1. 32|mediterraneo
CULTURE / MARSEILLE
words by Alexa Firmenich
photography by Grégoire Bernardi
Shimmering, suspended in mid-air, the silhou-
ettes of people and moored fishing vessels hover
in Norman Foster’s L’Ombrière, a large upside-
down mirror on stilts installed in Marseille’sVieux-
Port. Until recently the quayside was off limits
to pedestrians, reserved instead for teeming
lanes of highway traffic. However, things are
changing fast in France’s oldest city. The 5km
swathe of seafront stretching from the Vieux-
Port to the Arenc dockland has been opened up
for the first time in decades; abandoned buildings
have been transformed and new ones erected all
around the city.
Much of the gentrification is due to a €7bn
Euro-Méditerranée project, revamping neigh-
bourhoods that have been home to a melting pot
of nationalities for generations.This year though,
lending some extra shine to the city’s multicul-
tural roots and 2,600-year history is the 2013
European Capital of Culture, a year-long event
set to spruce up a dusty cultural scene.The hope
is it will entice people from around the Mediter-
ranean to visit a city that may have lost touch with
its ability to foster local artists (past residents
include Paul Cézanne and Pierre Puget).
On the J4 Pier, where jazz was welcomed to
Marseille in 1920, two notable developments were
inaugurated in June. The Musée des Civilisations
de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée, with its unfor-
tunate abbreviation of MuCEM, is the world’s first
museum dedicated to Mediterranean cultures: its
collection boasts a million artefacts from Spain to
Israel, via the Balkans, Turkey and North Africa.
Its façade is an undulating lattice shell inside which
you can wander through multiple passageways
where the sunlight falls in dappled patterns and
the sea reflects off silver balustrades.
The Galérie de la Méditeranée on the muse-
um’s ground floor tells the story of the gods and
the invention of agriculture (complete with stuffed
penguin), while upstairs “The Black and The
Blue” exhibit extols the age-old notion that there
are always two sides to the same story. “When
people get talking about their common histories
and start looking at the past from different points
of view, they begin to understand each other,” ex-
plains museum director Bruno Suzarelli.
A few metres away on the pier is theVilla Médi-
terranée, a towering wooden auditorium and series
of conference halls.An imposing cantilevered build-
ing extends over a pool connected to the open sea,
part of the architect Stefano Boeri’s aspirations
to “bring the sea into the building”. The current
exhibit, an audio-visual maze by Bruno Ulmer,
meanders through simulations of the ports of
Istanbul andAlgiers.You get lost,backtrack,return to
rooms already travelled – not too far removed from
the experiences of just-off-the-boat immigrants.
Artist-residency La Friche, a former tobacco
factory, is the kind of place you might expect to
see in a project that’s all about “conversations” and
the tracing of the many routes that have been taken
to, from and around this port city. Miniatures
Officinae reunites performers from Cairo, Tunis,
Marrakesh and Ramallah to travel to one another’s
countries and perform a short solo dance. An-
other project, Contemporary Arab Dramaturgy,
translates, publishes and performs little-known
theatrical texts by young playwrights from 10 Arab
countries; art video group Instants Vidéo helped
Casablanca set up its first festival in 1993 and
then went on to do the same for the Palestinian
Territories and Damascus.As founder Marc Mer-
cier points out, the possibilities here are endless:
“The beauty with these types of collaborations is
that they’re open to a whole new crowd; a genuine
tool for expression.”
Marseille hopes this new crowd of tourists and
residents will sustain the dynamism that has so
animated the city during the Capital of Culture,
pointing to the ripple effects seen in former hosts
Lille and Bilbao. “It’s a very motivational moment.
We’re tired of being known as the city of football
hooligans and crime-ridden banlieues,” says Sarah
Nawi, a Moroccan furniture seller in Le Panier.
The big question is whether the city can capitalise
on its changing image, its cultural comeback, and
position itself once more as the key link between the
Mediterranean’s two shores. — (m)
The next port of call
Marseille is a city in flux with a wave
of art and cultural projects heralding
its history and rejuvenating its image
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01 Norman Foster’s L’Ombrière in
the Vieux-Port
02 View of the MuCEM from the
Fort Saint-Jean
03 Villa Méditerranée’s ‘Beyond the
Horizon’ exhibit by Bruno Ulmer
04 Galerie de la Méditerranée
exhibit in the MuCEM
05 ‘The Black and The Blue’
exhibit in the MuCEM
06 The Villa Méditerranée
07 MuCEM director Bruno Suzarelli
08 Sarah Nawi in her store Place
Lorette in the Le Panier district
09 The Mamo contemporary-art
space on Le Corbusier’s rooftop
10 Comorans from the Noailles area
11 MuCEM’s rooftop
12 View of Marseille’s Vieux-Port
from the Fort Saint-Jean
13 Photographer and street artist
JR’s work at La Friche
Balearic
Sea
Spain
Italy
Switzerland
France
Marseille