The festival
The Art Explora Festival is an itinerant festival that travels the world's seas and oceans with its museum boat, offering innovative artistic and cultural experiences accessible free of charge.
The festival takes place aboard the world's first museum ship, docked in exhibition pavilions and in various venues in the heart of host cities, with a program combining exhibitions, virtual reality, performances, conferences, film screenings, concerts...
From spring 2024 to autumn 2026, the museum boat will travel to 15 countries in the Mediterranean, cradle of great civilizations and melting pot of many cultures, bringing together artists, curators, cultural, associative and educational organizations who, collectively, will imagine a new vision of the Mediterranean.
The museum boat
This catamaran is the world's first museum boat. Designed by architects Axel de Beaufort and Guillaume Verdier, it is 47m long and 55m high. The boat was built at the Perini Navi shipyard in Italy. It can accommodate 2,000 people a day on board, and features an immersive exhibition designed with the exceptional collaboration of the Musée du Louvre, a sound experience developed with Ircam, and onboard artist residencies.
Wilmotte & Associés Architectes
Exhibition pavilions
Accompanying the museum boat, a nomadic and innovative exhibition space, designed by Wilmotte & Associés Architectes, is set up on the quaysides of the ports visited. Comprising exhibition pavilions, a central stage - the Agora - and convivial spaces, it offers a rich program adapted to all audiences.
Dockside and city programming
At each stop, a local curator organizes a unique and varied cultural program in partnership with local institutions, associations and artists:
- A 10-day program of exhibitions, events, film screenings and live performances in each port and in the city.
- Close collaboration with local institutions, showcasing local and established Mediterranean artists as well as emerging talents, focusing on contemporary Mediterranean issues.
- Series of workshops and programs for the general public designed in collaboration with local associations
- "Ocean Week-ends" : Researchers, scientists and artists will be invited to exchange on the topic of the ocean and the climate emergency, accompanied by film screenings and the transmission of sound compositions.
Journey through time and space
Discover recent virtual reality creations connected to the themes of the Art Explora Festival: heritage, art culture, migrations...
Undertow
This exhibition explores the Mediterranean in the context of migration and exile, highlighting the work of emerging photographers from the region.
Under The Azure
Under the Azure is an exhibition paying tribute to the Mediterranean Sea, to the imagery it evokes, to the awe it inspires, and to the ancient and contemporary myths associated with it.
Aboard the museum boat
Discover 2 experiences on board: "Presents", the immersive exhibition with the exceptional collaboration of the Louvre Museum as well as the sound journey in the Mediterranean created by Ircam x Centre Pompidou. Sail by Laure Prouvost.
Voile, You Would Sea Where To Go by Laure Prouvost
Discover Laure Prouvost's new commission, IDEALLY YOU WOULD SEA WHERE TO GO - HERE WE DREAM OF NO MORE FRONT TEARS. These phrases written on the sails of the museum boat, produced in a specialized workshop in Brittany, are based on a hybrid play on words between English and French.
Opening day
Opening day of the Art Explora Festival in Marseille. On the program: official speeches, DJ set and concerts...
Workshop - Afrovibe - Maryam Kaba
Maryam Kaba invites you to discover afrovibe, an inclusive, non-gendered dance open to all levels and ages, which combines artistic creation, collective physical activity and letting go. Afrovibe's teaching is designed to help you get to know yourself better: improve your flexibility, coordination and balance, and work on your musicality, rhythm and listening skills. Come and share her motto: EveryBODY can vibe!
Original Rockerz - Pratiques libres 'Marseille fait son show' : Talent foot freestyle
Come and touch the ball at La Marseillaise! Freestyle soccer contest open to all, accompanied by professionals.
Voices : Fif Tobossi
A 30-minute talk by an inspiring personality: Fif Tobossi
Workshop - Learn to film with your smartphone - Ecole Kourtrajmé
The aim of this workshop is to learn how to exploit the full potential of your smartphone to capture quality video memories. Mouezi Fatoumiya, technical supervisor and project manager at the Kourtrajmé school, will introduce you to framing techniques, composition, shot values and essential accessories for filming. All these lessons will be put into practice to produce quality stories!
