Press Paul Maheke - Galerie Sultana

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Press Paul Maheke - Galerie Sultana
Press
                                            Paul Maheke

Galerie Sultana, 10 rue ramponeau, 75020 Paris, + 33 1 44 54 08 90, contact@galeriesultana.com, www.galeriesultana.com
Press Paul Maheke - Galerie Sultana
Paul Maheke had originally planned to stage a performance at Margate’s Tom Thumb Theatre, a unique
venue that is one of the smallest theatres in Europe. The work was envisioned as an experimentation with
the malleability of voice and different modes of address as tools to transform the audience’s experience
of a physical space. As the spread of Covid-19 led to the delay or cancellation of most exhibitions and live
programming, followed by a rapid shift to online platforms, Paul wrote an open letter, titled, “The year I
stopped making art. Why the art world should assist artists beyond representation; in solidarity.”, addres-
sing the impossibility of making work during the pandemic. This letter served as a source of inspiration
throughout the re-imagining of ‘Nothing gentle will remain’. Nora Kovacs exchanged emails with Paul to
discuss his contribution; a new visual poem that builds upon his research interests and uses the page as a
performative space of its own.
Press Paul Maheke - Galerie Sultana
Nora Kovacs: Your practice took a slightly different form with ‘A light barrel in a river’s mouth’ than what many viewers
will be used to. The physical presence of your body, the audience and surrounding venue have been replaced by a visual
poem within which the ‘performance’ unfolds. Could you talk about this shift in medium and how your way of working
may have changed as you moved from the space of a live performance to that of a publication?

Paul Maheke: I have actually used the format of the visual poem on several occasions previous to this. I came to art
through drawing and for a long time drawing was at the very basis of my thinking. Even today, when it comes to perfor-
mance, I often score the work as I would compose a drawing: balancing out and playing with contrast and density.

It’s important to say that ‘A light barrel in a river’s mouth’ isn’t the direct translation of the performance work. It defini-
tely has got a life of its own. I would say that it is less of a score than it is a consequence of or an appendix to the perfor-
mance—which I still haven’t been able to perform live due to the pandemic.

NK: Your works often draw from a similar thread of materials, each iteration building upon and evolving into the next.
For A light barrel in a river’s mouth, your references range from gravitational waves and Jeff Buckley lyrics to Édouard
Glissant’s ‘Poetics of Relation’ and images from the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Could you share a bit more about
your research process and how these specific sources have come together?

PM: It’s funny because although I end up researching quite a bit, I don’t necessarily consider myself as someone who
builds their work around specific research. The process feels very intuitive. I literally let my intuitions guide me, some-
times beyond my own understanding.

Ever since I started to make art, most of it took shape while trying to fall asleep. In those moments and in-between
states, it is as if things were able to bubble up and had eventually decided to make themselves visible/audible. The
various scenarii in which all of those elements introduce themselves to one another are nocturnal; they are launched
from the shadows (to quote Judith Butler).

NK: Stemming from Glissant’s ‘Poetics of Relation’, the notion of opacity is something that you have experimented
within many of your performances, as well as your latest work for Nothing gentle will remain. Certain parts are more
legible than others; the textual and visual elements are not linear, but rather converge into a sort of ‘archipelago’ of dura-
tions and intensities. How have Glissant’s theories impacted your work? What role does opacity play in A light barrel in
a river’s mouth?

PM: Glissant is MAJOR. Probably one of the most brilliant voices of our era. His thinking around the globalised world
built upon the abyss which holds the remains of the Atlantic trade— therefore the (floating) ground on which we all
stand and from which we have all been cast—is, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful ways to articulate the struggle
Black folks are put through today: a deliberate and continuous attempt to shut us out from the abyss. Which is by no
means for Glissant the void whiteness expects us to believe it is.

In this regard, the right to be opaque, and to remain in the depth of the unseen/the unknown/the unseen, is as much a
fundamental need as a survival strategy. Not everything can be legible nor it is appropriate for us to expect so. The pro-
blem I have with representation — which is often used as a synonym for transparency — is that it entertains the belief
that everything can be articulated visually.

NK: The last ‘page’ of ‘A light barrel in a river’s mouth’ writes, “I return to the visible and although I have no body ... I
still talk.” In a similar vein, Nothing gentle will remain considers how publics might gather together, both now and in
the future; the parameters of which have rapidly shifted throughout the production of the project in light of Covid-19
and recent protests in response to systemic racism and police brutality. What do you hope readers/audiences take away
from your work’s oscillation between presence and absence? How might we “return to the visible” amidst and after
these respective (though interrelated) crises?

PM: Perhaps that we should just decide collectively to withdraw from the visible. Even just for a minute. To me, sight is
an impairment to our deep understanding. It prevents us from accessing what lurks in the shadow image.

There is no return ... whatever happened is part of us now, and forever.

‘Nothing gentle will remain’ is a collaboration between curators Lydia Antoniou, Caterina Guadagno, Nora
Kovacs, Titus Nouwens and William Rees, in partnership with Open School East as part of the Curating Contem-
porary Art Programme Graduate Projects 2020, Royal College of Art, London. The publication is available online
here, with a physical publication launched at a later date.
Press Paul Maheke - Galerie Sultana
Patrice Joly, « L’été contemporain, 5 expositions à la Friche la Belle de Mai, Marseille, 29.06 - 29.09.2019 »,
02, Ete/Summer 2019
Press Paul Maheke - Galerie Sultana
Pedro Morais, « Blackness ou comment disparaître en pleine lumière », 02, Ete/Summer 2019, p. 54-58.

                                      Blackness
                                ou comment disparaître
                                   en pleine lumière
                                                                  -
                                                         par Pedro Morais

          Entre le débat pour la décolonisation des musées             Aux antipodes de ce que laisse penser ce scé-
          et le désir d’échapper aux assignations iden-                nario de guerre découvert subitement par une
          titaires, une nouvelle génération d’artistes, de             presse déconnectée, Columbia a souhaité instal-
          chercheurs, de lieux et de curateurs assume la               ler son Institut à Paris, intéressée par une « vita-
          nécessité d’affronter le racisme structurel tout             lité culturelle unique » et un terrain de recherche
          en cherchant à créer des espaces d’opacité, de               privilégié pour les études post-coloniales, selon
          fugitivité et d’affirmation d’un futur.                      son directeur Mark Mazower.

