Effet de serre is a research project (2012), exhibition (2021) and publication (2022), in which the artist Farah Khelil undertakes to renovate the municipal greenhouse of the city of Tunis in the Parc du Belvedere with an artistic production grant. Her approach questions the definition of the artistic object and the exhibition, as well as the place of the artist in cultural institutions. Thus, the artist emancipates himself from the demands of the market by directing a grant to support artistic production towards actions of general interest and common good. The Orangery then hosts an immersive exhibition composed of polymorphic and heterogeneous elements that retrace the architectural history of the Palmarium in Tunis.

Kurdistan has often been the focus of photojournalistic reports in recent years. An autonomous region that straddles northern Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran, it has been subjected to violence by radical Islamic groups (most recently) since 2014. But while many photographers have turned their lens towards the conflict itself, Simon Chang seems more interested in the nation's less obvious wounds, those that lurk even within it. Between two visits to northern Iraq, one in 2018 and the other in 2019, he has taken an interest in two places that exist as part of everyday life, but removed or shunned from public view.

Taula طاولة. État des lieux is the result of nine months of networking, carried out from the strictest virtuality, and from the uncertainty imposed by the context of the pandemic. Despite everything, we have tried to convey and highlight the state of affairs in the cultural sector in the cities that collaborate in this project: Algiers, Tunis, Barcelona, Tangiers, Seville, Marseille, Berlin and Stockholm.

During 2019, we will carry out two itinerant Taula, in Tunis and Algiers, taking advantage of the residency programme and the presence of the three selected artists in each city. We intended to hold a physical meeting in Barcelona in April 2020 and so that the essence of the project could be preserved, despite mutating in its initial form, it became a self-distributed booklet in the region.

The fact of decentralising the centres of conception of a project and doing so through a horizontal network responds to the sensitivity that Jiser tries to apply to its projects. This would not have been possible, however, without the closeness we have with creators, entities and professionals that has been built on trust, mutual respect and a firm will to weave new long-distance paths.

We have chosen a title that would allow us to give visibility to the different visions and perspectives on the general situation of the cultural projects that we are trying to maintain, and to establish a state of the art of the cities and networks in the Mediterranean region with which we work regularly and with which we mutually support each other.

In this online Taula we will talk about the process that has been the most important for us, where through the different online meetings between the team and the network of collaborators we have been shaping the contents and contributions that are included in this document.

Contributions
Box24, Espace Mass’Art, Think Tanger, Azimut, reboot.fm y AllArtNow.

Anna Irina Russell, Joan Pallé, Anna López Luna, Mounir Gouri, Teo Vázquez, Violeta Ospina, Férielle Zouari, Hamideddine Bouali, Soufia Bensaïd, Zineddine Bessai Tikharbishine, Babek Yekhzor fik, Louise Dib, Ranougraphy Rania G y Abdelraouf Meraga.

Xavier de Luca, Toni Cots, Mohamed Ben Soltane, Walid Aidoud, Amina Mourid, Hicham Bouzid, Abir Boukhari, Nora Daoud, Soukaïna Sentissi, Diana McCarty y Hatem Boukesra.

he photobook titled Un poco más alto [A little louder] by Abdo Shanan on the protests in Algeria is the result of the I Premi Mediterrani Albert Camus Incipiens, organized by the Trobades & Premis Mediterranis Albert Camus of Menorca. This project whose strength of vision is combined with the universality of the revolts against injustice shows the absence of crowds, flags and banners, despite the ever-present determination of the protesters. From an estranged proximity, Abdo Shanan questions and documents in his own way the hirak, the peaceful protest movement that has shaken Algeria since February 22, 2019 and that continues with vigor despite the pandemic.

A searing, diaristic portrayal of a city and society in revolution by Magnum nominee Myriam Boulos. In her debut monograph, Myriam Boulos casts an unflinching eye on the revolution that began in Lebanon in 2019 with protests against government corruption and austerity—culminating with the aftermath of the devastating Beirut port explosion of August 2020. She portrays her friends and family with startling energy and intimacy, in states of pleasure and protest. Boulos renders the body in public space as a powerful motif, both visceral and vulnerable in the face of state neglect and violence. Of her approach to photography, Boulos states: “It’s more of a need than a choice. I obsess about things and I don’t know how to deal with these obsessions in any other way but photography.” Featuring a contextual essay by noted writer Mona Eltahawy, What’s Ours showcases Boulos’s strident and urgent vision.