Granada - Rodeo
RODÉO - A show for the public space, created in 2023 by the Grenade - Josette Baïz group and company.
Belsunce Project: Liliane Giraudon, Lucile Littot, Markos Mazarakis (invited by Martha Kirszenbaum)
Belsunce Projects inaugurates the Twilight Bar in the Agora, with a reading by Liliane Giraudon and a musical performance by Lucile Littot and Markos Mazarakis, as well as downtown for a convivial welcome to audiences, the community and the artistic disciplines represented during the festival period. Marseille-based Belsunce Projects, founded by Won Jin Choi and Basile Ghosn in 2018, is an independent, associative exhibition space whose aim is to disseminate contemporary creation to a wide audience locally and internationally.
Stroll - How did the ancients see the world? - Caspar Noyons - Bureau des Guides du GR2013
During this walk, we'll explore Massilia's most ancient remains, from the ancient port to the excavations in the bourse center, and on to the sea. Beyond history, we'll delve into the ancient imagination through the myths of Greece, Mesopotamia and Egypt, discovering that every human being is a universe and that the city itself reflects the cosmos.
DJ Set Hadi Zeidan (invited by Martha Kirszenbaum)
Born in Beirut, Hadi Zeidan is a French-Lebanese composer whose music blends Arabic and electronic influences in a quest for multicultural dialogue and musical modernity. He creates unique electronic sounds, often serving as sonic communions, conversations and unique dance floor moments. His work provokes conversations about multiculturalism, identities, nostalgia and the feelings you can get when you're not at home.
Workshop - La Recyclerie Mobile - Sauvage Méditerranée with the collaboration of Laure Prouvost
The association Sauvage Méditerranée is offering two workshops with its Recyclerie mobile. You'll have the opportunity to discover the main stages of plastic recycling through three fun activities, with the aim of creating an object designed by artist Laure Prouvost, using the heating and injection of recycled plastic!
SISSI Club performance with Samir Laghouati-Rashwan (guests Martha Kirszenbaum)
SISSI invites Marseilles-based artist Samir Laghouati-Rashwan for a new performance entitled Dance Against, Samir Laghouati-Rashwan collaborates with artist Morjiane to create a work fusing video installation and DJ set.
Concert De la Crau (guests Alain Weber)
De la Crau, a band from Marseilles with unclassifiable, wandering influences, reveal a thousand-faceted Occitan poetry through their rock universe.
Concert by Justin Adams & Mauro Durante (guests of Alain Weber)
Guitar hero Justin Adams, producer of Tinariwen, Lo'Jo, Rachid Taha, lover of North African groove, Robert Plant's guitarist with Sensational Space Shifters, world music travelers to the banks of the Niger, meets Mauro Durante, violinist and percussionist from southern Italy.
Workshop - Introduction to press illustration! - Cami and SOS Méditerranée
In partnership with the NGO SOS MEDITERRANEE, these two workshops offer an introduction to the profession of press cartoonist. After a brief presentation of the profession, the techniques used (symbols, caricatures, misappropriation, etc.) and the association's missions, apprentice journalists will be invited to pick up their pencils and draw a news cartoon.
Valentin Noujaïm retrospective (invited by Martha Kirszenbaum)
Screening of a retrospective of works by artist Valentin Noujaïm. The retrospective will be followed by a discussion in the presence of the filmmaker.
Carte blanche Fondation de la mer
Round-table discussion on the theme: "The Mediterranean, wonder and action".
Tours and workshops for school and after-school groups
Come and discover the various Art Explora Festival exhibitions with your class!
Belsunce Project: Théo Casciani, Hugo Mir-Valette (guests of Martha Kirszenbaum)
Belsunce Projects inaugurates the Crépuscule bar in the Agora, with a sound performance by Hugo Mir-Valette and a reading by Théo Casciani. Marseille-based Belsunce Projects, founded by Won Jin Choi and Basile Ghosn in 2018, is an independent, associative exhibition space whose aim is to disseminate contemporary creation to a wide audience locally and internationally.
