Aqueous Entanglements

The project Aqueous Entanglements: Audiovisual Migration Histories through Mediterranean Marseille is based on the work of Samuel Sami Everett and on collaboration with the collective Les Écrans du large. This research axis examines the effects of maritime connections linking Marseille and the Maghreb through a series of audiovisual productions addressing Mediterranean migratory and cultural dynamics. Everett’s investigation focuses on the urban area between the docks and the railway station, where migratory flows have historically and socially been most concentrated. Through an audiovisual methodology, the project analyses urban spaces of musical production, reception, and sociability—cabarets, cafés, concert halls, and recording studios—that have shaped Marseille’s hybrid appearance and sonic landscape. These sites attest to the city’s central position within the circulation of a plural and multi-communal Mediterranean imaginary—working-class, Kabyle, Pied-noir, Harki, Sephardi—structured around Andalusian, chaâbi, and raï musical traditions, all bearing the lyrical imprint of ghorba (from the root GRB, “west”), understood as the experience of exile across the Mediterranean Sea. In collaboration with the Centre for Conservation and Resources of the Mucem, this work seeks to identify, transcribe, and analyse repertoires of ghorba song in relation to the crossing of water, water as border, and water as temporal barrier, drawing in particular on the works of Jo Elmaghribi (Amar), Raymond Oujdy (Azoulay), and Albert Rouimi (Blond-Blond), from Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria respectively. This research will resonate with the collaboration developed with Les Écrans du large, who will invite Algerian and Marseille-based artists to produce short videos presenting their perspectives on these trans-Mediterranean connections.

Project lead: Samuel Sami Everett

Team: Élisabeth Leuvrey, Hervé Cohen

Partners: Les Écrans du large, Gharamophone.com

Keywords: Audiovisual, Ghorba (exile), Judeoarabic Music, Water Poetry, Water Letters, Transmission