Just Waiting | On the politics and poetics of seatmaking in Casablanca
‘Just Waiting | On the politics and poetics of seatmaking in Casablanca’ is an on-going MA thesis research project. The project looks at the various ways individuals translate the span of their waiting through the practice of seatmaking in the public spaces of Casablanca (Morocco).
Departing from the belief that in the city time becomes visible, the research explores waiting as not only a temporal state but also a physical state that involves space-making practices as well as design practices.
When scrutinized in relation to the central figures of hope, doubt, and uncertainty, the study of waiting as a phenomenon renders visible the experience of time as an experience that is imbued with anticipation, negotiation, and expectation. We might want to look at waiting as a phenomenon that produces relations as much as it is the result of relations. Waiting as a concept enables us to engage ethnographically with time and examine how actions, thoughts, and social relationships manifest in various spatial settings. In other words, not only are we waiting ‘for’ or ‘because’, but we are also waiting ‘on’.
Above : 3D rendering of the DIY street-chair of a peanut seller carved in the trunc of a palm tree (Phoenix Canariensis) growing on the trunc of a rubber tree (Ficus Elastica).