Carte blanche at FIDMarseille
Screening of films from the Marseille International Film Festival. Photo: Capital by Basma Al-Sharif Courtesy of the artist and Imane Farès Galerie
Performances by artists/students from the Beaux-Arts d'Aix-en-Provence in co-production with the Frac Sud - Cité de l'art contemporain
Frac Sud - Cité de l'art contemporain is always attentive to the emergence of new talent in the region, and regularly offers cartes blanches at its premises as a resource platform for young local artists. By inviting three young artists who have recently graduated from the École supérieure d'art d'Aix-en-Provence Félix Ciccolini to take part in the Art Explora Festival program, Frac Sud, echoing its art and sport programming, is thwarting established representations and contributing to the themes explored by the festival, based on current issues affecting the Mediterranean world.
Concert La Madalena (guest.es by Alain Weber)
Manu Théron has set to music "La Cantilène de Sancta Maria Magdalena", the score of which was lost over two centuries ago. This composition, inspired by testimonies collected since the end of the 19th century, has enabled this archaic song to reconnect with popular devotion to Madalena, a timeless figure in Provence's Phocaean city, and to free itself from the uniformity of Catholic dogma that had once proscribed it.
Film screenings Triangle-Astérides x Marie de Gaulejac (guests Martha Kirszenbaum)
With Marseille as a recurring backdrop, the video selection brings together an anthology, a series, an experimental documentary and a film at the crossroads of manga and autobiographical narrative.
Original Rockerz - Pratiques libres 'Marseille fait son show': Talent interskool kidz hip-hop
Kidz-18 competition in Hip-hop Breaking, bringing together the vast majority of schools in the region to create their own regional competition.
Visit - workshop - Super Nana! - Préau des Accoules - Children's Museum
Following a visit to the "Elles!" exhibition at the Préau des Accoules, the museum's staff will be offering a workshop highlighting the work of artist Niki de Saint Phalle. Children will be invited to create their own little Nana, using existing Nana models as inspiration. These cheerful, colorful creatures spread the artist's feminist and social ideas.
Voices Caroline Nasica
30 minutes of inspiring personalities : Caroline Nasica
Kader Attou / Compagnie Accrorap
The dance performance 'Pré́lude' is the story of the encounter between the music of Romain Dubois and the physicality of the dancers. Like a prelude to Compagnie Accrorap's move into the Southern Region, this piece is an invitation from choreographer Kader Attou to a dozen professional hip-hop dancers from the region to invest in his artistic universe. This "all-terrain" show, presented here for the first time, is designed to reach out to all audiences, taking hip-hop dance to places where it is least expected.
Concert by Maria Simoglou (invited by Alain Weber)
Greek artist Maria Simouglou combines a musical culture that is both learned and popular, thanks to a family cradle steeped in the traditional music of Macedonia, Thrace and Asia Minor, and to her studies at the National State Conservatory of Thessalonica (oboe, oud, qanun, percussion). She nurtures her passion for traditional Mediterranean music and her work of transmission by collaborating with numerous orchestras in Greece and abroad, highlighting the richness of Greece's traditional heritage.
Concert Spartenza (Maura Guerrera, Malik Ziad, Manu Théron) (guests Alain Weber)
Maura Guerrera with Malik Ziad, in the beautiful creation of "Spartenza", transport us to a village, arid, rocky, somewhere between Sicily and Africa, the passage of a tinker who intones his refrain, the harvest song, the lullabies, the song of spartenza.
Atelier - Le corps s'étend - Omar Aljbaai and Dasha Sedova - l'atelier des artistes en exil
For this workshop combining dance and theater, Dasha Sedova and Omar Aljbaai, in association with l'atelier des artistes en exil, propose to reintroduce the notion of play and joy into our daily movement practices. Over a period of an hour and a half, participants will explore walking, bodily interactions in everyday situations and ways of occupying space with an unusual eye.
Performance by Rafram Chaddad (invited by Martha Kirszenbaum)
As a self-taught artist and culinary expert with a particular interest in the Judeo-Arabic cuisine of North Africa, Rafram Chaddad transposes the function of the hammam into a place not only of care and relaxation, but also of food and sharing. For one afternoon, he took over Marseille's Zein hammam, located near the Old Port, and offered to cook and serve dishes to customers during their treatments.
