The wonderful performers cast in the guide/storytelling role after their briefing.
Update: 15.30
Group 8 reports that they’re in a taxi.
Group 3 has arrived already in Plaza Toro.
Some Skype connections are apparently happening already, but some are not!
UPDATE 15.48
Group 2 reports a happy cybercafe and an on-g0ing conversation with Caroline in Australia.
A couple of Skype contacts have notified us that they cannot make their meetings. Their teams are advised to drink tea and have a conversation.
UPDATE 15.58 Khalid and Friederike and Yusuf are back and they had a great trip. Khalid reports an interesting conversation with Richard in Wales.
By email Katia says “Hi, we are with Walid at the Echarf quartier; quite, not many people on the street, clean; the area is the richest in Tangier! ”
UPDATE 16.25
Several groups are back, photos are being shared and the map poured over. Comments and updates are too fast to keep up with!
UPDATE 16.30
The group trying to reach Annette reports back that their cafe was all out of internet. We messaged Annette, who was a very good sport. She wrote: “Thank you for telling me – I had an exciting time waiting for the call and enjoyed the sweets – I wrote some notes and will try to post them to your blog today. If I cannot make it i will send them by email, say hello to colleagues from me !”
UPDATE 16.40
A good cluster of folks are back, and treats are being served out in the garden. The image of Tangier and the world that is emerging is both chaotic and human. Many people responded that they’d never have visited the neighborhoods they went to, and we hope even the missed connections produced interesting thoughts…
UPDATE 16.47
Joe Kelleher has posted a comment and sent along a photo:
Joe Kelleher grabbed this context shot.
Actually, we have only 4 of 10 6 of 10 groups back, so we hope there are no traffic or other problems!
UPDATE 16.55
A lovely garden party is developing. Not everyone is talking about intermediality and urban space, but Laurie Beth and Khalid are!
UPDATE 17.00ish:
Nice text from Richard: “I had a nice conversation with Khalid! I showed him the tagine I bought the first time I went to Morocco – thirty two years ago – it arrived home in more than two hundred pieces. I stuck in together like some enthusiastic archaeologist dutifulyy reconstructing some ancient pot. I now have several more bought on subsequent visits but this remains my favourite. We spoke about Argan Oil (Agadir, Essouria, Djema El Fna, Marakesh, Fez, Rabat and Kasbah Toubkal) I had a handful of fresh mint pulledf from the garden from where I can see lambs in the field; mint sauce goes well with lamb – as with tea in Morocco; mint a Morocco-Welsh connection.
UPDATE 17.50
We had a nice conversation afterwards, though too short as we had to send people off to the next event. There were lots of good stories about moving through the city and meeting people; we can tell there was much more to be said about the city, people, intermediality, art, and life. Thanks and thanks again to everyone who joined in, even if you got lost or your connections were crossed.
Spatula&Barcode 
Just off the skype connection with Nigar and Shamal of Lalish Theater (http://www.lalishtheater.org). We enjoyed meeting them and learning about their company and their travels. As we all drank together from our fab Spatula and Barcode ‘sippy cups’ we discussed their performances at the conferences while tasting some of the delights–liquorish was most people’s least favorite (although Josh likes it, well Josh likes pretty much everything). They brought some local fruit and Moroccan bread, and we brought a game pie from the Real Food festival at the Southbank and some smoked cheddar from Greens of Gloucestershire. Nigar and Shamal have travelled widely throughout the world with their work although our paths have never crossed. We’d love to visit them in Vienna some day and see their work! Photo and video log to follow. (Very tasty Moroccan pastries from Utrecht by the way, but they were only on our side). Signing off, Jen and Josh in London
Enjoyed talking to my contacts over there, whose names I am afraid I am inevitably going to mis-spell, Holga and Zukena. I could see them, but they couldn’t see me. I think I got the best deal on that one. I have, anyway, photographic documentation, to prove the encounter took place, which I shall send along by email and maybe it can be uploaded here. Conversations through this medium never straightforward (he says, as someone who tends to restrict any telecommunications involving faces or voices to birthdays and the like) but a delight even so to share the gesture of communication, with colleagues elsewhere, which is where, I guess, colleagues always are. The communications between us all tend to come round slowly – we read each other’s stuff, or we hear about each other’s stuff from someone else, we hear tell of a name and look forward to meeting, of listening, or reading – so good to have these occasions to jump the gun, to meet before meeting, to speak before speaking. Best wishes to all there. Have a great rest of conference.
Btw, I gorged on week-old chocolate and licorice after the chat. I’m not living with that.
That should have read ‘now’ living with that.
[NB: I posted this comment earlier on the previous ‘in/of the city’ blog page, so re-post it here.]
I’ve just finished having a conversation with Chiel Kattenbelt. I was expecting to be contacted by someone I’ve never met from North Africa, but this experience was itself interesting, since Chiel and I have corresponded, but never met – we were both in Utrecht at the PSi conference last week, of course, but it’s only when I saw his photograph on Skype (he had no video, though he could see me on video) that I realised who it was – a person I had sat near to during several different events. And now I know why he kept going in an out of the room in Utrecht! (Chiel was one of the organisers of the conference).
Anyway, we talked a bit about our respective locations and munched licorice. He didn’t have any baklava, so I enjoyed the taste while he sat in the location. It was nice to have quite a meandering chat – we didn’t dwell on anything for too long, and were just starting to talk about the Utrecht conference in detail when his handlers decided it was time for him to go.
Since I had no video of Chiel, I google-mapped him while we were talking, though for a while I could only locate ‘Tangier’-related places in the US, rather than in Morocco, a limitation I’ve never experienced before. The closest I can seem to get in Tangier itself is a nearby golf club. So I hope Chiel is now taking it easy on the green.
It’s a grey and rainy Sunday afternoon here at my mum’s house in Southwater, West Sussex, England. It was nice to have an easy-going conversation with a voice from a sunnier place; a voice I could finally match to a face I’ve seen before.
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