04. Kholwa
One of the many conversations we had during our stay in Moulay Bouchta with Abdeljalil and Gilles, in September 2018, was how to align our interests as researchers and practitioners of art and architecture, and to produce a “work” that would be the result of our skills and interests in Moulay Bouchta. In fact, it was about bringing together sound, architecture, and the visual arts while maintaining a connection to the place. From an architectural perspective, two aspects caught my attention and should be explored in this transdisciplinary quest.
The most obvious was the construction system of the region's dwellings, not through the use of rammed earth, but rather the spaces and volumes that generated the use of olive wood for the construction of the roofs. One could argue that the interiors of these rooms were habitable art installations.
The second aspect spanned multiple scales and domains; Geology, landscape, private and public habitable spaces, religion, culture, construction system, architecture… All this was specifically manifested in the relationship between rocks and houses, both in their volumes and in their spaces. It is quite impressive how the inhabitants of Moulay Bouchta still use the caves today as annexes to their houses or as autonomous spaces (individual or collective). For example, the sand cave is used on the hottest days of the year due to the coolness inside.
The most significant case was that of Sidi Moulay Bouchta. According to oral tradition, he isolated himself in a small cave at the top of the Amergou mountain, overlooking the village of Moulay Bouchta al-Khamar. There was room for only one person in a small corner at the top to sleep and another small space at the entrance where one remained protected from the rain. It is a rather impressive place, barely 2 meters wide, which invited one to sit and meditate while looking at the landscape through the opening which was shaped like a door.
Of course, there was no need to explain the importance of the caves to Abdeljalil; he had built his own house against a rock and his bedroom was in a small cave in the same rock.
Gilles also agreed to explore this topic (space, geology and architecture), since he had worked precisely on the sound of stones and pebbles and the way in which the inhabitants exploited the rocks to obtain a building material (in the village and its surroundings there were several places with very small open-air quarries) and the relationships they kept with the sound of these stones and pebbles. Gilles devoted chapter V. of his publication Sawt, Bodies, Species. Sonic Pluralism in Morocco to STONESOUND, Living with stones, lithic affect and aura co-domestication (pages 194-233).
Once we agreed to work in one of the caves, we had to find one that met certain conditions: it had to have a horizontal surface to allow the construction of an architectural element; the resulting space had to be able to accommodate two people; the presence of the rock had to be predominant in relation to the architecture we were going to add.
Since the discussions took place after the "residency," we had to return to Moulay Bouchta (which I did in January 2018 with Younès Rahmoun) to identify as many caves as possible near Abdeljalil's house, even though he conducted his own surveys and drew sketches to explain the possibilities of specific locations.
The analysis I had done on the relationship between rocks and houses had shown me that architecture was really anecdotal, as far as its presence in the landscape was concerned, and that although sometimes there was a balance between built space and geological space, it was necessary to keep this idea; it is nature that counts and not architecture.
By the way, Abdeljalil's first proposals were rather architectures constructions placed on a rocky plateau. For me, it was necessary to be more aseptic, to go more unnoticed; the architecture should not look like architecture, even if we used the materials and construction systems that the inhabitants put in place to build their houses.
Looking at how the locals, and more specifically Abdeljalil, built gates and barriers to keep animals in and fence off their land, I thought that this could be a technique to apply, but on a different scale. And if we took into account the construction of roofs with olive wood (already used by Abdeljalil for his art installations) we could use it to "arrange" the chosen space.
After seeing 5 caves, I looked at a small cavity right next to the house. With the objects that Abdeljalil stored at the entrance, it was difficult to realise that the space was a little larger. It is true that the cavity was too open and that once inside it did not give the impression of being a cave, on the other hand, the "fissure" that cut the rock in two inside, imbued it with a rather particular power. If we ever managed to "close" the entrance to reinforce the importance of the interstices and the light that fell from above (and from the sides), perhaps we would end up with a place that collected many of the concepts that we had imagined at the beginning.
After speaking with Abdeljalil and Gilles, they agreed to work on this site. Abdeljalil thought the idea of building a traditional vertical roof, like a façade, was feasible. A solution had to be found for the door so that the entrance wouldn't be associated with a building, but rather with a "natural construction”. We realised that if we left a tangential opening, relative to the vertical plane of the rock, the entrance could be achieved without the need for a gate.
After several conversations, it was Abdeljalil, with the help of his friends, who built Kholwa Sakhra and figured out the interior layout.
Kholwa was for us a way of showing a transdisciplinary collaboration between two artists (visual and sound) and an architect, using vernacular elements from a very specific and particular place, that of Moulay Bouchta, which served as a place of rest and exhibition during the 2019 and 2025 editions of Sakhra, as we will see on the following pages.
In preparing for the 2025 edition, we noticed that this term given in 2019, kholwa (خـــــلوة), refers in Moroccan Arabic to a private room, a place of retreat or the act of isolating oneself, which perfectly described the uses that visitors gave to this place.
Credits texts, photos and drawings: Carlos Pérez Marín