Voices : Zahia Ziouani
30 minutes of inspiring personalities : Zahia Ziouani
Stroll - These words in which we circulate - David Poullard - Bureau des Guides du GR2013
All around us, as we walk through the city, are texts, words and letters. David Poullard invites us to discover this scriptural hubbub, which has a form, an origin, a state of existence conducive to raising questions, and rich in teaching for those who take the time to cast an inquisitive eye over it. He will question a series of "cases" on a walk that will take us from Réformés to the Old Port, passing through three distinct neighborhoods.
Concert by Meryem Koufi and Juan Carmona (guest.es by Alain Weber)
Flamenco's history is rooted in the memory of a harmonious Andalusia, where the beauty of nature and the stars, nourished by the knowledge of the Ancients and ancient Arabic poetry, where the sacred texts of the Torah, Bible and Koran rubbed shoulders with Visigoth, Moorish, Jewish, Christian and Amazigh cultures. Its gypsy aspect also links it to an intense, proud music. Andalusia, perhaps even more than the symbol of a civilization based on a meeting of the three monotheistic religions, symbolizes an idyllic golden age between East and West, far removed from the alarming ecological context of today's Mediterranean.
Screening of films by Lina Soualem (invited by Martha Kirszenbaum)
Screening with the director. Lina Soualem, 'Bye Bye Tibériade', 2024, 82 min.
Original Rockerz - Pratiques libres 'Marseille fait son show' : Talent rap
Tremplin Rap, culture, widespread in Marseille, open to all to let them take the Mic.
Voices : Kaouther Adimi
A 30-minute talk by an inspiring personality: Kaouther Adimi
Musicatreize concert
As part of the Art Explora traveling cultural festival, Musicatreize premieres a new work by Zad Moultaka, Innana.
DJ Set Deena Abdelwahed (invited by Martha Kirszenbaum)
Workshop - Hip-Hop - Compagnie Grenade
Two dancers from Granada, Kim Evin and Aline Lopès, will introduce you to the fundamentals (Break, Popping, House and Newstyle techniques), through choreographic phrases taken from the show Rodeo.
Stroll - These words in which we circulate - David Poullard - Bureau des Guides du GR2013
All around us, as we walk through the city, are texts, words and letters. David Poullard invites us to discover this scriptural hubbub, which has a form, an origin, a state of existence conducive to raising questions, and rich in teaching for those who take the time to cast an inquisitive eye over it. He will question a series of "cases" on a walk that will take us from Réformés to the Old Port, passing through three distinct neighborhoods.
Combined visit - ELLES! exhibition at the Children's Museum / Présentes! exhibition at the Children's Museum
Sign up for a combined visit to the ELLES! exhibition at the Préau des Accoules - Musée des enfants and the immersive Présentes! exhibition aboard the museum boat.
Stroll - How did the ancients see the world? - Caspar Noyons - Bureau des Guides du GR2013
During this walk, we'll explore Massilia's most ancient remains, from the ancient port to the excavations in the bourse center, and on to the sea. Beyond history, we'll delve into the ancient imagination through the myths of Greece, Mesopotamia and Egypt, discovering that every human being is a universe and that the city itself reflects the cosmos.
Fashion performance - Alexandra Hadjikyriacou (invited by Martha Kirszenbaum)
Cypriot and English designer Alexandra Hadjikyriacou combines Cypriot Venetian lace, urban and rural embroidery, silk making and linen weaving in her fashion creations, using domestic knitting machines combined with painting and installation.
Performance with Atelier des Artistes en Exil
Performance Dé-racinement. 50'. Dancers: Amal Alnabwany and Emmanuelle Pépin. Oud player: Rooney Lumière.
Carte Blanche with Dizonord (guests Martha Kirszenbaum)
For his Carte Blanche at the Art Explora Festival, Vincent Privat has imagined an evening dedicated to Mediterranean music, with the artists and players of the Dizonord network, with a cross-cultural and cross-generational focus. By inviting different artists, media, performers, all linked to Mediterranean sound/music cultures, in its popular, traditional and underground definition, to collectively create the soundtrack of the museum ship's voyage, echoing the different Mediterranean ports and ports of call.
