• Can you explain the genesis of the "Ma'an, natural colors in the Mediterranean" project?

The Mothership is a multidisciplinary art space conceived as a platform dedicated to artistic creation, experimentation and collaboration. The venue is located in the hills above Tangier, in the heart of a natural estate that is home to exceptional biodiversity, and is dedicated to the question of the use of natural materials in artistic production. It was the ideal place to continue the experimentation we ourselves have been conducting on this subject for several years, particularly in the field of printing and publishing, and to anchor a series of collaborations with Morocco. "Ma'an, couleurs naturelles en Méditerranée" will enable us to offer designers and visual artists a space for experimentation, so that innovative and experimental processes can emerge as virtuous models for potential future productions, in a dialogue between the two shores of the Mediterranean.

• The Mothership was founded by artist Yto Barrada, who will represent France at the Venice Biennale 2026. How did the collaboration between your two structures come about?

Our first encounter with Yto Barrada took place in Tangier, in the early 2010s, when she invited us to the Cinémathèque to propose a series of creative workshops. Yto's personal work, which will be honored in Venice, is inseparable from the many projects for transmission, education, sharing of knowledge and preservation of a heritage that she has imagined over the years. These include, of course, the Cinémathèque de Tanger, which she founded some twenty years ago, the rediscovery of the work of New York artist Bettina Grossman, and The Mothership. All these projects nurture forms of resistance and contribute, as does her personal work, to reinterrogating established hierarchies and official Histories. I'd say that, in a way, these are also subjects inherent to the Fotokino project. It was on this intuition that our complicity, which has lasted for fifteen years, was born.

• The project began in April, as a cross-residency at The Mothership of graphic designer and painter Geoffroy Pithon and yourself. Your research focused on paints based on natural pigments. How did the residency go, and what did you take away from it?

Accustomed to painting in a thousand different situations or contexts, Geoffroy Pithon isn't an artist who needs a long warm-up time, so it went very quickly. After a few hours on site, I was in the kitchen preparing recipes for lacquers and natural inks, which he used immediately on paper. It was a very empirical collaboration that we developed. As the color chart grew, layers of color were superimposed on Geoffroy's drawings, and we could observe the different qualities of each preparation: opacity, viscosity, liveliness of color... The residency taught us something we already knew, but hadn't really tested: you can make color with almost anything. With the countless varieties of plants in the Mothership garden (eucalyptus, poplar, pomegranate, carnations, hibiscus...) but also pigments, spices or roots found in the downtown stalls (fuwa, dgbar, aker fassi, nila), or even the Provençal minerals I'd packed in my suitcase.

• "Ma'an, couleurs naturelles en Méditerranée" aims to establish a lasting collaboration between Fotokino and The Mothership and encourage distribution in Morocco. Can you tell us more about it? What can we expect in the coming months?

Following this first residency, we also ran a Riso workshop at the Cinémathèque de Tanger, aimed at local children. We hope to extend the research work carried out at Mothership through forms of transmission or mediation with a wider public, since these issues are at the heart of our missions. Other players on the local scene will also be involved: Think Tanger, Kiosk, the Institut Français de Tanger, as well as the Kulte publishing house and art center in Rabat. These structures will be able to support the residencies we are planning with artists and designers Adrien Vescovi, Marion Mailaender, Raphaël Pluvinage and Marion Pinaffo. Over and above the research they will be developing at Mothership, "Ma'an, couleurs naturelles en Méditerranée" thus enables us to provide a framework and resources for complicities that existed but had struggled to blossom until now.

• What particularly intrigues you about their craftsmanship?

Whether in the fields of papermaking, bookbinding or printing, artisanal skills and a long publishing tradition have helped shape a book aesthetic unique to Japan. Of course, over time, the Japanese book has been enriched by Western influences, but even today, it's a uniquely rich and unique territory, from which I have much to learn. Not to mention that it's also the birthplace of Riso, the hybrid printing system behind the recent emergence of numerous independent publishing houses around the world, which are reshuffling the cards of traditional creative book manufacturing and distribution circuits.

• Do you have any other news you'd like to tell us about? Any concluding message you'd like to pass on?

Paradoxically, it's an event I won't be able to experience that's keeping me busy at the moment, as I'll be in Japan at that time: with the Fotokino team, we're currently preparing the first edition of a new festival dedicated to design, Tangible, which will take place from October 10 to 26, 2025 in Marseille and the Aix-Marseille Metropolitan area, in partnership with some twenty local structures. Marseille is a laboratory for living together, for collective and artistic commitment, for resourcefulness and resistance. Design and the multiple ramifications that this field of practice weaves here are no exception to the rule, especially as the local scene is so rich and diverse. This event will highlight its vitality and inventiveness. Basically, "Ma'an, natural colors in the Mediterranean" stems from the same desire: to discover and promote virtuous and respectful processes, to experiment, share and pass on.

For more information: visit https://fotokino.org/