          Quand, en octobre 2018, se sont réunies à Paris                   Essentialisation et condescendance
          la philosophe Denise Ferreira da Silva (connue
          par son travail sur la notion de l’« Autre racial            Ces échanges universitaires transatlantiques ont
          » en tant que fondement de la géopolitique                   une longue tradition, à l’exemple des finance-
          coloniale de l’universalisme), la théoricienne des           ments que l’historien Fernand Braudel y a trouvé
          black queer studies Christina Sharpe (autrice du             pour la création de la Maison des Sciences de
          célèbre In the Wake: On Blackness and Being1)                l’Homme (1970), puis de l’École des hautes
          et la politologue Françoise Vergès (qui, dans Un             études en sciences sociales (1975). C’est d’ail-
          féminisme décolonial2, problématise le féminisme             leurs dans cette dernière qu’en 2017 l’historienne
          civilisationnel blanc), invitées par Tina Campt              de l’art Anne Lafont a été nommée directrice
          (qui, dans Listening to Images3,cherche à écou-              d’études en histoire de l’art et créolités. Un
          ter les pratiques de refus en sourdine dans des              événement majeur : une femme noire qui ouvre
          photos ethnographiques ou judiciaires), la sen-              discrètement mais sûrement l’histoire de l’art à la
          sation d’un moment historique a parcouru la salle            discipline « ennemie » des cultures visuelles mais
          pleine à craquer. Une histoire décentralisée, en             aussi aux études de genre et post-coloniales.
          train de s’écrire, bousculait enfin le débat d’idées         Anne Lafont a acquis cette année une visibilité
          en France. La réunion avait lieu dans l’antenne              déterminante, intégrant le comité scientifique
          parisienne de l’université de Columbia qui venait            de l’exposition « Le modèle noir, de Géricault
          d’ouvrir un ambitieux Institute for Ideas and                à Matisse » au musée d’Orsay, en parallèle de
          Imagination dirigé par l’historien Mark Mazower              la publication de son ouvrage L’art et la race –
          et réunissant chercheurs, écrivains et artistes              L’Africain (tout) contre l’œil des Lumières6. Elle
          pour un an de résidence (dont les philosophes                a joué un rôle-clé dans la reconnaissance par le
          Elsa Dorlin et Achille Membe). Tina Campt,                   musée qu’il n’est pas neutre politiquement dans
          l’une des résidentes, avait réussit à rassembler             son utilisation du langage, détectant toute em-
          parmi les plus brillantes théoriciennes actuelles            preinte d’un colonialisme mental toujours enclin
          autour d’une discussion sur la black futurity4. S’il         à promouvoir l’idée des « missions civilisatrices
          était toujours question de reconnaître que la «              », du « primitivisme » ou des hiérarchisations et
          question noire » est une construction imposée à              essentialisations culturelles. Dans le catalogue7,
          travers l’histoire de l’esclavage et de la colonisa-         tout en reconnaissant le rôle historique de l’expo-
          tion, le débat se portait aussi sur cette ouverture          sition « Les Magiciens de la Terre » de Jean-Hu-
          : cette « futurity », la possibilité d’un futur. « Le        bert Martin (1989), elle rompt, aux côtés de David
          passé est encore devant nous, il est notre futur             Bindman, un certain consensus, la considérant
          » évoquait Vergès. Ce n’était peut-être pas un               « fondée sur la fixation d’une autre catégorie
          hasard si la discussion avait lieu dans l’antenne            problématique car insuffisamment contextualisée
          d’une institution universitaire américaine, ce qui           : le non-Occidental comme Autre éternel ». Pour
          ne manquera pas de nourrir les discours d’une                garantir le principe suprême de l’autonomie de
          presse française paniquée par l’arrivée supposée             l’œuvre fondé sur l’héritage formaliste greenber-
          d’un Plan Marshall à la faveur d’un communau-                gien (ou dans sa version révisée et actualisée
          tarisme identitaire visant à détruire le beau projet         de la revue October), les institutions françaises
          de l’universalisme français                                  préfèrent remettre le débat sur la « politique des
                                                                       identités »
Press Paul Maheke - Galerie Sultana
Anthea Hamilton, The New Life, 2018.
Dimensions variables / variable dimensions. 58th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, May You Live In Interesting Times.
Photo: Andrea Avezzu. Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia.