Performance nasa4nasa - 'Promises' (invited by Martha Kirszenbaum)
Rethought for the Art Explora Festival, Promises is an improvisational score in which two bodies attempt to choreograph a field of sensitive compositional listening.
DJ Set for kids - Radio Minus Sound System
An atypical web radio station for curious young listeners, Radio Minus is dedicated to researching, archiving, documenting and broadcasting the hidden treasures of music for and by children. Hosted by a team of enthusiasts at the cutting edge of the subject, the radio station offers a vinyl DJ set, supported by a video-game system, with a single objective: to get kids dancing to never-before-heard tunes.
Participatory culinary performance by Rafram Chaddad with an Old Port fishmonger (invited by Martha Kirszenbaum)
Inspired by the fish markets of Djerba, the Tunisian island where Rafram Chaddad grew up, a fish auction performance.
Echo à performance de mode - Alexandra Hadjikyriacou (invited by Martha Kirszenbaum)
Cypriot-English designer Alexandra Hadjikyriacou combines Cypriot Venetian lace, urban and rural embroidery, silk making and linen weaving in her fashion creations, using domestic knitting machines combined with painting and installation.
Carte blanche at Pavillon Southway (invited by Martha Kirszenbaum)
The Pavillon Southway, inaugurated in 2019 by Emmanuelle Luciani, proposes a project based on Marseille's legendary team, OM. The project, conceived for Art Explora, revisits the history of soccer and Marseille, in particular OM and its fans, and blends historical objects and contemporary works in an installation at Pavillon Southway, bringing together works by Émile Barret and Bella Hunt & Dante Di Calce inspired by soccer, fan culture and OM.
Compagnie Hylel
In response to the film BAC Nord, the show BACH NORD [Get out the guitars] proposes a reappropriation of the image of inner-city youth by themselves. This participatory project is a musical and dance work inspired by the music of Bach, navigating between drill and instrumental music. The starting point for the choreographic creation is the work carried out by the choreographer during workshops in schools and socio-educational establishments with around a hundred teenagers from the northern districts of Marseille.
Carte blanche with Films Femmes Méditerranée
Film screenings.
Carte blanche at FIDMarseille
Film screening
Visits for associations
Come and discover the various Art Explora Festival exhibitions with your association!
Combined visit - ELLES! exhibition at the Children's Museum / Présentes! exhibition at the Children's Museum
Sign up for a combined visit to the ELLES! exhibition at the Préau des Accoules - Musée des enfants and the immersive Présentes! exhibition aboard the museum boat.
Voices : Sophie Beau
30-minute talk by an inspiring personality : Sophie Beau
Festival Musique Cinéma
"Vestiaires - Season 14" is a project conceived for the 2024 Cultural Olympiad and sponsored by the series' Marseilles-based scriptwriters, Fabrice Chanut and Adda Abdelli. Since 2011, the Vestiaires series has used a light, humorous tone to highlight the daily lives of swimmers with disabilities, while breaking down stereotypes.
Screening of the film 'Les rêves n'ont pas de titres' by Zineb Sedira followed by a conversation with Coline Milliard, art critic and executive editor at Art Basel (invited by Martha Kirszenbaum)
Combined visit - ELLES! exhibition at the Children's Museum / Présentes! exhibition at the Children's Museum
Sign up for a combined visit to the ELLES! exhibition at the Préau des Accoules - Musée des enfants and the immersive Présentes! exhibition aboard the museum boat.
Concert Shobee (invited by Martha Kirszenbaum)
Shobee (real name Chouaib Ribati) is a Moroccan artist, musician, songwriter and composer born in 1991. He is best known for his work in the Moroccan rap genre, where he has been active for over 10 years. He was a pioneer at the turn of the 2010s in the reinvention and modernization of the country's rap codes, and a factor of empowerment and emancipation for young Moroccans in the wake of the Arab Spring.