Print Archive: Endless Permanence
First published in The Art Paper 04, November 2022.
From my house on Otago Harbour in Ōtepoti, Dunedin, I see the same view every evening. Across the water, a plume of smoke rises from the chimney of the Ravensdown Factory as the sun sets. This factory processes phosphate rock into the fertiliser used to make our agriculture industry more productive. However, in order to make this crucial product, Aotearoa is currently reliant on imports of phosphate rock from occupied Western Sahara. By purchasing this rock, we are helping fund Morocco’s brutal occupation of this territory, where those indigenous to Western Sahara are either heavily persecuted within the occupied zone, or live in the Saharawi Refugee Camps in neighbouring Algeria.
I first met Saharawi artist and activist Mohamed Sleiman Labat when I had the opportunity to visit these camps in 2016. In February 2022, we worked together to adapt elements of his film Desert Strawberries into a sound work to accompany my installation, Endless, for the Te Tuhi Project Wall. The installation included a two-channel video depicting the chimney of the Ravensdown Factory in endless production, while Desert Strawberries features a recording of Mohamed’s father speaking in Hassanya, dispersing memories of nomadic life in Western Sahara before the Moroccan invasion (1975) amongst contemporary descriptions of the ‘family gardens’ now grown in the Sahrawi Refugee camps where they live. These gardens are the initiative of Mohamed’s generation, many of whom have studied abroad and returned with new knowledge and techniques. They are giving Sahrawi more agency over food production, lessening their reliance on food provided through humanitarian aid.
The pairing of these artworks aimed to question whether our current systems of trade, production, and economics—which operate at the cost of the basic human rights of others—are truly inevitable, or whether it might be possible to seek alternatives.
—Matthew Galloway
A sandstorm approaches the Smara Refugee Camp, in the Tindouf Region of Algeria. Photo: Mohamed Sleiman Labat.
MATTHEW GALLOWAY
I wanted to start by discussing your film Desert Strawberries, which documents the emergence of farming and gardening practices amongst families living in the Saharawi Refugee Camps. A key feature of the film is how the narrator’s voice weaves together descriptions of the gardens with more poetic moments that reflect on the pre-Moroccan occupation nomadic lifestyle of the Saharawi. It’s also important to note that the narrator’s voice is that of your father. What was the significance in having him perform that role?
MOHAMED SLEIMAN LABAT
My father was a nomad when he lived in Western Sahara; and then witnessed how the Saharawi were forced to flee into Algeria as a result of theMoroccan invasion of Western Sahara. He was part of the war, and then he was part of settling and establishing the camps. He then lived through the different stages of the camps, from the fabric tents to the more established built environment and neighbourhoods; and finally, he’s now witnessing the emergence of family gardens.
Desert Strawberries is a collaborative work. It’s my structure, and partly my thoughts, but it draws on conversations and stories [my father] has told me over the years and is based on the way he talks. There are parts I added from my research on the family gardens. But the parts where he discusses important nomadic desert practices, or Saharawi Indigenous perspectives, that’s definitely his input.
Writing and structuring the script with him in mind [is] a nice way to enact how knowledge passes from one generation to the next, and vice-versa.
Yes, in writing the script I would listen to the many recordings of him in my archives. I wanted his voice and his wisdom to convey ideas that weren't being presented visually. His oral wisdom has such a strong presence in the film. And I think also, for me, this creates a dialogue between his method and mine: I’m a visual person, he is an oral person; he is a nomad, I am a contemporary artist. And I wanted the meeting of these two methods to happen in the film.
Desert Strawberries is an example of your archiving practice. With your father being from an oral tradition, do you feel responsibility to record these stories in a way that hasn't been done before?
To be honest, it mostly happens spontaneously—I find myself needing to grab whatever is close at hand to record, because these conversations and stories are such a precious material that I really don’t want to lose. At other times I deliberately set up the equipment, and sit [my father] down to interview him and ask him about specific things I’ve heard him talk about in the past, or that I want to know more about; or ask him to make a testimony about something that he witnessed.