 Tarek Lakhrissi, Out of the Blue, 2019.
 Court métrage HD / Hd short movie.
 Vue de l’exposition / view of the exhibition
 Tarek Lakhrissi, «Caméléon Club»,
 La Galerie CAC, Noisy-Le-Sec, 2019.
 Photo: Pierre Antoine.
 Courtesy Tarek Lakhrissi;
 La Galerie Noisy-Le-Sec.
Press Paul Maheke - Galerie Sultana
à des institutions de secteur comme le musée            (du titre de l’essai de Paul Gilroy pour évoquer
du Quai Branly. Anne Lafont fait d’ailleurs l’éloge     la traite Atlantique)qui constituerait le disque
du caractère pionnier des expositions de Daniel         dur de pratiques musicales de révolte ayant été
Soutif qui s’y sont tenues (« Le Siècle du jazz »       plus effectives à « hacker » le système colonial
en 2009 et « The Color Line » en 2016), « même          que la culture visuelle10. « Nous voulons sortir
si étrangement programmées dans le musée                des privilèges et des invitations, nous voulons
des Autres ». L’exposition « Le modèle noir », si       négocier notre manière d’être là, nous voulons
elle fait date, n’a pas manqué de faire débat. Le       fuir », écrit Olivier Marbœuf, s’inspirant de la
collectif « Décoloniser les arts » et en particulier    réflexion de Fred Moten autour d’une fugitivité (en
Françoise Vergès avec son texte « Corps noirs,          écho à celle des esclaves) qui défait l’imaginaire
vies muettes. Quand le modèle noir masque l’his-        héroïque des luttes et se soustrait parfois à la
toire de la fabrication du blanc8 » ont sévèrement      visibilité, permettant de « reprendre son souffle,
critiqué l’exposition concernant la nécessité de «      rassembler ses forces, pratiquer des alliances
passer du fait d’avoir été représentée au fait de       avec les vivants et les morts », face à la stratégie
se représenter ». « En commençant par l’escla-          de valorisation et de visibilité soudaine opérée
vage, l’exposition enferme les Noir·e·s dans une        dans le champ de l’art11.
histoire que des Européens ont mise en place
et ainsi reproduit leur objectification », poursuit                    Pratiques de refus
Vergès, sans aller pour autant jusqu’à remettre
en question les frontières entre art et artisanat, ce   Le champ de références s’élargit, avec une
qui aurait permis d’intégrer des formes d’auto-re-      conscience aiguë de l’intersectionnalité, croi-
présentation.                                           sant le féminisme à travers une littérature queer
                                                        (Audre Lorde, bell hooks), la science-fiction
  Décoloniser tout et rien, museler le conflit          (Octavia E. Butler), la désidentification critique
                                                        (José Esteban Muñoz) ou les études culturelles
Comment persister alors à considérer ce débat           (Stuart Hall). La dernière Biennale de Berlin,
comme une anomalie anglo-saxonne, étranger              placée sous l’égide de l’écrivaine Audre Lorde
à l’immaculée doctrine universaliste française ?        (qui a vécu dans cette ville entre 1984 et 1992)
Pas une seule semaine ne se passe à Paris sans          par la curatrice Sud-Africaine Gabi Ngcobo, a
que l’on assiste à la publication d’un livre, à la      adopté la stratégie du refus, malgré sa déclara-
tenue d’un colloque ou d’un meeting militant cher-      tion en conférence de presse (« Nous sommes
chant à élargir le débat. Si cette fermeture institu-   en guerre »). Refus de répondre à des questions
tionnelle française est colportée par des médias        sur une éventuelle thématique post-coloniale ou
qui persistent à brandir la menace « indigéniste        sur le choix d’une majorité d’artistes issu·e·s de
» (rappelant le rejet brutal de toute personne de       la diaspora africaine et caribéenne (avec 72 %
près ou de loin identifiée avec les Indigènes de        de femmes). Si tant de biennales n’ont pas pris la
la République, dont le manifeste était publié peu       peine jusqu’ici de déclarer que l’écrasante majori-
avant les émeutes de 2005 dans les banlieues),          té des artistes invités étaient des hommes blancs,
de nombreux curateurs et institutions-phare             pourquoi le faire maintenant ? La biennale répon-
pour l’art contemporain ont tissé des réseaux           dra avec le titre de l’un de ses programmes (« Je
d’échanges internationaux et approfondi la              ne suis pas ce que tu penses que je ne suis pas
réflexion sur le sujet. Depuis le travail défricheur    ») et situera la bataille à l’intérieur même du lan-
de Le Peuple Qui Manque, Clémentine Deliss,             gage utilisé pour travailler avec l’art. De la même
Marie Canet, Lotte Arndt ou Virginie Bobin (avec        manière, la dernière Biennale de Rennes, tout
la revue Qalqalah), jusqu’à de jeunes curateurs         en convoquant des auteurs majeurs du spectre
comme Cédric Fauq, Eva Barois de Caevel ou              post-colonial (Fred Moten, Ghassam Hage, Tina
Mawena Yehouessi, en passant par la program-            Campt, Jack Halberstam), s’est refusée à l’ériger
mation de certains lieux à Paris — la Colonie,          en thématique. Même son de cloche du côté de
Bétonsalon, la Villa Vassilieff, la fondation Kadist    celle du Whitney, organisée par les curatrices
ou l’ex-Khiasma —, de nouveaux centres ont              Jane Panetta et Rujeko Hockley, avec une
émergé qui opèrent un changement de para-               majorité d’artistes afro-américains et femmes (ou
digme et de langage. Au point où l’injonction à «       non-binaires) : cette comptabilité sera aussi évi-
décoloniser », devenue synonyme d’un outil pour         tée bien que la question de l’identité y reste très
défaire les rapports de pouvoir et la reproduction      présente, à travers des formes de spiritualité (le
de structures d’inégalité, pourrait avoir dilué son     gospel fantomatique de Steffani Jemison, les rites
champ d’action (décoloniser les musées mais             afro-cubains Santeria de Tiona Nekkia McClod-
aussi les imaginaires, les corps ou le travail).        den, les talismans de Daniel Lind-Ramos), la
Cela ne va pas sans critiques, à l’exemple d’Eve        transition des genres (Elle Pérez), la transfor-
Tuck et de K. Wayne Yang qui rappellent que             mation des cultures natives (Laura Ortman), le
« décoloniser n’est pas une métaphore » ou              dynamisme de la sculpture figurative (Wangechi
de Catherine E. Walsh qui met en garde sur la           Mutu, Simone Leigh) ou de la représentation du
légèreté de son usage adjectif et rhétorique9.          corps noir en photographie (John Edmonds, Paul
Pour Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, directeur          Mpagi Sepuya, Todd Gray, Troy Michie).
de SAVVY Contemporary à Berlin, il faut que la
décolonisation reste fidèle au « programme de
désordre absolu » de Fanon et qu’elle convoque
la mémoire sonore des corps, sédimentée depuis
« l’Atlantique Noir »
Press Paul Maheke - Galerie Sultana
À Venise, Ralph Rugoff célébrait deux figures
                                                                                                                     tutélaires : le peintre Henri Taylor (qui associe
                                                                                                                     un portrait de Toussaint Louverture, leader de la
                                                                                                                     révolution haïtienne, à une évocation de la série
                                                                                                                     de Glenn Ligon, « Remember the Revolution »)
                                                                                                                     et l’artiste et cinéaste Arthur Jafa, dont le travail
                                                                                                                     n’a cessé depuis trois décennies de proposer
                                                                                                                     une compréhension du monde à partir de la
                                                                                                                     culture noire et de définir la blanchitude en tant
                                                                                                                     que système de pouvoir. Néanmoins, dans ces
                                                                                                                     deux dernières biennales, du côté de la nouvelle
                                                                                                                     génération était perceptible un élan d’affirmation
                                                                                                                     plutôt que de seule dénonciation des injustices.
                                                                                                                     À Venise, les autoportraits de Zanele Muholi
                                                                                                                     exultent, poursuivant son « activisme visuel »
                                                                                                                     pour la visibilité lesbienne noire, tandis que les
                                                                                                                     mannequins noires d’Anthea Hamilton portent
                                                                                                                     l’élégance stricte et ironique d’un motif tartan vic-
                                                                                                                     torien. Il s’agit d’une génération qui partage une
                                                                                                                     aisance à circuler dans une culture numérique
                                                                                                                     dont le potentiel est à la fois normatif et éman-
                                                                                                                     cipateur. Le cinéaste Kahlil Joseph (membre de
                                                                                                                     l’Underground Museum, espace mythique de Los
                                                                                                                     Angeles) tire un portrait de la Black American
                                                                                                                     life à travers clips de R&B, extraits YouTube,
                                                                                                                     mèmes et conférences filmées du philosophe
                                                                                                                     Fred Moten. Au Whitney, Martine Syms ne sépare
                                                                                                                     pas l’auto-représentation du pouvoir oppressant
                                                                                                                     des stéréotypes : ce ne sont pas uniquement
                                                                                                                     les images qui gagnent un pouvoir à travers la
                                                                                                                     répétition et la circulation, c’est la production des
                                                                                                                     identités comme performance (avec une réflexion
                                                                                                                     sur la manière dont les femmes noires anticipent
                                                                                                                     le racisme dans l’auto-construction de leur image
                                                                                                                     et y réagissent).

