Carte Blanche Alice Diop – Reformuler
The Voyage of the Black Venus
© The Voyage of the Sable Venus from Angola to the West Indies, gravure de W. Grainger d’après Thomas Stothard, illustration de B. Edwards publiée dans The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies, in the West Indies, Londres ©
Reading followed by a screening of the short films Conspiracy and Et les chiens se taisaient
The Voyage of the Black Venus is the epilogue to Robin Coste Lewis's poetry collection Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems. A woman dreams her way through the museums of the world at night. She sets off in search of the fragmented bodies of all those black women who have populated the margins of paintings since the Renaissance. She invites them to join her on a voyage through time, on a ship captained by the Black Venus. This short prose text not only offers a radical re-reading of art history, but also illuminates the entire project of Robin Coste Lewis, Pulitzer Prize winner for Voyage of the Sable Venus and one of the most important poets on the American scene. On discovering this text, Alice Diop recognised her own questions, transfigured in this vast poetic and political epic.
Conspiracy (2022, 25 minutes, in English) by Simone Leigh and Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich
with Simone Leigh, Kimari Hazward, Lorraine O'Grady, Edward Sales, Jin Sik, Sarah Wang, Anastasia Warren
Conspiracy is a collaborative film by artists Simone Leigh and Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, celebrating the many facets of black women's identity. It blends sculpture and filmmaking to create a hypnotic work of art. The film is a reinterpretation of Hands of Inge from 1962, a documentary about the artist Ruth Inge Hardison, and pays homage to her artistic legacy and her defiance of white norms in the art world. This collaboration is the result of a ten-year creative friendship between Simone Leigh and Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, sharing an ongoing conversation with other influential black women in the cultural field. Simone Leigh, born in 1967, is a versatile artist based in New York who explores the history and subjectivity of black women through sculpture, performance, video and installation. Her ceramic and bronze works denounce systemic racism, re-establishing the centrality of the black experience. She was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2022. Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich is a filmmaker and artist who explores the inner worlds of black women. Her award-winning films have been screened worldwide.
Et les chiens se taisaient (1978, 15 minutes) by Sarah Maldoror, Bernard Favre, Vincent Blanchet
Et les chiens se taisaient is a film inspired by Aimé Césaire's play in which the rebel expresses his revolt against the slavery of his people in a poignant poem. Actors Gabriel Glissant and Sarah Maldoror perform in the reserves of the Musée de l'Homme dedicated to Black Africa, integrating three silent spectators. Ancient statues and masks and views of Martinique's landscapes enhance the film.
In the same place
LIMINAL, Forensic Oceanography, Border Forensics From Sea to Sky
Featuring different works by the LIMINAL, Forensic Oceanography and Border Forensics collectives, the multimedia installation From Sea to Sky approaches intersectional immobility and frontier-based violence at sea. The objective is to highlight the way in which the Mediterranean maritime space has been transformed into a militarized border zone.
Lawrence Abu Hamdan Zifzafa
Zifzafa, is an arabic word to describe a wind that shakes and rattles all in its path. Here, it becomes the title of a performance of artist and researcher Lawrence Abu Hamdan, that enmeshes sonic composition, video game engines and spoken word, to immerse us in the heart of a movement to resist green colonialism in the occupied Syrian Golan heights.
Alessandro Sciarroni U. (un canto)
A year after the premier of IRIS at the Butte-aux-Cailles swimming pool, commissioned by the Festival d'Automne, in which he explored the Italian polyphonic repertoire, Alessandro Sciarroni brings us U. (un canto). This music-based performance piece evokes the profoundly mysterious relationship between human beings and nature.
Lina Majdalanie, Rabih Mroué Quatre murs et un toit
In 1947, the trial of German playwright Bertolt Brecht took place in the United States in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), responsible for combating communist activism. It was here that Brecht wrote a declaration which he was forbidden to read out. The minutes of the trial, as well as this declaration, constitute one of the axes of this exuberant show.