The chimney of the Ravensdown Factory on Otago Harbour, the smokestack signifies the constant production of super-phostphate in the factory. Photo: Matthew Galloway
Do you see this being an ongoing collaboration or way of working together?
Definitely—although it will be a slow process to work through the archive and figure out how best to use the content. I have just finished another film where he’s involved, The Year of Balls. The film is about some of his memories as a nomadic child, witnessing horrible events that took place in northern Western Sahara. The Year of Balls is in the Saharawi nomadic calendar—which is not a numerical calendar, it’s a way that the nomads used to tell time and preserve knowledge related to time. Instead of giving the years numbers, they gave them names based on events and encounters; things that happened to them. Sometimes it could be stories—a story about a drought or flood; about the rain coming; or about the wind; or about the death of an important person in the community. It could be about new plants that appeared that year.
The Year of Balls describes a year when the French and Spanish were bombarding different nomadic communities in the middle of Western Sahara. My father witnessed this as a six or seven year old. In the film, he speaks about how the nomads didn’t know what bombs were. And so they saw these round shapes falling from the sky and called them balls. It’s the year of bombardment, and it was horrible. So that’s one of the stories I intentionally recorded, because I’ve heard him speak about it in the past and I wanted to have it recorded properly.
Another important recording I made was during a visit from one of my father’s oldest friends from nomadic life. They started talking about how the Saharawi relate to landscape, to the desert. This led to a discussion about the importance of decolonising maps. He was not happy with how borders have been drawn and constructed. Obviously, it’s a result of colonial practice. When European colonists arrived in Africa, they just set up these imaginary borders, in the process pushing communities to different sides; and that affected their practices and their lives, hurting communities on many levels. He wanted to draw or create a map that wasn't based on a European perspective, but based on some sort of indigenous mapping in accordance with nomadic movements, and stories that are related to time and space in Western Sahara. Nomads move in accordance with water. They move to the rain, from well to well. He spoke of wanting to map out the movement of the nomads in accordance with water sources.
I’m unaware of any existing work or research in Western Sahara to re-map indigenous movement in accordance with water. We’re not sure of the best way to do this yet, but a first step would be to document and record this precious knowledge. [My father and his friend] were discussing all the places they have visited where they witnessed elders digging wells, some of the valleys they remember, some of the rivers, concave rock formations the nomads visited from time to time—because they knew when it rained these would hold some water—and how, over the passage of time, some of the wells disappeared; and some of the wells were known by different names. All these factors contributed to the movement of the nomads.
These conversations are so important, telling us about the practices related to nomadic lifestyle and preserving some of the knowledge related to it. I really feel sad when I come across this knowledge because it’s hardly talked about, it’s disappearing; it’s mostly in the memory of the elderly. And if we don’t work hard to preserve it, then it will be gone forever. It’s such a precious Indigenous perspective, not just to Saharawi, but also to the collective human understanding of life.
Family Gardens in the Smara Refugee Camp, in the Tindouf Region of Algeria. Photo: Mohamed Sleiman Labat
Sand covers fresh produce grown in the family gardens of Smara Refugee Camp, in the aftermath of a sandstorm. Photo: Mohamed Sleiman Labat
So for you it’s about finding a way of mapping that departs from the entrenched western ways as a default?
That’s part of it, but it’s also about why these colonial maps were drawn, in addition to how they were drawn. They were drawn for colonial interests, with no consideration for the perspective of the local Indigenous people. Saharawi understanding of space is not based on economic perspectives, it’s based on a relationship with the space that you live in, and the memories and the poetry that comes with it. For the nomads, it’s not about simply travelling from place A to B. The whole process unfolds through knowledge related to the place—the belief, time, and experience that goes with it. It’s so much deeper than, “let’s set up this border and you belong here.” It’s a way of life. I feel like we’ve lost so much of it. I can only now relate to it through the narrations of my father’s generation. But as far as creating these maps, it’s an ongoing project that I don’t want to rush and intervene in. I would like to pause and listen; hold back until I see how the Saharawi would like to recreate an understanding or ‘map’ related to the place they call home.