                                                                                                                              La blackness comme medium

                                                                                                                     Il ne s’agit donc plus uniquement d’un proces-
Paul Maheke, Kasangu, 2019.                                                                                          sus de décolonisation (loin d’être accompli)
Dessin gravé au laser en 3D dans un cube de verre / 3D laser engraved drawing in a glass cube.                       mais aussi d’une affirmation positive autour de
9 x 6 x 6 cm. Photo: Aurélien Mole. Courtesy Paul Maheke; Galerie Sultana
                                                                                                                     la blackness. Anne Lafont identifie cette notion,
                                                                                                                     difficilement traduisible en français, comme une
                                                                                                                     nébuleuse couvrant la culture produite par des
                                                                                                                     individus noirs (la négritude au sens large et pas
                                                                                                                     seulement le mouvement historique) et l’africa-
                                                                                                                     nité sociale et culturelle transcontinentale de la
                                                                                                                     diaspora. La blackness serait alors la contribution
                                                                                                                     noire à la culture, sans la faire reposer sur une
                                                                                                                     évidence biologique et même, au contraire, en
                                                                                                                     cherchant à comprendre les ressorts culturels et
                                                                                                                     sociaux qui en sont la condition. Ce glissement
                                                                                                                     presque imperceptible est cependant visible dans
                                                                                                                     le champ actuel de l’art. Il fait aussi éclat du côté
                                                                                                                     d’une jeune génération d’artistes français (Paul
                                                                                                                     Maheke, Tarek Lakhrissi, Gaëlle Choisne, Julien
                                                                                                                     Creuzet, Minia Biabiany, Samir Ramdani, Josèfa
                                                                                                                     Ntjam) dont la sensibilité se trouve exemplaire-
                                                                                                                     ment traduite dans les préoccupations du cura-
                                                                                                                     teur Cédric Fauq, curateur à Nottingham Contem-
                                                                                                                     porary et auteur d’un texte aux contours de
                                                                                                                     manifeste : « Curating for the Age of Blackness12
                                                                                                                     ». Partant d’une analyse du projet politique des
                                                                                                                     zoos humains du XIXe siècle « où il s’agissait de
                                                                                                                     performer la vie pour exhiber la mort », validant
                                                                                                                     les préconceptions des visiteurs sur le « primitif
                                                                                                                     », il établit une critique des modalités actuelles
                                                                                                                     de curating adressées à un regard nourri par
                                                                                                                     l’exotisme, le spectaculaire et le connaissable. «
      Zanele Muholi, Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness, 2012-en cours.                                        Ces expositions n’ont jamais été conçues pour
      Papier peint. 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, May You Live In Interesting Times.
                                                                                                                     accueillir le surplus que la blackness contient et
                                                                                                                     dépasse.
Press Paul Maheke - Galerie Sultana
Pire que ça : elles ont été conçues pour sup-
primer cet excédent », affirme-t-il. Chez lui, le
caractère indéfinissable de la blackness et la
conscience de l’acte de rendre visible (et donc
vulnérable) se transforment en désir de dépasser
la réalisation d’expositions « sur » la blackness,
pour faire le choix de les concevoir « dans et à
travers » elle. Frantz Fanon ou l’artiste Victoria
Santa Cruz (dans son poème-performance They
Called Me Black, 1978) se souviennent de la pre-
mière fois où ils ont été appelés « noirs » comme
d’une chute. La manière de renverser cette
longue histoire de chutes liée à une « exposition
forcée » peut passer autant par la réappropiation
d’une blackness avant qu’elle ne soit nommée
(en élargissant le lexique) que par la possibilité
d’une disparition. Cédric Fauq évoque alors la
possibilité d’expositions que « dé-performe » la
blackness (à la suite de la « non-performance
» théorisée par Fred Moten13), « dans leur
traitement de l’espace et de la danse, cherchant
à faire ressortir ce qu’il faut à un corps et à une
voix pour apparaître et disparaître (et brisant les
frontières entre le vivant et le non-vivant, tel que
définis dans la culture occidentale) ». Refusant
l’idée d’une blackness en tant que représentation,
et refusant aussi qu’elle appartienne uniquement
aux personnes noires, il envisage des exposi-
tions en mouvement, palpables (en contrepoint
à visibles) et où la blackness serait un medium
conducteur et catalyseur.
Press Paul Maheke - Galerie Sultana
Cédric Fauq, « Curating for the age of blackness », Mousse Magazine, n°66, Hiver 2018-2019, p. 226-235

  CURATING                                                                                                                                                       226

  FOR      THE AGE
  OF     BLACKNESS
                                                                           BY CÉDRIC FAUQ

                                                                                      Through this text, I am aiming to set out an
                                                                                      unforeseeable agenda, and I should start with
                                                                                      a disclaimer: there is no such thing that can
                                                                                      be identified as the age of blackness, whether
                                                                                      it would be located—according to a linear
                                                                                      and unilateral perspective on time and his-
                                                                                      tory—in the past (precolonial times and the
                                                                                      development of the slave trade), the present
                                                                                      (generalized precariousness and fatigue, fas-
                                                                                      cination for nonthreatening embodiments
                                                                                      of blackness), or the future (in the advents
                                                                                      of liberation). The age of blackness is an
                                                                                      ungraspable time and space, always fleeing
                                                                                      while there—for some—, forever escaped
                                                                                      and too much here—for others. In the para-
                                                                                      doxical occupation of this territory—the un-
                                                                                      graspable—I see the necessity and potential
                                                                                      to study and revise the way we exhibit, put
                                                                                      forward, and make visible—thus vulnera-
                                                                                      ble—to move from exhibitions that are about
                                                                                      blackness to devise exhibitions that are in and
                                                                                      through blackness.1                                1. I am here deeply indebted to the
                                                                                                                                         work of the journal Baedan, exempli-
                                                                                                                                         fied in the editorial statement and
                                                                                      This first requires us to come back to the in-     first chapter (“A Holey Curiosity”)
                                                                                      terlaced history that makes up the relationship    of Baedan 3: Journal of Queer Time
                                                                                                                                         Travel (Seattle, Portland: Contagion
                                                                                      between blackness and exhibition making.           Press, 2015) whose queer nihilist
                                                                                      I would go so far as to suggest that the for-      methodology challenged and
                                                                                      mats and conventions of exhibitions and ex-        inspired my approach to blackness.
                                                                                      hibiting as we know them have been devised
                                                                                      and maintained in order to surround black-
                                                                                      ness, to domesticate it so as to make it legible
  Cabinet with Amazon Indian objects   (and nonmenacing). Until recently, I used to locate the historical moment when that had
  in the 1886 American Exhibition,
  Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin.
                                       happened with the emergence of international exhibitions and the development of human
  Ethnologisches Museum-Staatliche     zoos (from the mid-eighteenth century). I was also seeing, in the different ages of the cab-
  Museen zu Berlin. © 2019.
  Photo: Scala, Florence/bpk,
                                       inets of wonders/curiosity—not to be conflated—the extension of a colonial process and
  Bildagentur für Kunst, Kultur        the confinement of wildness, symptom of a desire to collect and preserve the unknowable,
  und Geschichte, Berlin               once it was no longer alive, and, more often than not, killed, murdered (a desire which
                                       appeared in the Renaissance, in parallel to the inception of colonialism).

