Tales of a Nomadic City - Interview with Christian Vium & Med Lemin Rajel by Cosima Kopp

 

The term “nomadic city” seems con­tra­dic­to­ry, can you explain why you choose this title? 

Chris­t­ian Vium: Up until recent­ly Mau­ri­ta­nia was almost entire­ly nomadic. The French colo­nial admin­is­tra­tion began con­struct­ing Nouak­chott in the late 1950s. Quite quick­ly people from the desert areas start­ed coming into the city. So, in a sense, the city evolved beyond seden­tary logic. The city can be seen as a pro­lon­ga­tion of that nomadic kind of life that is still present today in the minds of the people that make the city.  

Med Lemin Rajel: Many people living in the city today came because of cli­mate change, droughts that  pushed people to go from the desert to the city, but the city was not pre­pared for  that. Today they are nav­i­gat­ing in a modern city, but they are nav­i­gat­ing as nomads.  The city is moving like a nomadic camp, sim­i­lar to what a tra­di­tion­al nomad does: if  there is no green on this side we move to the other.  

Can you explain how these two aspects of nomadic and seden­tary life relate to Deleuze and Guat­tari?  

Chris­t­ian Vium: In terms of Deleuze and Guat­tari, that is a more philo­soph­i­cal ref­er­ence, they speak of the logic of the state or the seden­tary logic, as this very par­tic­u­lar grid system that they call the stri­at­ed space. This is what we know from other cities like New York, where you have streets and avenues. You actu­al­ly have the same thing in Nouak­chott, at least in the orig­i­nal city plan that was built by the French colo­nial admin­is­tra­tion. You have the avenues and the streets that kind of define the urban space or topog­ra­phy. Deleuze and Guat­tari con­trast that with what they call the smooth space, a space that is not defined by this par­tic­u­lar grid logic. That’s the space that they relate to the nomad. It’s an ana­lyt­i­cal way of think­ing because the two coex­ist. It’s not like you have stri­at­ed space here and then smooth space there, for me Nouak­chott is the per­fect exam­ple of that. Because of this con­fla­tion of the nomadic logic with the seden­tary kind of system and the way that they coex­ist.  

Chris­t­ian, your research in Nouak­chott start­ed in 2009, what were your first impres­sions of the city? 

Chris­t­ian Vium: At first I would work mainly with people in the desert areas, but with the years I noticed con­nec­tions between the desert and the city.  In my own way I had to figure out what kind of a place this city was. Ini­tial­ly I was just walk­ing around in the out­skirts of the city, car­ry­ing my camera, a tripod and a GPS to reg­is­ter the pho­tographs I made. For me it was a way of fig­ur­ing out, what does this place look like? I was work­ing mainly in the periph­er­al areas, because those were the areas where people would come from the desert and they were not very well doc­u­ment­ed. People would invite me in for tea or a con­ver­sa­tion. I dis­cov­ered that people had their own pho­tographs that were not avail­able any­where else, family pho­tographs that showed their lives. It was a dif­fer­ent prism to under­stand the city than what I could find in the ‘offi­cial’ archives like news­pa­pers or the colo­nial French archives that show a very par­tic­u­lar kind of his­to­ry of the city. So, from the onset this project devel­oped as an assem­blage of dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives. When speak­ing about his­to­ry and archives, we’ve been dis­cussing a lot about this ver­nac­u­lar archive that is a pop­u­lar archive that is not writ­ten down. It exists in songs and in poetry and in sto­ries that people tell each other. It is some­thing very char­ac­ter­is­tic of a nomadic lifestyle in a way. It’s a form of poetry that’s part of Nouak­chott that Med and I are both com­plete­ly intrigued by and want to under­stand and trans­mit to others in var­i­ous ways. 

How did your work­ing rela­tion­ship start? And how does your col­lab­o­ra­tive work­flow look like? 

