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Métaboles : installations | projections | conferences | performances
From June 22nd to 26th 2021
Jeanne Barret, Marseille
Preamble
In an era of sanitary imbalance and fragmentation of relationships with the world (inter-human as well as inter-species), ecological questions, as a study of interactions between human beings with each other and with their environment, have become essential. They call to attention the theoretical reflections and the aesthetic investigations of an extended community of researchers and artists departing from the observation that our contemporary society, constructed by a humanity evolving within an illusion of progress, has gradually alienated itself from the rest of the living world. Our curatorial proposal brought under the title Métaboles (change, transition) constitutes a selection of projects, for the most part never before seen, that put forward reflections in the fields of relations between humans and their natural environment, concerning notions of sustainability, resilience and the effects of the Capitalocene on other living beings.
Context
A number of installations, videos and performances presented are original creations shown for the first time. They are supported by an ecosystem of committed production formed by our four associations: D.D.A Contemporary Art, 1979, M2F Créations | Lab Gamerz, and Otto-Prod in and around Marseille.
Métaboles is hosted in the peripheral district of les Crottes, Bougainville, Marseille. It forms the first artistic program within the Ateliers Jeanne Barret. Formerly an oil mill then a warehouse, the building is part of a district whose industrial and working class history leads the members of Jeanne Barret towards ecological and social reflection.
Métaboles fits naturally into the theme of the Living — a topic which will be celebrated this year by the IUCN World Conservation Congress (hosted by Marseille in 2021) along with all the city’s cultural actions that will surround this major event.
Curatorial Intentions
The curatorial proposal of Métaboles consists of an approach to the problems induced by the separation of notions of nature and society which has a direct impact on metabolic exchanges between human beings and their environment. The flourishing of life and its cyclical movement are found to have come to a halt, creating an imbalance for the living. How have artists taken hold of this observation and what are their positions in the face of an urgent need to decolonize nature?
From a broader perspective, different forms of deleterious impermeability isolate humans from their ecosystem and disrupt their biological and spiritual relationship to nature as an environment, and more essentially as an entity encompassing it. The symbiotic evolution of humans with their technology over the last centuries appears to be a sensitively alienating factor, just as concrete, petrochemistry or virtuality imposes on them an alternative environmental matrix.
The human as an animal unsuited to the new world it has set up for itself is augmented with tools that act like extensions of its instincts. Here, they resist biotechnological determinism and by questioning otherness, they seek permeability and empathy to the point of ‘metabolic delirium’ finally making them feel
plant,
stone,
water.
Métaboles is co-produced by 1979, Ateliers Jeanne Barret, D.D.A Contemporary Art, M2F Créations | LabGAMERZ and OTTO-Prod.
Artistic Selection
Jonathas de Andrade
O PEIXE, THE FISH
16mm film transferred to 2K video, 38min, 2016
O peixe borrows the style of ethnographic films made by anthropologists to record the cultures and traditions they study. In a series o0f vignettes shot on 16mm film, we witness what appears to be an intimate ritual among fishermen in a coastal village in northeastern Brazil. The camera follows individual fishermen as they catch their prey and then hold them to their chest.
Screening
Saturday June 26th at 16h30
Maxime Berthou
PAPARUDA
Video, 12min, 2011
Paparuda, act two of the Climat triptych, is a video installation by Monsieur Moo featuring a public performance in which the artists unleash an artificial rain. Taking place above a boreal forest on the border of Canada and the United States – this artistic gesture makes reference to a geopolitical dispute between the two countries over the ownership of clouds.
Screening
Wednesday June 23rd at 20h00
Maxime Berthou & Mark Požlep
HOGSHEAD, SOUTHWIND, UISUKI AND PUDGY
Conference / Meeting with the artists
Completed in the fall of 2019, Southwind consisted of restoring a small traditional American steamboat in order to descend on board the Mississippi from Minneapolis to New Orleans. Purposely equipped with a limited boiler, the small boat had to stop daily to allow wood to be collected. The stopovers also made it possible to harvest the 42 varieties of corn available in the ten states crossed before transforming them in the boat which became a mini-distillery upon arrival. This mutation of corn produces moonshine, a modest alcohol, emblematic of the Prohibition Era in the United States.
“During the trip, we collected samples of different types of corn from the ten different states we visited: Minnesota, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Iowa, Missouri and Arkansas. We took the corn samples with us on the boat, and the rest were sent by farmers to Seven Three Distillery in New Orleans. We collected interviews from farmers regarding their profitability and riverside life and their position in the Anthropocene as one of the major players in the agricultural corn industry.
Along the river we encountered the multiple layers of a landscape touched by the Capitolocene. »
Screening
Wednesday June 23rd at 20h00
Meeting and Conference
Wednesday June 23rd at 21h00
Félix Blume
ESSAIM
Sound installation produced on-site, 2021
A beehive is composed of tens of thousands of individuals. Whether it be a hive or a swarm in full flight, it’s a very recognizable sound. If we have the tendency to think of a beehive as a whole, this new project proposes to make heard the uniqueness of every one of these individuals who compose it, by way of isolated bee recordings.
