Speaking of a dream within a dream, stage 1, Filmed performances, 2018-2019
Avec Valérie Blanchon, Marie Deren, Pierre Guyotat, Florence Lazar, Petra Marcuz, Cécile Portier, Isabelle Rivoal, Pia Viewing, Sophie Wahnich. (View project)
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
La Plaine-Saint-Denis, 5 color photographs, 1997, 120 × 120 cm, Collection of the French National Contemporary Art Fund.
This series originated from the sight, at the gate of a disused factory, of a Black man dressed in white (a kind of Christ-like figure), at a time when we were working collectively—with artists Marc Pataut, Paola Salerno, and others—on an exhibition about the rapidly changing territory of La Plaine-Saint-Denis. The series begins with a questioning of a singular presence in the French landscape: coconuts scattered across a tree-lined vacant lot behind an abandoned warehouse. These were in fact remnants of magical rituals, traces of the presence of a religious community of African origin—“diasporas of publics enclosed within their own bubble” (Arjun Appadurai, After Colonialism)—emerging from globalization and postcolonial migratory movements. They had settled in the voids left by the deterritorialization of sites of production. They referred to themselves as “migratory birds.”
Work acquired by a public collection : Collection du Centre national des arts plastiques.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Un autre pays(Another Country), installation (synthetic foam, plaster, coconut shells, metal), 700 × 400 × 270 cm.
Exhibition “Des territoires”, École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 2001(curated by Jean-François Chevrier, 2001, Paris). Inqtallation which reused the exotic material of coconuts discovered in La Plaine-Saint-Denis and black industrial foam. This setting could be read as a metaphor for another country, an inner territory invented by exiles—political and economic refugees displaced and forming new diasporas. Lien vers le texte Jean-François Chevrier, catalogue Des Territoires.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Salons ovales, series of color photographs, 60 × 60 cm.
Staged photographs in the former MAAO (Museum of African and Oceanic Arts), now the Musée de l’Immigration. “History is neither in frescoes nor in texts; it is woven into bodies. It passes through them, disperses them, divides them, and makes them lose their way. It plays with homogeneous and empty time. It is always, in part, non-contemporary, achronic, and present. This history is that of these children who awkwardly reclaim ownership of the space. Their gazes are intense, determined, defiant. One is seated in the back of one of the beautiful 1930s armchairs, another places his hand on the female bust, which here no longer has the appearance of a specter but rather that of a familiar object.”Sophie Wahnich, 2005. Link to Sophie Wahnich’s text: sophie Wahnich.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Tropical Aquarium, video installation, 5:11 min loop, 2006.Exotic-dance, video installation, 3:min loop, 2006.
Videos installation exploring postcolonial imaginaries through archival and staged imagery.
Music: Georges Aperghis, “Machinations” (2000)
Performers: Christophe Constantin, Florence Lazar, Isabelle Maurel, Gérard Vidal
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Democracy?, 68-minute film, 2009 (Official selection, Marseille International Documentary Film Festival 2009)
The result of a collaboration with historian Sophie Wahnich, the film Democracy? can be seen both as an inquiry into the questions raised by the very word “democracy” and as a visual meditation on an urban landscape whose contours appear deceptively peaceful.
The historian meets the residents of the tower where Florence de Comarmond’s studio is located. Without preparation, these non-specialists respond generously and with conviction to demanding questions, even if their answers sometimes take unexpected paths that may unsettle the researcher. Wide shots of what is happening outside (workers balancing on rooftops, children, carnival scenes, the urban landscape…) counterpoint the faces filmed indoors, reinforcing the formal abstraction of the work and the sense of a definition of the word “democracy” emerging in negative. A young African student brings a relevant and slightly offbeat perspective.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Un autre pays, chanson (Another Country,song), sound installation, 2003
Another Country (song) is a sound piece performed by Daisy Bolteer based on a text by Florence de Comarmond, exploring themes of exile and displacement. Built on a sampled Afro-American rhythm, the singing freely interprets the text, echoing the condition of the exile compelled to invent their own conditions of existence. The listening device, with suspended headphones, creates an uncomfortable auditory experience, resonating with forced mobility and instability. The piece also invokes the figure of Seneca and reflects on exile as both a historical and contemporary condition. It examines the tension between mobility and the desire for rootedness, as well as the formation of imagined communities despite dispersion and distance.
> Anne-Marie Morice, revue Synesthésie n° 14, 2003