Binatna, a phonetic translation and transcription of “between us” in the Moroccan dialect of Arabic, must be understood as an act of meeting and exchange. At the same time, Binatna draws a gap, a distance, a so-called espace intermédiaire which, according to the French sociologist Etienne Duval, is necessary to identify persons involved in the exchange and the dynamics of that exchange.
This intermediate space “is first a separation space. This separation is necessary for the identification of protagonists and the dynamic of their relationship. The intermediate space is nothing. It is in-between. But what seems to be empty, turns into a playground where everything becomes possible. If there was, in writing, no white to separate words, reading and deciphering the meaning would be impossible.” *

From their research in Vienna and Rabat, the artists Carolle Benitah, Käthe Hager von Strobele, Jamila Lamrani, Edith Payer, Leila Sadel and Nicole Schatt have tried to capture the sites with a view from outside and to collect traces. For the artists, traces reflect impermanence in that they are proof of existence and a past state, or, one could write, manifestations of absences.
Reading traces means the reconstruction of a story, of an event that is at the origin. It is only through this narrative process that the trace reveals its importance and its local roots. Generated subjective perceptions and experiences allow many interpretations that can lead to various narrative threads in the story.

Elisabeth Piskernik
translation by Colette Apelian

* Etienne DUVAL, psychologist, Lyon, lectur in 1992 at a symposium on separation, organized by FRIPSI à Echirolles.

About the exhibition
• Binatna dossier de presse FR
Binatna dossier de presse DE

Press
• “Beside Memories” by Leila Sadel in Afriqueinvisu
• “Binatna / zwischen uns. Création féminine croisée” by Yasmine Belmahi
• “L’art du Maroc en Autriche” in Le Matin