I’m thinking about the trauma of conflict, and your father’s generation holding the memory of having to flee their homeland. As you said earlier, he has been involved in every stage of the process: being displaced, fighting in the conflict; creating a community and built environment in the camps. I imagine for a long time, conflict and survival were occupying much of his generation’s time, and it’s only more recently that the preservation of knowledge has been given priority?
Part of my journey as an artist has been to learn and discover where I come from. I grew up as a Saharawi, but [I've been trying] to relate to where we come from, who we are, the best way to understand and reconstruct this knowledge. It’s a process. And I think over the past few years, I’ve been acquiring different tools to help me. Unless we act quickly, we may never get hold of some of those practices, understandings and perspectives. I’m trying to follow a very thin thread to find that older knowledge. Of course it is important to document our more modern history—all of the developments and life in the camps since the 1970s—the establishment of a government, the years of exile. But how about the Indigenous perspective of the Saharawi, the practices and knowledge they developed for survival in the desert? I feel like some of that knowledge is crucial, and would help us in terms of changing climates, not just politically, but environmentally, ecologically. Knowledge of the Saharawi could help us relate to or face some of these challenges, [but much of it] is gone. These are a people of the desert who have lived in such harsh conditions for a long time. How did they relate to extreme conditions, and how did they survive?
The Smara Refugee Camp, in the Tindouf Region of Algeria. Photo: Mohamed Sleiman Labat
Is this also about finding ways for these perspectives to resonate within the context of modern life in the camps, so far removed from nomadic life?
Life in the camps is much easier now than 50 or 100 years ago, when people literally lived on a very few things. They had to respond to daily challenges on a very critical level. But now life in the camps is slowly becoming a city-like life. People are building houses, electricity is introduced, we have the internet. And hardly anybody from the new generation understands why the sand storms are happening. What happens when the temperature rises? How do we read the desert; the skies? How do we preserve water? How do we relate to animals? What do they need? It’s a body of knowledge that is gone: I’m questioning and trying to revisit what could help us on a daily basis. And it’s hard, because the people who hold such knowledge are quickly disappearing, the pace of life is also happening so quickly, the developments are happening so quickly. A lot of people are not seeing the connection between the politics of what has happened to us, and the loss of Indigenous knowledge; how the Saharawi live, where the Saharawi come from; their culture.
“It’s also about why these colonial maps were drawn … Saharawi understanding of space is not based on these economic perspectives, it’s based on a relationship with the space that you live in, and the memories and the poetry that comes with it.”
Family Gardens in the Smara Refugee Camp, in the Tindouf Region of Algeria. Photo: Mohamed Sleiman Labat
Can you link this loss of knowledge back beyond the camps, to Spanish colonisation?
When I ask my father and other elders in our community about testimonies of early Spanish colonial rule, it’s clear to see a totally different perspectives to that of Indigenous Western Sahara. The Spanish arrived because they were interested in something: phosphate, fisheries, exploiting the natural resources of the region in a very exhaustive manner. And they set up the longest conveyor belt in the world in order to excavate as much as they could from the phosphate mines, to ship it to Europe and other places like New Zealand.
The nomads weren’t interested in excavating or digging or exhausting the natural resources. They lived and used their resources around them in a very wise manner. This is at the heart of climate change, it’s at the heart of the ecological perspective. There’s so much damage because people in certain areas of the world are excessively, unwisely and disrespectfully using and exploiting all sorts of resources. At the core of this is greed, consuming and using resources without respect for people, other species, and the environment. It’s a psychological problem in the end, a way of relating to the world around you. And so I feel like Indigenous knowledge is useful in providing a different perspective. And that perspective is gradually disappearing. If we lose that, we lose who we are. So, I really feel like we need to do something about preserving this knowledge. And I’m trying my best, but it’s not easy.