Med Lemin Rajel: When we first met, we both had quite a common sense of what both of us were look­ing for. I prac­tise more film­mak­ing, but I’m also from a soci­ol­o­gy back­ground. When I came to the city very young and there were so many things around me I could­n’t under­stand, that’s why I decid­ed to study soci­ol­o­gy. Devel­op­ing this project togeth­er over time, we get more and more under­stand­ing of how we learn from each other. I think we both pro­vid­ed a good point of view to the project. I am just some­one from Nouak­chott who had to under­stand the city, because I had my inter­nal per­spec­tive and view of it. One of the things I learned quite a lot from Chris­tians research, how he tries from his out­side per­spec­tive to under­stand what people explain to him, but he also fol­lows or sits down and watch­es how things happen. 

Chris­t­ian Vium: I was prepar­ing to do a body of film work based on the research in the pre­ced­ing decade and then I dis­cov­ered Med, a person I had never met before, who was a film­mak­er in Nouak­chott. Sud­den­ly I met some­body who knows the his­to­ry of film, who has expe­ri­ence in film­mak­ing, trans­lat­ing, pro­duc­tion and with a huge net­work in the city. It was really a per­fect match for us. Some­how, we fig­ured out this new way of doing col­lab­o­ra­tive work that actu­al­ly pro­duces a lot of new knowl­edge, but not in the kind of con­ven­tion­al way where I would come as a researcher with pre­de­fined ques­tions. Here, we’re trying to do it in a more play­ful and hope­ful­ly lev­elled way. I think that’s where the film­mak­ing and the work­shops we orga­nize are so pro­duc­tive because it’s just anoth­er way of engag­ing and being togeth­er. 

How do these work­shops look like? 

Chris­t­ian Vium: We’re work­ing on a fea­ture film that is a hybrid ethno-fic­tion that bends the genre between doc­u­men­tary and fic­tion. Most of the scenes and the people are based on research, but not all of what hap­pens is a doc­u­men­tary that just unfolds, scenes are par­tial­ly script­ed and sequenced.    

Med Lemin Rajel: We work­shop with dif­fer­ent people around the city, we intro­duce them to our film idea and ask them ques­tions. Last time we work­shopped one of the main char­ac­ters in the film, an 11-year-old girl, with a group of young women. They had expe­ri­enced many of the same things, and added more infor­ma­tion about the char­ac­ter based on their own expe­ri­ences. This char­ac­ter is built out of so many people. Reflect­ing not only one person, but reflect­ing a gen­er­a­tion that has the same expe­ri­ences. 

Chris­t­ian Vium: When we’re togeth­er in a con­ver­sa­tion or a work­shop we com­pli­ment each other. I can permit myself to ques­tion that from the out­side and push people a little bit some­times. Some­times when you’re doing more con­ven­tion­al research, it can be a bit arti­fi­cial. I’m the for­eign pro­fes­sor, sup­posed to be very well edu­cat­ed, and people can feel intim­i­dat­ed by me because I’m asking ques­tions that they think they should be able to respond to, and they have an idea of what answers I might want. Where­as in work­shops people stop think­ing about it like that and just start inter­act­ing, coming up with ideas, and sud­den­ly some­thing quite mag­i­cal hap­pens and hope­ful­ly we are able to some­how hold on to that and com­mu­ni­cate this. For us it’s been a way of devel­op­ing ideas and then test­ing them with people and devel­op­ing new, con­stant­ly making new iter­a­tions. The instal­la­tion of parts of the work is part of the same kind of process of analysing mate­r­i­al and think­ing through mate­r­i­al, get­ting new ideas and using it as a vehi­cle for con­stant­ly think­ing around ques­tions in a new way and togeth­er with people. 

What made you choose using VR for this project?  

Chris­t­ian Vium: I was film­ing during my PhD field work in Nouak­chott and in the desert, and I always knew that I wanted to devel­op it into larger films even­tu­al­ly. I was script­ing along the way step by step and at one point I thought now is the time to start to see if that could be the next larger iter­a­tion of my work and that’s when I met Med. Since then we’ve been work­ing togeth­er. We applied for the CPH:LAP (Copen­hagen DOX) and there we devel­oped the VR pro­to­type.  

