The text is painted on tulle. It is structured around repetition, continuously looping back on itself. Within this spiral, occasional openings—a breath—slip through. The text keeps circling until I tear it apart. I then use these pieces of fabric to create a bandage with clay, which I apply to my chest.
Excerpt from the text:
«Can you feel that throbbing deep inside you? The fear. I’m afraid my words will start to sound hollow from being repeated. That they’ll become a slow, tiresome, and nagging refrain. I know they need to be— spoken and re-spoken, over and over again.
I’m afraid I’ll start to sound hollow, unable to find resonance—neither outside nor within my body— from naming injustice and explaining anger.
Because every time, I feel the inside of my skin erode. I feel the tides they stir crash against my own cliffs. They crumble a little more each time, and with them, the shelters.
Every time I say: My anger is political because it’s personal in the plural. Every time I say: My anger tastes of iron and smells of the blood of those still denied access to humanity. Every time I say: My anger is rooted in oceans that are also graveyards. Every time,
I feel the inside of my skin erode. I feel the tides they stir crash against my own cliffs. They crumble a little more each time, and with them, the shelters.
Today, I want to tell you that my anger is a blade sharpened at both ends. Using it wounds me too. Using it awakens fear. The fear of starting to sound hollow from naming injustice and explaining anger.
Because every time, it’s a moment to breathe that I take away from myself. Every time, it’s yet another suffocation, and rare are the moments when I can breathe, when the conditions outside allow me to.
A more breathable world—that’s what I want. But for that, we must name injustice and explain anger. But every time I repeat: [...]»
@La Balsamine
FROM NORMS TO MORNES: MAROONING WITHIN
How can performative practices become maroon practices by seizing the interstices within institutions?
During my two years of master’s studies, I reflected on my place within art-related institutions, particularly concerning their norms. I questioned the role of support within these structures and what subterfuges could be imagined to practice it. This led me to explore marronage as both a social phenomenon and a practice of empowerment. Historically, marronage emerged during the colonial era as a means of opposing and resisting the slave regime through escape. When fleeing outward was impossible, it became an inward flight, into the heart of the land, particularly in the “mornes .”
My interest in marronage lies in the fact that it was a choice for life within a death-dealing system. Shifting this concept into the field of performance aims to revalue and revitalize our capacities to resist, to care, and to feel. I chose to work with institutions as collaborators. This approach allowed me to move beyond the binary positions of institutional critique, asking instead how one can learn from a place in order to resist it effectively.
This work also reflects on the relationship between theory and practice. I approached it through the lens of agency, questioning how theory affects the body that produces it or is traversed by it. Furthermore, I wanted to think of theory as a project— asking: What can I do with it? How can I put it into practice?
These questions quickly led me to consider how the audiences and spaces where my performances take place influence and transform my ways of doing and speaking. It became essential to find a principle of translation, understood as the necessity of movement, of crossing, in order to build bridges, hyphens. This translation is inspired by so-called “site-specific” artistic practices.
The plot , during the colonial era, was a small piece of land allocated by the master to enslaved people for their subsistence. But it was also the maroon garden , a rehearsal before marronage . I use the ERG as a space to cultivate and amplify questions, as well as a place to find allies and resources.
Protocol :
An introduction phase where the audience is thanked for their presence and invited to come closer and move freely within the space. Remind them that their presence supports us and allows us to inhabit the space.
Stretch and focus on our presence.
Retrieve the questioning t-shirts . One after the other, read the question written on each.
Take the edition Marooning the Institution: Embodying Resistance , designed to be detached and turned into a deck of cards.
Move through the space while reading the questions and using the repertoire of supportive gestures.
The questions can be addressed to one of us, to people in the space, or to the space itself.
The performance concludes with the reading of Les Marges Forcées (The Forced Margins).
1. Wear t-shirts displaying different questions addressed to the museum.
2. Reproduce supportive gestures from the inventory created during last month’s experimental session.
3. Engage in arpentage of Geoffroy de Lagasnerie’s L’Art Impossible, reading excerpts to the group and, for those who wish, to people present in the museum. At the end of the walk, give your excerpt to one of the visitors.
You are asked to always keep at least one group member within your field of vision. Here are some guiding thoughts to consider during the walk:
What does it mean to walk mindfully?
How can we remain a group even when in different spaces?
How do we integrate care into our movements?
How can we blend into the environment?
How do we pay attention to and care for one another in a museum?
What does it mean to tell and transmit stories?
Carrying the Questions
This work consists of finding ways to carve a path within the institution by carrying the questions cultivated in the school. It offers the possibility of being within the institution while also being elsewhere—anywhere these questions are asked. This was implemented through the witch visit protocol of the Possible Gestures action.
We want to emphasize that this performance-intervention-action is rooted in care and guided by what bell hooks calls an ethic of love. It is about openness and the desire to nurture. We are not seeking a defensive attitude toward the museum, nor an aggressive stance. The goal is to remain discreet, blending into the museum space.
If a security guard approaches you to ask what we are doing, we suggest responding:
“I was wondering how to carry an ethic of love within the museum.” If asked to leave, please do so. We are not seeking confrontation.
01.02.2023 @WIELS, Brussels
LES MARGES FORCÉES
16.06.2023 @Recyclart
The Forced Margins
Since this work is not addressed to institutions but to their users, I questioned its place and translation within a non-institutional framework. This led to the performance Les marges forcées , in which I explore the possibilities of cabaret.
Excerpt from the text
«Outsider, not by choice but by impossibility. The margins are forced. Certainly, the world is built there too. Yet, how could this ‘outside’—which is, after all, ‘here’— become more navigable? There is no ‘beyond the walls’ waiting for us with open arms, ready to welcome change, a place where everything could be attempted.
Our bodies seem made to endure, and they continue to take the blows. They continue to bear the cost. But for how long?
It is crucial to change the conditions of life as we know them, not just to ask ‘how to eat,’ but to rethink the system that allows—or denies—us the means to do so. But what are the temporalities of these struggles? In the meantime, what do we do? In the meantime, how do we survive—and above all, where?
And this fear of not being able to meet our needs is real, far more tangible than any after-post-capitalism. It’s a fear for my comrades in scattered struggles.
What do we do with this now that feels like a slippery ground, where we must move forward by twisting the possible out of the impossible? Knowing there is no hand to catch us because those who would want to are fumbling for their own survival.
And yet, I do not doubt our capacity to move mountains. In fact, that’s exactly what we are already doing. All of us, busy as we are, shifting from survival to life. Because fumbling elsewhere has never stopped us from holding each other tightly, in this night we did not choose, whenever one of us is shaken, we recognize it in the fumbling of another.
But it remains fragile—a community of tightrope walkers, brushing against one another. [...]»