Is it a case of trying to restore a balance between the old and the new?
Yes, I think so. It’s definitely important to note I don’t think being a Saharawi is sticking to how our ancestors lived 100 or more years ago. But it is understanding the essence of being nomadic, the essence of being Saharawi. And how we can take that knowledge forward in order to help us survive. Taleb Brahim is doing an amazing job in the camps helping people build up new knowledge around gardening and farming practices. I feel like it’s a privilege to be able to witness it. How often do we witness the birth of a phenomenon in a society that alters their means of survival? I don’t want to be dependent on international aid in the refugee camps. I grew up eating food from unknown origins. I didn’t know how it was produced. I didn’t know the people who made it. I didn’t know how safe it was to eat. Of course, I was not asking these questions when I was growing up because I didn’t have that awareness—again, at that time it was more about surviving. It was more about eating the food we were given, or having none. But now that I’m more informed, I would like to open up these questions regarding the humanitarian aid we receive. Where is this food coming from? Who are the people who made it? Why is it arriving this way. Is it ethical? Is it ecological? To bring food all the way from other countries to feed me in the desert? Why am I essentially locked-down in the desert when I could have access to my own food? Why are the Saharawi not able access their own food sources, their own homeland? If the Saharawi had access to food sources in Western Sahara, through our fisheries, or the utilisation of our phosphate, then we wouldn’t need to get the international community to ship all of these food rations to the refugee camps in Algeria. It’s unsustainable to transport all of this food. Imagine the emissions involved. I heard that some of the products, rice or wheat, come from Pakistan? It’s bizarre, because, well, you could have fed some of the people who need it in Pakistan. Why does it travel all the way to somewhere in Europe and then get redirected to the refugee camp in Algeria? But the same applies to so many aspects of our food supply chain. It all seems broken to me.
There is a striking moment in Desert Strawberries when your father talks about phosphate particles being carried by the wind and settling in the camps. It’s followed by the idea that this phenomenon is making the desert more fertile or productive than it should be. It’s also a really darkly poetic image; phosphate is so present in the region, it’s even in the air. In my mind this links to satellite imagery I have seen of the phosphate conveyor belt, where one side of the desert has been turned white by phosphate in the prevailing wind.
Saharan desert dust particles are filled with phosphorus. NASA visual scanning technologies have traced huge amounts of dust from the Sahara Desert being blown across the Atlantic Ocean and arriving in the Amazon—it’s actually fertilizing the Amazon rainforest. About 26 million tonnes every year travel from the Sahara desert as dust clouds and land in the Amazon rainforest. Not many people know this. So the Amazon actually depends on the desert because the particles carry phosphorus, and that’s crucial to the growth of plants and trees. The desert plays a very, very critical role in our global ecosystem; and it’s really sad that so many people don’t know this. It’s very underrepresented in the climate change narrative.
Yeah, it’s incredible.
It is incredible. These two regions, so far from each other, but connected through the infliction of man-made inerventions and damage. When Morocco extracts phosphate, and ships it to other parts of the world, whether New Zealand, or Canada, or the US, we’re creating the same damage, the same misbalance. We may not immediately see how this is playing out in the ecosystems of Western Sahara and New Zealand, but we will. As you mentioned, the scale of phosphate extraction in Western Sahara can be demonstrated through satellite images that show the conveyor belt, acting as a trail. I can only imagine how the excess use of phosphorus in agricultural activities in New Zealand will be resulting in negative aspects, one way or another. We’ve seen this in the Baltic Sea, where I’m researching the situation in collaboration with Finnish artist Pekka Neilson. The excess use of phosphate fertiliser in agricultural activity around the Baltic Sea has created eutrophication from phosphorus leaching into water sources, and ending up in the sea floor. As a result, the algae in the Baltic Sea is growing because it feeds on the excess of phosphorus. It drops nitrogen and oxygen, creating dead zones on the seabed. I can’t speak to the exact science, but I know it’s the result of an excess material hurting another ecosystem. Because it shouldn’t be used in that way.
