Saffron Cultivation inn Taliouine, Morocco

Course: Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle, Harvard Graduate School of Design.

“A living organism continually increases its entropy and thus tends to approach the dangerous state of maximum entropy, which is death.”
-Erwin Schrodigner, What is life?, 1994.

This project attempts to connect the second law of thermodynamics and the spiritual practices that are associated with saffron cultivation to explain the evolution of the landscape. The Indigenous inhabitants in Taliouine, who are the Berber tribes known as Amazigh, have successfully deployed an ancestral irrigation method that transforms kinetic and gravitational energy to produce life within an arid environment. While saffron is not a food crop, it appears that the motivation behind growing it and sustaining its production is deeply connected to cultural and spiritual values; a connection that can be traced to deities. Historically, the Amazigh worshipped a woman goddess who symbolizes fertility, growth, and prosperity of life. In today's context, women are key players in the cultivation of saffron and hold leadership roles in the value chain and distribution of this mystic spice.

Various narratives on saffron cultivation begin by referring to how this spice saved the village and the Amazigh from poverty. From spiritual and cultural perspectives, it implies a divine intervention; an input of energy that slows the constant increase of disorder. The Amazigh believe in the saffron therapeutic powers, which can explain the commercial value of saffron, and one could argue that its spiritual connotation has made it the most expensive spice in the world.

The indigenous method of managing the distribution of water relies on using a marked stick, which indicates the amount of water that is allocated for each farmer. Each farmer has a specific time frame to access his share of water, and the time is measured by a fixed shade between marks on the ground. The distance of one foot between the rows of saffron flowers facilitates the movement of women from one row to another while maintaining the maximum density within the parcel. Women chant while picking the flowers and sorting the saffron adding an auditory component to the landscape.