Med Lemin Rajel: When we were devel­op­ing the VR expe­ri­ence we decid­ed that people from Nouak­chott are going to be our main audi­ence. We wanted to have some­thing in the medium that people can refer to, a father or an uncle, sit­ting next to them. He tells them the story of how he arrived here and how every­thing hap­pened around him. We want the audi­ence to feel in the space they know, as a young Mau­ri­tan­ian in a cer­tain part of the city, every­thing that’s pre­sent­ed there, it’s some­thing they can refer to. The inter­na­tion­al audi­ences will have an expe­ri­ence as if they arrived in Nouak­chott for the first time, sit­ting next to some­one making tea and just talk­ing. At cer­tain times he does­n’t speak, he’s just sit­ting there and making tea. But this con­nec­tion we really wanted to show in that way. 

In which way is exhibit­ing your work through art instal­la­tions part of your ana­lyt­i­cal process?  

Chris­t­ian Vium: When you do a film, you have to be quite spe­cif­ic about what and how you want to com­mu­ni­cate, because you have to take people with you on a nar­ra­tive jour­ney so that they don’t just switch chan­nels. Where­as in an exhi­bi­tion, I think you can be a little bit more open and asso­cia­tive in the way that you work. You can put an image that you know people are going to have dif­fi­cul­ty in under­stand­ing, it can be some­thing that you want to test, whether that influ­ences some­thing, so it’s a more open exper­i­men­tal way for me to approach mate­r­i­al. You’re in it with your body and your senses. So it’s anoth­er kind of thing when you’re in front of one chan­nel image and you have the sound around you and the sto­ries laid out for you. Then in dif­fer­ent ways you can work with how you speak with audi­ences around the work. We’re for­tu­nate to have a work­shop in Freiburg and I think we’re gonna take that oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn from the par­tic­i­pants as well and give them an invi­ta­tion to think with us around the mate­r­i­al that we present and that may very well find its way to anoth­er iter­a­tion later on. 

You are cur­rent­ly work­ing on a project called “Revi­sion­ing the African City”, can you tell us more about this new iter­a­tion of your research?  

Chris­t­ian Vium: For a number of years I’ve been apply­ing for a larger research project that expands on some of the meth­ods and approach­es from this project into three cities on the African con­ti­nent: Nairo­bi in Kenya, Cape Town in South Africa and Nouak­chott in Mau­ri­ta­nia. Three very dif­fer­ent cities with very dif­fer­ent his­to­ries, sizes and chal­lenges. I’m really excit­ed to see what will happen when this same kind of work is then extend­ed into a col­lab­o­ra­tive project that is taking place in very dif­fer­ent loca­tions and to see what the work­shops with young people will gen­er­ate. I expect some of the same ques­tions will be rel­e­vant. I’m excit­ed to see what hap­pens when a young person from Nairo­bi is speak­ing with a young person from Nouak­chott or Cape Town. What kind of a con­ver­sa­tion will they have about the future of African cities? I think that we need to desta­bilise the way that we think of what an African city is today. And I think the best way to do that is to work with the people that live in those cities, and rep­re­sent the future of those cities. Some­thing that strikes me in a lot of media cov­er­age about the African con­ti­nent is that you don’t have a lot of sto­ries that speak to the cre­ativ­i­ty of young people and the kind of com­plete­ly amaz­ing capac­i­ty young people have for revi­sion­ing the world. Instead it’s become this story of over­pop­u­la­tion, prob­lems and con­flict. I’m not saying that those are not chal­lenges, but I think that all of us have to tap into the cre­ativ­i­ty of young people, for exam­ple, on the African con­ti­nent and cer­tain­ly that’s what we’ve been doing, Med and I togeth­er. 

 

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.