Wave Affinities

Waves Affinities is a sonic travelogue that traces a journey from Alcantarilla to Granada, on to Algeciras and Tarifa, crossing by ferry to Tangier and arriving in Casablanca. From Casablanca, the journey continued towards Biela and Madrid, before ending back in Murcia. The sound piece emerged as a commission from La Madraza as a way to continue the collaboration between that institution and the Cervantes Institute of Casablanca through the artistic work of the duo Zineb Achoubie & Lorenzo Sandoval (La Casa de los Engarces).

The piece takes its title from the intervention carried out in November 2025 on the exterior façade of the Cervantes Institute in Casablanca, which inspired the journey through all these places. The project follows Gil Benumeya's research on the notion of midday, conducted at the invitation of La Madraza, the Center for Contemporary Culture of the University of Granada. The audio recordings include those made by the artists: Easter week in Alcantarilla, the heartbeat of Nour Aurora about to be born, the sounds and languages ​​​​on journeys by bus, ferry, and car with their radios playing, a dance workshop in Casa de Porras that overlays the birds of the Albaicín, the prayers and calls to prayer in the streets of Morocco, the omnipresent construction works in that country, Gnawa music played by the Achoubie family, the sound of the production process of some of the pieces of the intervention on the façade of the Cervantes, after which its director talks about the history of the building and its relationship with the republicans, and the subsequent workshops in Morocco in which the artists worked – one of the exercises they included in Writing Patterns at the Pistoletto Foundation in Biela and another taught by Vir Andrés Hera as part of the Arte por Venir program at the Carasso Foundation. It also includes recordings from the Alan Lomax archive of the market vendors' songs in Granada in the 1950s, and from the archive of the Museo de la Huerta in Alcantarilla, where the Auroros song was taken. The travelogue “Wave Affinities” invites us to listen, to find the vibration that allows the whole to be found in the parts, and through the parts to access the whole.

The original proposal of Wave Affinities, was displayed on the façade of the Cervantes Institute in Casablanca. It explores a genealogy that connects North Africa with Southern Europe, intertwining formal and historical aspects of patterns found in carpets, ceramics, architecture, and music from Andalusian and Amazigh cultures. The project seeks to understand common elements on both shores of the Mediterranean, reflecting on cultural continuities as well as the current complexities of transit across the Mediterranean. Through the pieces produced, the proposal emphasizes a divergent genealogy that introduces commonalities between the two countries. This exploration arises as a way of repairing the historical erasure of the deep connection between the two shores and the ever-increasing asymmetry in how people on either side treat each other in relation to geopolitical borders.

The Cervantes Institute in Casablanca commissioned the duo to create an intervention on the fence surrounding its building. To develop the proposal, the artists were in dialogue with Teresa Lanceta, drawing on her connection to Bert Flint. Flint had founded a museum in Marrakech with a vast collection of objects such as carpets, ceramics, stone and wood carvings, and more. The narrative presented by the museum was based on Flint's own theories, in which he proposed a divergent history of his forms: through the comparison of patterns and inscriptions on objects, he challenged the official account of the origin of forms in relation to the Middle East. His genealogy connected the Amazigh to the Andalusian, ranging from the southern Sahara to the Iberian Peninsula, and encompassing the arts of different parts of the Atlas Mountains. Flint was also a collaborator in the early days of the Casablanca School, sharing his historical research with contemporary artists in the group, including Farid Belkahia, Mohammed Chabaa, and Mohamed Melehi.

The group explored genealogies connecting popular culture and contemporary art production, alongside interventions in public spaces, such as the “Présence Plastique” manifesto in Marrakech and Casablanca in 1969 and the Asilah public art festival, which began in 1978 and continues to this day. Wave Affinities revisited the Casablanca School's research on popular culture and art in public spaces, continuing the genealogy they proposed in their intervention at the Cervantes Institute.