LE 18

The space has developed organically and through a collaborative, open ethos, (un)learning from and in dialogue with the various communities it works with, in an institutional practice based on horizontality and collaboration.

Through a fluid network of collaborators and various formats including exhibitions, residencies, conversations, workshops, and publications, LE 18 has become a collective learning platform, listening to, and critically tackling the multiple dynamics, processes, and infrastructures shaping the cultural, political, and economic lives of their local and trans-local ekosistem.

Currently, LE 18’s long-term research lines and platforms unfold a glossary of key terms encompassing and intersecting: photography and image-making in Morocco and the region; the politics and poetics of water and commoning; oral arts, cultures, and practices; processes of reactivation of collective memory, and participative archiving; food sovereignty, culinary cultures, and communal gardening; independent publishing, and processes conducive to collective making.

At documenta fifteen, LE 18 transforms its exhibition space at WH22 into a place for conversations and exchanges around the processes, challenges, and failures that emerged during the preparation for and participation at documenta fifteen. It therefore opens itself to addressing a sense of exhaustion and (self)-exploitation triggered by major art events. In this sense, it lends itself to the exploration of the structures cultural workers operate in and offers to collectively and openly deconstruct them.

As the title A Door to the Sky—or a Plea for Rain suggests, the site is reinforced as a space-time to rest. As such, it is be open to all invited artists at documenta fifteen as well as to the general public in order to find and share modes of regenerating and relearning after crisis.