Phoenix Atala (FR/MA, 1977)
Residency period: May-June 2025
Based in Paris, Phoenix Atala is a trans, transversal, and transdisciplinary French/Moroccan artist, involved in decolonial and queer practices, and speculative and transformative futures. Working most often collectively and collaboratively, Phoenix Atala explores, dissects, and disrupts the techniques of cinema, performance, stand-up comedy, speech, web series, rap, and so on.
His work has been presented in institutions such as Centre Pompidou (Paris), Nanterre-Amandiers, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Chez Bushwick and FIAF (New York), Fundaçao Serralves (Porto), Casa Encendida (Madrid), Human Resources (Los Angeles), MAC Val (Vitry-sur-Seine), and on France Culture and Canal +.
Phoenix Atala is currently teaching at the Institut Kunst Gender & Natur in Basel, where educational experiments on queer temporality, collaborative work, and decentralized production/show spaces are being conducted.
During his three-month residency as part of the Principal Residency Program, Phoenix Atala will continue to develop ىدصلا يفاك (echo café), a speculative script made up of music, a photo novel, and derivative encounters, which will evoke his grandfather’s life in Morocco’s 1950s and 1960s cruising scene. This journey through North African temporality will bring together experiences of three generations of artists from the same family in the fantasy of a utopian café, where visitors swap books, listen to music and sip mint tea in the haze of shisha smoke.