marseille · 13th arrondissementmarseille · 13th arrondissement · since 2023
At Les Ruches, La Maurelle, La Marie and Les Olives, mOst makes photographs, maps, sound, exhibitions and a film with children, young people and families. Images made from the inside, by the people who live the neighborhood.
20232026
what we want
stay, come back, do it together.
We came to the 13th arrondissement in 2023, through two Maisons pour tous, neighborhood community centers: the one for Les Olives and La Marie, and the one for La Maurelle and Les Bougainvilliers. Since then we have come back every year to Les Ruches and the Petit Séminaire with the centre social La Maurelle; in 2023 and 2024 we were also at La Marie. Not for a one-off workshop: to stay for the long haul, with the same organizations, the same families, and children who grow up from one project to the next.
Our role is not to replace the people who keep the neighborhood going day to day. We come with a toolbox: film cameras, microphones, maps, paintbrushes, a video camera. Residents choose what they look at, what they say and what they show. They are the authors of the images.
The neighborhood is changing. The neighboring Petit Séminaire housing estate, built in the late 1950s to plans by the architect Georges Candilis, was demolished in the early 2020s; Les Ruches is due to be renovated; a fire station has replaced the sports field. We want this transformation to be told from the inside as well, and to leave a trace: a living archive, made by the people who live through it.
The Petit Séminaire housing estate is built on farmland along the rue de la Maurelle.
The Petit Séminaire is demolished. Families are rehoused, sometimes far from one another.
First workshops at La Marie and Les Ruches: maps, photos, street interviews.
The film la vie aux ruches, and the collages of Les Olives and La Marie.
La galerie des ruches meets the children of the T.L., in Rio.
The projet mémoire (memory project): a community arts residency at Les Ruches, to keep the memory of the neighborhood.
the projects
Five projects in three years, and a residency underway. Each one produced images, maps and voices, then a public presentation in the neighborhood.
Maison pour tous des Olives et de La Marie
Maison pour tous de La Maurelle et des Bougainvilliers
centre social La Maurelle
Maison pour tous des Olives et de La Marie
centre social La Maurelle, Fotogracria
the 3D visit
atterrir
Atterrir means “to land”: the exhibitions return to their walls. At the centre social La Maurelle, the exhibition of October 1, 2025 is rebuilt from the installation photos: each photo from Rocinha takes you across the Atlantic and lands you where it was taken. At La Marie, the 2023 and 2024 exhibitions are pasted again at the foot of the towers.
fifteen panels at La Maurelle · twenty walls at La Marie · a flight to Rio de Janeiro
the screening room
la vie aux ruches
Camera in hand, the young people of Les Ruches interview their neighbors after the demolition of the Petit Séminaire: the fields of before, the sports field that disappeared, the cracks, the neighborhood dog, their dreams for what comes next. A fourteen-minute documentary, in full, subtitled in four languages.
2024 · 14 min 24 · in French · subtitles fr, pt, en, es
the 13th, full screen →Here, it’s magnificent, fabulous and… perilous!
« Ici, c’est magnifique, fabuleux et… périlleux ! »
the children of Les Ruches, 2023
the map
From Les Ruches to La Marie, a little over half a mile of small valleys, housing estates and village. Each marker opens the images made at that spot.
le petit séminaire, then and now →
01
Maison pour tous · rue Marius Briata
The starting point of the workshops at Les Ruches since 2023, and the venue of the exhibition of October 1, 2025. To get there, the children say: “take the slope, then the stairs, walk on the boards and on the stones to avoid the sewer water.”
02
housing estate built between 1958 and 1960 · demolished in the early 2020s
This is where the Petit Séminaire housing estate stood: 240 apartments designed by the architect Georges Candilis. The children photograph the empty lot; in the film, former neighbors tell what they lived through there.
03
C1 · C2 · D1 · D2 · D3 · D4
Yellow buildings above the valley, which the children call by their letters. The garden and its planters, the parking lot, the neighborhood dog. This is where la galerie des ruches, the film and the 2026 residency were made.
04
where the sports field used to be
On the 2023 map, it is drawn in red, under construction. In its place there used to be a field where the kids loved to play: “They shouldn’t have destroyed it.”
05
the square, the church, the pétanque court
The old village, its square and its pétanque players: “A Marseille passion: pétanque. It does you good.”
06
the pharmacy, the bakery, the rotisserie
The pharmacist, the mail carrier, the Rivas bakery, “from father to son,” Monsieur Louis’s rotisserie: the shopkeepers photographed and portrayed by the families in 2023.
07
85 avenue des Poilus
The 2023 and 2024 workshops started here: “I discovered the MPT thanks to Hanna. The MPT lives up to its name.” (MPT stands for Maison pour tous, a house for everyone.)
08
la cité aux fleurs · building 16
Colorful towers “to make it pretty,” Peggy’s garden, the shared Wednesday meal. In 2023, the exhibition hung at the foot of building 16; in 2024, the images and collages were pasted on the neighborhood’s walls.
our approach
Every project begins in a Maison pour tous or a community center, with the youth and community workers who know the families. When the weather is nice, we set up at the foot of the buildings.
We draw the neighborhood as it is, then as we would like it to be: the map of the present and the map of the future (the “turfu,” French back slang for futur). It then serves as a plan for the photo walks.
Film cameras and only a few frames: we learn to choose, to frame, to wait. The rolls are developed and scanned in high definition.
Street interviews, conversations with neighbors and elders, the sounds of the neighborhood: the children write the questions and hold the microphone.
Each image gets a title and a few words written by the person who took it. The captions are theirs.
At the foot of building 16, on the walls of La Marie, in the hallways of the community center. When hanging outdoors is not allowed, as at Les Ruches in 2023, we look for other walls: this site is one of them.
Photos, maps, sound and film join a living archive, which we put back into circulation in the neighborhood and beyond.
right now · 2026
a community arts residency at Les Ruches · in English: “memory project”
Since spring 2026, the residency has brought two artists to Les Ruches. With Maymouna Baradji, a mosaic artist, the children are tracing a large sensory map of the neighborhood, layer by layer: archives, photos of the present, collages and drawings on glass. With Myriam Rabah-Konaté, an artist and sound documentarian, they investigate building by building, write the questions and record the voices.
In August, the workshops took place at the foot of the buildings, at Les Ruches. Since September 23, they have continued at the centre social La Maurelle, at 5 pm, until October 23, including the Toussaint school break. Still free and open to all, they lead up to a public presentation in the neighborhood, indoors and outdoors, where the map, the images and the sounds come together.
With support from the Fondation Art Dialogue (Institut de France), the Prefect of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, the Métropole Aix-Marseille-Provence and the City of Marseille. In partnership with the centre social La Maurelle.
crossed perspectives
In 2025, through images, the children of Les Ruches met the children of the T.L., the Terra da Lama, at the very top of Rocinha in Rio de Janeiro, where mOst works with the photographer Fotogracria. Shared acerolas, barefoot soccer and the Paula Brito shower answer the garden, the dogs and the fields of Les Ruches.
with
The Maison pour tous and centre social La Maurelle et des Bougainvilliers, the Maison pour tous and centre social des Olives et de La Marie, their community teams, the artists Maymouna Baradji, Myriam Rabah-Konaté and Fotogracria, and above all the children, young people and families who took the photos, drew the maps and asked the questions.