                                       If some scholars have underlined the political and ideological project behind the invention
                                       and development of human zoos and cabinets of wonders/curiosity,2 few have operated a             2. About cabinets of wonder/
                                       comparative analysis of these two complex exhibition devices. However, despite chrono-            curiosity, refer to the work of
                                                                                                                                         Patricia Falguières, Genese Grill and
                                       logical incompatibilities, I believe there are major conclusions to be dragged out of their       Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll.
                                       collision: my hypothesis is that the two perform liveness while exhibiting death.                 About human zoos, refer to Human
                                                                                                                                         Zoos: Science and Spectacle in the Age
                                                                                                                                         of Empire, edited by Pascal
                                       In human zoos, the subjects were forced to perform what was believed to be “their lives” to       Blanchard et al. (Liverpool:
                                       please the audience and validate the views and assumptions of that audience in what they          Liverpool University Press, 2008).
                                       thought the “primitive” was like and acted like. Not only that but in parallel to the human
                                       zoos, which were devised as spaces of authenticity, enslaved people were also coerced to
                                       perform in theaters and cabarets to restage the invasion of their lands and replay the sce-
                                       nario of their “defeat.” Sylvie Chalaye delineates this history very well—focusing on the
                                       French context in the 1880s—in her essay “Theatre and Cabarets: The ‘Negro’ Spectacle”:

                                                   They are bodies to see, authentic bodies, in the flesh, objects of dis-
                                                                                                                                         3. Sylvie Chalaye, “Theatre and
                                                   play offered to the curiosity of the audience. The black body is                      Cabarets: The ‘Negro’ Spectacle,”
                                                   spectacle, and is thus inevitably confined within an exhibition com-                  in Zoos humains et expositions
                                                   plex. Whether it is the theatre’s stage or the garden, one would al-                  coloniales: 150 ans d’invention de
                                                                                                                                         l’Autre, edited by Pascal Blanchard
                                                   ways find a “zoographic” space exhibiting the “Negro” and offer its                   et al. (Paris: La Découverte, 2011),
                                                   spectacularity to the white gaze.3                                                    400 (author’s translation).
CURATING FOR THE AGE OF BLACKNESS
        227
                                                   C. FAUQ

Kobby Adi, Exit Strategies, 2018,
Bloomberg New Contemporaries
2018 installation view at Liverpool
Biennial, Liverpool, 2018. Photo:
Rob Battersby

                                                                          Below - Kobby Adi, DYING TO LIVE
                                                                          (still), 2018
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                                                                        228
                                    TALKING ABOUT

Steffani Jemison, Same Time,
2017, L’économie du vivant
installation view at Maison d’Art
Bernard Anthonioz, Nogent, 2017.
Courtesy: Jeu de Paume,
Paris. © Jeu de Paume, Paris.
Photo: Raphaël Chipault

                                                    Emil Nolde, Masks, 1911.
                                                    The Nelson-Atkins Museum
                                                    of Art, Kansas City, Missouri.
                                                    Photo: Nelson-Atkins Media
                                                    Services / Jamison Miller
CURATING FOR THE AGE OF BLACKNESS
       229
                                                                          C. FAUQ

                                         These lines further emphasize the degree of performance inherent to the exhibition of
                                         blackness when reduced to Races on Display, to borrow the title of Dana S. Hale ’s 2008
                                         book. The liveness of the black subject, already dead (in cabinets) or dying (in zoos), was
                                         always faked, performed.

                                         We are now able to consider the act of exhibiting blackness as a gesture aimed at performing
                                         blackness’s liveness while dead. This liveness/death interplay also helps us to understand
                                         that certain modes of exhibiting are first addressed to a gaze that can be fed only by the ex-
                                         otic, the spectacular, and the knowable (in the sense of what can be known), which is full of
                                         contradictions: the gaze wants blackness to be alive, to introduce itself, but it can only do so
                                         if in a state of near-death, weakened, amputated. This prompts me to claim that exhibitions
                                         have never been devised to welcome the surplus that blackness is, contains, and exceeds.
                                         More than that: they have been devised for that surplus to be suppressed.

                                                     The Chambers of Art and Wonders of the Late Renaissance
                                                     offer themselves as the phantasmagoria of the modern
4. Patricia Falguières, preface                      museum, its dark side, its nightmare.4
to Les Cabinets d’art et de merveilles
de la Renaissance tardive (Paris:
Editions Macula, 2012), 57 (author’s     Patricia Falguières helps us to understand that the establishment of
translation).                            museums took place in opposition to cabinets of wonders/curiosi-
                                         ty. These were messy, impure, and polluted, while their children,
                                         the museums (from the nineteenth century), tried to set up order
                                         and precision, as encyclopedism and mysticism were abandoned.
                                         Museums wanted to be spaces of expertise: it prepared the ground
                                         for the white cube to surface as this environment for clean knowl-
                                         edge and appreciation, perpetuating class divide through the el-
                                         evation and maintenance of purity. What happens, then, when
                                         blackness enters this pure space? Or, to be more precise: what
                                         happens when blackness is enclosed by purity?

                                         A very particular, not to say bewildering, series of paintings em-
                                         bodies and complicates the performance/exhibition conundrum
                                         previously touched upon. These are paintings by an obscure char-
                                         acter: Emil Nolde (1867-1956), who was the subject of a retrospec-
                                         tive in the summer of 2018 at the National Gallery of Ireland. I use the word obscure as I am       Atiéna Lansade, Untitled (Baby
                                                                                                                                             I swear it’s deja vu, New Orleans,
                                         not entirely sure how to position myself toward the person—and thus the artist. Indeed,             1997), 2018. Courtesy: Cell Project
                                         Nolde was a Nazi. Contradictory fact: his works had also been deemed “degenerate” by the            Space, London. Photo: Rob Harris
                                         Nazi government. The series of works I would like to focus on is from 1911, and has been
                                         mostly (but not only) inspired by collection displays of Berlin’s Museum für Völkerkunde
                                         (Museum of Ethnography)—specifically, masks of different origins but also preserved
                                         heads (from South America, Mexico, Nigeria, the Solomon Islands, and more).

                                         I consider the four paintings of the series an attempt at rehanging the collections they origi-
                                         nated from. According to Nolde ’s autobiography, it seems he had a lot to say about the way
                                         Western museums were dealing with so-called “tribal art,” which we know was a precious
                                         material for the avant-gardes and thus, to them, deserved particular care. However, at the
                                         turn of the century, directors of museums of ethnology were conflicted about the method to
5. Jill Lloyd, “Emil Nolde’s             adopt, as explained in Jill Lloyd’s analysis of the Masks Still Life series:5 to classify accord-
Drawings from the Museum für             ing to aesthetic and sensible qualities or to organize according to more rational parameters
Völkerkunde, Berlin, and the
‘Maskenstilleben 1–4,’ 1911,”            (date, geographical area).
Burlington Magazine 127, no. 987
(London: Burlington Magazine
Publications, June 1985): 380–85.
                                         What is made evident in these paintings is the life (re)injected into the masks and heads,
                                         which then become more than objects in the space of the painting, which stands for another
                                         type of cabinet, another kind of vitrine, one that—maybe—doesn’t reify and crystallize.
                                         Here, the masks and heads perform by themselves, instead of being reduced to mere ar-
                                         tifacts and objects of collections. The other important point is the new proximity created
                                         between masks and heads from different geographical contexts (as they were separated in
                                         the museums they were found in, categorized according to their geographic provenance).
                                         Two other things to underline have to do with language and naming: the lack of indications
                                         of the origin of each mask/head, as well as the titles of the works (Masks Still Life), which
                                         emphasize the ambiguousness of the masks as bearing an agency of their own as well as the
                                         blurriness between the masks and the heads.