“The scale of the phosphate extraction in Western Sahara
can be demonstrated through satellite images
that show the conveyor belt, acting as a trail.”
The Sea Breeze docking in Ōtepoti, Dunedin, in July 2022, carrying 33,000 tonnes of raw phosphate rock mined in the disputed territory of Western Sahara. Photo: Matthew Galloway
I’m interested in continuing to visualise the connections between Western Sahara and Aotearoa, and part of that is tracing backwards; tracing the phosphate to its origin in Western Sahara. But it also requires tracing forwards. Once it arrives in Aotearoa, and it’s used on our land, what happens to the phosphate? We know that it makes its way into our food, and it means that we can produce more agricultural products than we could otherwise. Figures suggest our agricultural industry is 50% more productive through the use of phosphate fertiliser. And so it makes us rich in that way. But it also has led to a lot of our natural environment and land being changed into green farmland, which is not its natural state. The quality of our rivers and natural waterways in Aotearoa is being harmed by this use of phosphate fertiliser, through the leaching of phosphorus and nitrates into our rivers, in a similar way to what you talk about with the Baltic Sea. There's a link to the process of colonisation here, as land over the last 200 years has been stolen from Māori, and turned into agricultural land that is predominantly owned by pākehā.
It’s so interesting to me that there is an economic benefit and short-term wealth that comes with the use of phosphate and intensive agricultural land use, but the long-term harm that it is causing, we’re only just gaining a full understanding of. And that’s not even considering the harm to Saharawi and to the international community through supporting the ongoing Moroccan occupation. It’s a massive issue that touches so many different parts of life. It’s daunting to think about how to visualise all of this, and tell people about it through an art practice, in a way that is meaningful and might help to make change.
Why do you think people import phosphate from Western Sahara? Do you think New Zealand would go hungry?
I don’t think New Zealand would go hungry—we are a country of 5 million, but we produce enough food for 50 million. To lessen our production would affect our GDP, due to our economy being so reliant on exporting what we produce domestically. So quality of life would drop. New Zealand is a very rich country with a relatively good public health system, infrastructure for schooling, and government funding for many aspects of life.
The importation of phosphate from a region whose people are really suffering, is an importation to create luxuries. People would like to live according to a certain standard, but to live up to that standard, they are reliant on all these resources from other places. It is dangerous. Because they don’t care about how the people in those places are forced to live. It is exactly the colonial mentality, the same as 100 years ago, when the Europeans arrived in Africa and Asia. I’m not saying we can’t create beautiful things or important things, but it's done at the expense of the suffering of others. So, I would hope that the people who consume or receive such things would at least raise ethical questions about where these products are coming from, and how they are building a life at the expense of someone suffering in the middle of the desert.
It amazes me how easily it seems people can abide by laws, make ethical decisions and talk to their children about respecting neighbours and respecting their community. But they can’t apply the same principles to people that they can’t see. What are ethics if they are only applied when it’s in your interest?
Absolutely. I think there is a feeling of impotence in the ‘Global North’; that the systems creating these problems feel so big, it becomes hard to understand how people going about their everyday lives might be able to make a difference. I don’t think it’s a great excuse. But it is an excuse that people use.
Yeah, I’ve heard that. But no system is bigger than our story. The story we create as human beings. Systems are just stories that we created, imaginary things that we created, layers upon layers upon layers of stories and discussions and interactions. If we start to talk about these things, we start to build the next story. Do we speak out about injustices around the world? Do we speak enough about them? Or do we let status-quo story dominate yet again?
This is at the heart of what we started with; the importance of art. If people listen, it may help them in the future to act in certain way that do not hurt the Saharawi. But is the story present enough in their daily life? Not many people hear about us. There is a responsibility to make people more informed. This is the power of knowledge; if people know, it’s a good start. The more the story sinks in, the more of it helps guide their actions.