bly’ (Pro­mo­tion­al Prize of Ober­hausen short film fes­ti­val 2024). BA degree in Soci­ol­o­gy, Uni­ver­sité de Nouak­chott, Mauritania.