                                         There is a lot to unpack here. But I am really attracted by the idea of these paintings em-
                                         bodying a complex curatorial gesture, manifested through several paintings, subverting the
                                         legacy of both the cabinets of wonder/curiosity and the human zoo.

                                         I now need to backtrack a little. I would like to speculate on the idea of exhibiting black-
                                         ness, as an act. Not an act that could be located in history, nor an act that manifests as
                                         an exhibition or proto-exhibition. I am here thinking of “exhibiting” in the sense of mon-
                                         trer (French, “to show”), which differs from exposer (French, “to display”). Thinking
                                         about the problems posed by exhibitions about blackness, I come to wonder: what if the
MOUSSE 66
                                                                                                                                                                 232
                                                                        TALKING ABOUT

                                                 gesture that precedes the display is the unveiling, the indication, trig-
                                                 gered by a speech act, the naming. What if we were to consider naming
                                                 as a primary curatorial gesture: that which exhibits? What if exhibiting
                                                 blackness started with the injunction “You’re black” / “They’re black” /
                                                 “This is black”?

                                                 Let’s speculate even further. Before blackness and whiteness meet and clash,
                                                 blackness and whiteness weren’t. It took the encounter, a second big bang, for
                                                 the words to be shouted out. In our collective imaginary, in the Western world,
                                                 whiteness would have been the first to unveil and exhibit the other. Arriving
                                                 from somewhere else, it was “in motion” and thus on the watch: ready to
                                                 shoot and shout. Blackness wasn’t prepared. But this doesn’t mean that black-
                                                 ness wasn’t. Following Fred Moten’s thoughts, I believe in blackness before
                                                 blackness. Meaning something that cannot be grasped despite the fact that it
                                                 seems so much here, as it is now named, but before the naming.6 A blackness             6. The chapter “Kidnapping
                                                 that antedated the naming act, the first “exhibition” of blackness. Maybe this is       Language” in Stephen Greenblatt,
                                                                                                                                         Marvelous Possessions: The Wonders
                                                 where the age of blackness could be located. Or rather, unlocated.                      of the New World (Chicago: The
                                                                                                                                         University of Chicago Press, 1991),
                                                                                                                                         offers a great analysis of the “first
                                                 This primary act of naming the Blacks, enclosing blackness, enacted by the              encounters” and the role language
                                                 colonizers, while perpetuating violence, had a great impact on what was next to         played in them.
                                                 come. Several artists and thinkers come back to the first time they were called
                                                 “black,” such as psychoanalyst Frantz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks (1952)
                                                 or artist Victoria Santa Cruz in Me Gritaron Negra (They Called Me Black)
                                                 (1978), both told through the recounting of a fall.7 It would be interesting to re-     7. For more on the relationship
                                                 write the history of these “calls/falls” as “forced exhibition” (which would also       between the “call” and the “fall”, see
                                                                                                                                         André Lepecki, Exhausting Dance:
                                                 enable us to better understand the relationship between blackness and polic-            Performance and the Politics of
                                                 ing). The reclaiming of these moments by black people themselves is also of in-         Movement (New York: Routledge,
                                                                                                                                         2006) and specifically the fifth chap-
                                                 terest, as it operates a reversal in the exhibiting nature of the naming: for a black   ter: “Stumbling Dance: William
                                                 person to call themselves black is to take back the ownership of how they ap-           Pope.L’s crawls”.
                                                 pear within a white field of vision. It also means the possibility of disappearing.

                                   At this stage, we can start drawing some conclusions. This fast-paced chronology of the
                                   relationship between blackness and exhibiting—not only exhibition—is helpful in order to
                                   better consider where we are today. The craze for black artists and artists of color in the name
                                   of representational fairness and decolonizing strategies should be deeply interrogated. As a
                                   gay/queer mixed-race curator, I find myself bothered by the recuperation and reducing of
                                   questions of race to mere issues of representation and historical revisions. I believe that there
                                   is much more to do, something that could be labelled “queering blackness,” which would ex-
                                   periment with forms and display strategies, ways of producing and exhibiting art that would
                                   invent new poethics—following Denise Ferreira da Silva’s thinking. Make space for the
                                   unbelievable and the unknowable. Artists have been doing this work, and a new generation is
                                   clearly taking this direction and pushing it further. But the practices clearly clash with the
                                                                                                       “exhibitionary complex” 8         8. Cf. Tony Bennett, “The Exhibi-
                                                                                                       sustained by curating.            tionary Complex” New Formations,
                                                                                                                                         Issue 4: Cultural Technologies
                                                                                                                                         (London: Lawrence & Wishart,
                                                                                                         The need to revise and          Spring 1988): 73–102.
                                                                                                         question the place of cu-
                                                                                                         rating in this whole mess
                                                                                                         is thus not only important
                                                                                                         but also crucial. This is
                                                                                                         where the strategies put
                                                                                                         in place by Emil Nolde
                                                                                                         in his Masks Still Life
                                                                                                         paintings can help us: (1)
                                                                                                         reconfiguring the exhi-
                                                                                                         bition—performance/
                                                                                                         death-liveness interplay;
                                                                                                         (2) embracing inaccuracy
                                                                                                         inferred by a sacrilegious
                                                                                                         relationship to knowl-
                                                                                                         edge; and (3) questioning
                                                                                                         the act of naming as an ex-
                                                                                                         hibitionary gesture.
Victoria Santa Cruz, Me gritaron
negra (stills), 1978. Courtesy:
Odin Teatret Film & Odin Teatret
                                   I would thus advocate for exhibitions that unperform blackness, in the vein of the practices of
Archives, Holstebro, Denmark       Ligia Lewis and Paul Maheke, who, in their treatment of space and dance, work toward the
                                   surfacing of what it takes for a body—and a voice—to appear and disappear (thus already
                                                                                                                                         9. Fred Moten, Blackness and
                                   blurring the lines between the living and the dead, as demarcated in the West). Unperformance         Nonperformance, 2015 (pronounced
                                   is probably more nuanced than nonperformance, a term notably employed, theorized, and po-             at the Museum of Modern Art,
                                   eticized by Fred Moten in his important lecture “Blackness and Nonperformance” (2015).9               New York on September 25, 2015).
                                                                                                                                         Available at https://www.youtube.
                                   It also puts refusal (of representation and spectacle) in motion, instead of immobilizing it.         com/watch?v=G2leiFByIIg
                                   The question is then: is there scope for exhibitions to unperform themselves?                         (Last accessed on 28/12/2018)
CURATING FOR THE AGE OF BLACKNESS
        233
                                          C. FAUQ

free.yard, PRAISE N PAY
IT / PULL UP, COME INTO
THE RISE installation view
at the South London
Gallery, London, 2018.
Photo: Andy Stagg
MOUSSE 66
                                                                          234
                                       TALKING ABOUT

