SAVA Research Week V: Geotransformación / Panel on Revolutionary Agrarianism


The artist presentations in this SAVA Panel on Revolutionary Agrarianism illuminate episodes in the socialist history of experimental agricultural and rural transformation. Massinissa Selmani’s talk is based around his artistic research into the 1000 Villages project that set out to transform rural life in Algeria during the 1970s, while Ângela Ferreira excavates traces of experimental agronomy in socialist Mozambique. Responses are by art historian Jonathan Cane, whose work engages decolonial approaches to African art, architecture and the built environment, and SAVA Research Fellow Alex Petrusek, who is researching East German extractivism in Namibia.

1000 Socialist Villages
Massinissa Selmani (artist, Tours / Tizi-Ouzou)

Artist Massinissa Selmani will speak about his project 1000 Villages (2015-) that investigates the structure of history in 1970's Algeria and the plans made to create a new model for society through the transformation of the countryside. Selmani’s point of departure was an archive of press clippings about a rural development project initiated by the Algerian government in the mid-70s under the aegis of the “Agrarian Revolution”. The goal of this planning project was to redevelop the agricultural sector of Algeria’s economy by collectivizing its infrastructure. Together with curator Natasha Marie Llorens, Selmani spoke with architects, filmmakers, writers, artists, sociologists, academics, journalists, and regular Algerians who had either lived through the period during which the 1000 socialist villages were being built, or had associations with a period of Algerian history that remains vivid in the nation’s collective imagination as a relatively prosperous and optimistic time of construction and unity.

Experimental Field
Ângela Ferreira (artist, Lisbon)

The presentation will focus on the part of the artist’s practice which is concerned with developing metaphoric and political statements from critical investigations into academic practices and research centres in the early years of Mozambique’s independence. She will present documentation of the exhibition Experimental Field: Ângela Ferreira, in Collaboration with Alda Costa (2024), which explores material and environmental research. The exhibition takes its name from an outdoor agricultural learning laboratory maintained at Eduardo Mondlane University’s campus, where university staff, researchers and students worked together to produce food, design resources, tools and structures, and train farmers and community technicians. This experimental site was coordinated by TBARN (Técnicas Básicas de Aproveitamento de Recursos Naturais)*, a research group formed in the early years of the socialist government to improve farmers’ production and quality of life with minimal resources. 
* Basic Techniques for Utilising Natural Resources.

Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts (SAVA) is a visual arts led interdisciplinary research project that challenges the West-centric discourses of the Anthropocene by asserting the constitutive role of the environmental histories of Socialism in the formation of the new geological age. Led by Dr. Maja Fowkes at UCL Institute of Advanced Studies, the project was selected for a Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council (ERC) and is funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

Image: Massinissa Selmani, 1000 villages, 2015. (detail, double page 2/20). 20 Drawings on double pages and one drawing on notebook cover. Graphite, tape, marker and transfer on paper and tracing paper. With the support of the 56th Venice Biennale, All the world’s futures, 2015. Collection Frac Centre Val de Loire, Orléans. France. © ADAGP Paris