Paul Maheke, Dans l’éther, la, ou
l’eau, 2018, À Cris Ouverts instal-
lation view at Galerie Art & Essai,
Rennes, 6 th edition of Les Ateliers
de Rennes – Contemporary Art
Biennale, 2018. © Paul Maheke.
Courtesy: Galerie Sultana, Paris.
Photo: Aurélien Mole

                                                       Rammellzee, Maestro (detail),
                                                       1979, RAMMΣLLZΣΣ: Racing
                                                       for Thunder at Red Bull Arts New
                                                       York, 2018. © The Rammellzee
                                                       Estate 2018. Courtesy: Yaki
                                                       Kornblit and Red Bull Arts,
                                                       New York. Photo: Lance Brewer
CURATING FOR THE AGE OF BLACKNESS
         235
                                                                          C. FAUQ

                                          Another important aspect of the work that needs to be done has to do with unnaming.
                                          There need to be more lexicons formed in order to deal with blackness, to think and exhibit
                                          through and in blackness, and to inhabit its ungraspability. The works of artists such as
                                          Rammellzee (with his alphabet and equations)
                                          and Steffani Jemison (working on secret lan-
                                          guages, musical notations, and gospel mimes)
                                          or scholar Denise Ferreira da Silva (with the
                                          help of equations) are truly decisive in the way
                                          they invent or revisit languages to seize the
                                          legacy of blackness and prepare the ground for
                                          something new to happen (beyond the end of
                                          the world as we know it).

                                          There are many more ghosts to give up: uni-
                                          versalism in the first instance. It is now nec-
                                          essary—in group exhibitions, as Bassam
                                          El Baroni advocates in his 2014 essay
                                          “Universalism without a Universal Subject, on
                                          the Possibilities of Time in the Contemporary
  10. Bassam El Baroni, “Universalism     Group Exhibition”10 —to abandon the holis-
  without a Universal Subject, on the     tic treatment of artists’ practices within one
  Possibilities of Time in the Contem-
  porary Group Exhibition,” in            given project. Clashes have to happen and
  Cultures of the Curatorial 2, Timing:   should be emphasized. Harmony is the child
  On the Temporal Dimension of
  Exhibiting, edited by Beatrice von
                                          of purity and should thus be banned. It may
  Bismarck et al. (Berlin: Sternberg      be time to consider the provision that negation
  Press, 2014): 83–91.                    and voids can bring into curating and exhi-
                                          bition making (in opposition to complemen-
                                          tarity). This is also valid for blackness itself.
                                          In the exhibition Le Colt Est Jeune & Haine,
                                          which I curated in 2018 at DOC, Paris, a sen-
                                          tence was inscribed right above the floor plan.
                                          It said, “BLACKNESSES RATHER THAN
                                          BLACKNESS IS.” One of the desires of the
                                          exhibition was to shatter blackness to better
                                          manifest its multiplicities, make them palpable.
                                          (On top of refusing representation, the exhibi-
                                          tion was refusing blackness as something that inherently belongs to black people. There        Olu Ogunnaike, Stock _107792391,
                                          was the profound desire to create a rupture between black culture and blackness and move       2018, The Way Things Run (Der
                                                                                                                                         Lauf der Dinge) Part I : Loose Ends
                                          away from the idea of belonging, to think of blackness beyond the concept of “ownership”.      Don’t Tie installation view at PS120,
                                          Where that could lead is still unanswered).                                                    Berlin, 2018. © Olu Ogunnaike
                                                                                                                                         2018. Photo: Steffen Kørner

                                          The idea of palpability (as a counterpoint to visibility) eventually leads to my last obser-
                                          vation, which may be the most perilous one: could blackness be considered a medium?
                                          Not only as substance and matter—a permanently fleeting one—but also catalyst and
                                          channel? This is something I am currently asking myself, as I notice several of the artists
                                          I am collaborating with treat materials for the share of blackness they hold, and/or devise
                                          and use their works as a catalyst to infuse blackness beyond the representational. To name
                                          but a few, this is the case for Olu Ogunnaike and his wood dust and coal, Kobby Adi and
                                          his precarious display arrangements, Atiéna Lansade and her poor images, Adam Farah /
                                                                                                                                         The Share of Opulence; Doubled;
                                          free.yard and their treatment of surfaces (floors, windows, screens)… Many more could          Fractional installation view at
                                          be mentioned: Dominique White, Samboleap Tol, Minia Biabiany, Lewis Hammond,                   curated by_2018, Viennaline,
                                                                                                                                         2018. Courtesy: the artists and
                                          Rachel Jones, Tarek Lakhrissi, Mathias Pfund, Ima-Abasi Okon, Tamu Nkiwane, Julien             Sophie Tappeiner, Wien. Photo:
                                          Creuzet, Abbas Zahedi, Eve Chabanon, Cameron Rowland.                                          kunst-dokumentation

                                          If blackness is a medium, what are
                                          the implications when it comes to
                                          curating? What needs to be done so
                                          as to avoid the enclosure of the me-
                                          dium and foreground its ungrasp-
                                          ability? The strategies previously
                                          outlined can be useful; they now
                                          need to be tested, in and through.

Cédric Fauq is curator at Nottingham Contemporary where he recently co-
curated Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender, Resistance. As an independent cura-
tor, he recently curated Le Colt Est Jeune & Haine at DOC, Paris, and The Share
of Opulence; Doubled; Fractional at Sophie Tappeiner, Vienna. Upcoming proj-
ects include an exhibition at Cordova, Barcelona. His practice focuses on de-
veloping exhibitions, gatherings, and programs that aim at complexifying the
relationship between display, blackness, and representation.
MOUSSE 66                 CURATING FOR THE AGE OF BLACKNESS
                                                 230   231
                                 TALKING ABOUT                            C. FAUQ

Ligia Lewis, Water Will, 2018
performance at HAU Hebbel
am Ufer Theater, Berlin, 2018.
Photo: Doro Tuch
Pedro Morais, «Le Frac Aquitaine acquiert une vidéo de Paul Maheke », L’Hebdo du Quotidien de l’Art,
n°1607, novembre 2018, p.20-21.
Elena Setzer « Echoes, Oracles and False Friends: À Cris Ouverts. 6th Rennes Biennial,2018 », KubaParis, 2018.

Echoes, Oracles and False Friends: À Cris Ouverts.
6th Rennes Biennial, 2018

“Some People want to run things, other things want to run. If they ask you, tell them we were flying”

Bewildering things seem to have taken place within Paul Maheke’s installation Dans l’éther, là, ou l’eau (2018),
the activation of which served as a prelude to the 6th Rennes Biennial, running from September 29th through
December 2nd. Cocooned by an spherical drone sound, you could find yourself in a bizarre interior, composed
of deflated aquariums equipped with soaked strands of hair, marbles and moist clumps of soil on the ground;
curtains that have nothing to veil but bear traces of mold and several light bulbs arranged within flat orbital
metal objects in front of a campy airbrush mural depicting an extraterrestrial world. Are we witnessing a cos-
mic constellation or rather entering the sloppy household of a New Age veteran?

“I took everything and made it my own”, states one performer, a member of an occult triad which seems to em-
body both the essential elements of life and performativity, while installing herself within this slippery compo-
sition. Here (dans l’éther) the dramatic, ringing speech of a static performer, themselves entangled with one of
the curtains to such extent it becomes a toga, prophecies her own return in a circular argument: “I am because
I was and because I was before and because I will be and will be again.” Echo is an oracle is an echo is an oracle.
There (l’à), in front of the backdrop of the violet Jupiter landscape, a body measures a square through taping
and exaggerated walking, until the hips start to swing out in a well-known manner, evoking iconic movement
patterns of Michael Jackson’s Dangerous World Tour (1992). A ghostly amalgamation of old masters of perfor-
mance and pop culture. Between (l’eau) dance and theater, body and voice, the third performer floats with her
wavy gestures, accompanying the proud interpretation of Michelle Gurevich’s ballade Party Girl. Intonation
and body language become indivisible.
Maheke, who often performs on stage himself, remains in the unlit spots, makes space for the female perfor-
mers, whose individual languages become visible with and through their multi-layered appropriations. Paying
homage to activist poet Audre Lorde, the interplay creates a renewal of her timid Echo, which is marked by a
“timbre of voice / that comes from not being heard” (Audre Lorde, Echos, 1978). This ‘three dimensional’ Echo
is different: she grabs back, uses her unique adaptability and makes everything her own through spectral laye-
ring. Maheke’s domestic microcosm, which restrains itself from making every symbol legible, operates within
the glitch of the untranslatable title: À Cris Ouverts opens up a semantic and emotive range through phonetic
proximity along the chain of trauma, crisis, survival and ephemeral renewal.

The 54 artists brought together in Rennes, explore and stimulate grey zones of dissonance, confrontation and
clash, which withstand being captured by current logics of rule. Following Jack Halberstam’s rethinking of
“wildness as a critical space, term [and practice]”, curators Céline Knopp and Etienne Bernard resigned from
thematic chapters or sections. Moreover, the ten venues across the city seem to be loosely grouped like an
archipelago, lapped by a shared, fluid, ecosystem. A similar rhizomatic microstructure might be found in Julien
Creuzet’s fragile, skeletal sonic installation at Halle de la Courrouze, a former arsenal. It recalls the formation
and survival techniques of mangroves trees, which populate harsh environments like unstable, salty coastal
areas and estuaries while functioning as habitats for various animal species at the same time. Here, it is the
rhythmical creole chanting of Creuzet which seems to fill the gaps between the metaphysical twigs and provide
the breeding ground for a conglomeration of found material, engraved flip charts and multiple screens, pictu-
ring a dissociating couple.
Spoken language as adaptable and transformative weapon, and the sea as mythological and political imagery
seem to be one of the connective phenomena of this biennial. Most distinctly, this interconnection is explored
by Madison Bycroft’s scenographic video installation, with its overflowing stage designs and aquamorphic
sculptures, spread out over two venues – one of it located outside of Rennes, at the coast of the English Channel.

In her video work Jolly Roger & Friends(2018), the open sea as a stateless transit zone and basin for fugitives
serves as the political backdrop for a fictionalized love story between the female pirates Anne Bony and Mary
Read. Underwater and under cover of the legend pirate flag Jolly Roger – “the banner that bans the ban” – the
masked female outlaws secretly converge through an erratic language game. Ann and Mary, these tricksters
with their flexible tongues, hijack one signifiant after the other and unify through consonances of faux amis, be-
coming Ann Mary or Mary Ann. The self-referential system becomes a sanctuary for the secret lovers within a
phallocentric environment. Meanwhile, their comic counterpart, two illiterate art dealers with stiff golden neck
braces, are stuck in the loop of their hedged contracts around Jeff, Robert, Richard, Jasper. Bycroft stretches,
twists and sprinkles language until it becomes an elastic mollusk, or something resembling Senga Nengudi’s
flexible sculptures filled with sand and water.

Sensual piracy is also key to Julie Béna’s newly developed video installation Who wants to be my Horse? (2018).
Presented within a cage-like metal cabin with dark curtains (yes, curtains again), the work evokes a peepshow
and turns it into a theatrical stand up stage.

Again, it is the carnivalesque performance of storytelling itself (not the narration through representative ima-
gery) that shapes and chains different portraits of a sex-positive movement: A sleek lady in a sink tells salacious
jokes, a mistress teaches carefully about good and bad lashes, and the actual pornstar Madison Young confesses
‘why she never made it as a comedian’.

Cheap pastries and tea in plastic cups are what lure the visitor into Oreet Ashreys video installation Revisiting
Genesis (2016–ongoing), located in a clinical setting between therapy facility and quarantine site. Intermin-
gling popular TV hospital series with Black Mirror dystopia, the twelve-part video work unfolds a dark story of
necropolitics, interwoven with (female) failure caused by a system of globalized privatization. At the center are
the mysterious symptoms and the aspired healing of the resigned artist Genesis, who is in a state of progressive
dissolution. While Genesis nimbly escapes into a semiotic black hole, her friends try to reanimate her through
the newest technological therapy – a slideshow, recapping ‘highlights’ of the individual life. “Death is optional”
says the slogan of another company, selling programmed gadgets, which send happy selfies to bereaved loved
ones. The experience of death as total contingency, as the “wild spirit of the unknown and the disorderly” is
abolished through the infinity of relegating imagery.

In her recap of this year’s major biennials, such as Manifesta in Palermo or the 10th Berlin Biennial, Susanne
von Falkenhausen bemoans the ubiquitous post-autonomy of current large-scale exhibitions. Art, she states, is
merely treated as service provider for political concerns, therefore an almost universal legibility the condition.
However, the 6th Rennes Biennial keeps the promise of being somehow unresolvable, of promising nothing but
an anthology of wild tales interweaving the flotsam of current floods. Just as Ashrey’s futuristic genesis leads
back to Maheke’s primordial cosmology, or Bycroft’s mollusc fauna could be resident within Creuzet’s Carib-
bean ecosystem, the works spin their yarn around each other through a similar poetical vocabulary and twisted
grammar, which is often informed by performative, theatrical and ritualistic strategies. In a time of ubiquitous
populism, such self-supporting networks seem to form a slippery statement.

Elena Setzer is a writer based in Zurich, Switzerland.
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