The installation will consist of hundreds of small individual sound devices, consisting of a sound card and a small speaker, each broadcasting the sound of a particular bee.
Vernissage
Tuesday June 22nd at 17h30
Meeting and Conference
Thursday June 24th at 19h00
CURUPIRA, BÊTE DES BOIS
Sound color video, 35min, 2019
In the heart of the Amazon, the inhabitants of Tauary invite us to listen to the sounds of their forest, with its birds and animals.
Screening
Saturday June 26th at 16h30
Antoine Boute
TUTORIEL BIOHARDCORE
Performance of poem, 2019
Reading of the Manuel de Civilité Biohardcore (Antoine Boute, Stéphane de Groef et Adrien Herda)
Inventing an aesthetic-political arrangement that shatters literature with drums and that cuts text and image to the point of producing an economy of the sign that exceeds its own economic level, Manuel de Civilité Biohardcore releases an anti-pedagogy of the wildness that plants flowers and fields of nettles upon chaos.
Reading and Performance
Thursday June 24th at 21h00
Alexandre Chanoine
Sculptures, sound performance, 2021
Alexandre Chanoine makes objects with stones that are at the same time sculptures, toys and instruments. He manipulates them, jostles them, makes them ring by exploring the powers of primitive gestures — or the beginnings of erosion. Summoning temporalities that vastly exceed those of humans, where his gestures and works lie beyond any and all categorizations, Alexandre Chanoine digs a rut as sensitive as it is singular, where the infinitely old makes us hear the infinitely beautiful.
Sound performance (with Félix Blume)
Tuesday June 22nd at 19h30
Lena Hiriartborde
SOUS RÉSERVE DE
Video, 6min, 2018
Subject to seeing where the confetti goes. Provided they accept my donation to their company. Subject to taking the size of underground galleries. Captivated by the relentless occupation of leaf-cutting ants, I seek to participate. Between scientific prospects and childish curiosity, I place new materials cut to the appropriate dimensions near their tracks. That they get them on board immediately, ready to integrate this new substrate into their precise ecology. What are they going to do with it? Are there laboratory ants inside? What a funny picture these spots of bright colors that emerge little by little from the multiple openings in the anthill.
Vernissage
Tuesday June 22nd at 17h30
RDV À LA SOURCE
Performance, produced on-site, 2021
The well has, despite being singular, a signficant S. Perhaps he is thus suggesting that there is only one entry into the multiple branches of an underground network and an especially porous planet?
Performance
Saturday June 26th at 18h30
Luce Moreau
BRÈCHES MÉCANIQUES
Installation, 2020
The installation Brèches Mécaniques proposes a fictional medium around the notions of resilience and ecological anticipation. It aims to deal with a species’ ability to recover normal functioning after having undergone a disturbance: here, it’s the disappearance of the bee’s natural habitats and its surculture by humans in the grip of both a disorientation and a progressive abandonment of its utopic communities.
Vernissage
Tuesday June 22nd at 17h30
Špela Petrič
CONFRONTING VEGETAL OTHERNESS : SKOTOPOIESIS
Video installation documenting the performance, 22h, 2015
Skotopoiesis (meaning shaped by darkness) is the first performance from the series attempting plant-human intercognition. In this durational piece the artist and the germinating cress face each, illuminated by a light pro- jection. The biosemiotic process occurs through the obstruction of the light – the artist throws a shadow onto the cress for 12 hours a day, which results in the etiolation (blanching, whitening) of the plants. The effect is mediated by phytochromes, one of the plants’ non-photosynthetic light sensors. The diminished light intensity stimulates the production of auxin, a plant hormone that acidifies the cell wall, facilitating its elongation. The stems of the cress become long and pale; the leaves are sparser, all in an effort by the plant to grow from the shadow.
Vernissage
Tuesday June 22nd at 17h30
Meeting and Conference
Friday June 25th at 18h30
Julie Rousse
UNE VOIX PARCOURT LE RHÔNE
Performance sonore
Une Voix Parcourt le Rhône is a sound fresco of this massive river: hybrid and sculptural, having the desire to immerse listeners into the river, it proposes to establish a transversal conversation between the Rhône and its different actors.
The river, considered as a « living entity, » is present in the form of an entangled multitude that is both complex and organic – forming a « body, » literally. During this audiovisual performance, the different strata of the sounds recorded on the Rhône overlap, intertwine and respond, like a fresco where field recordings, specialized recordings and speeches, filmed images and found objects intersect …
The sounds broadcast are stored in a sound library that classifies the sounds according to their nature, their geographical location, the seasonal cycles, the recording schedule (precise day and time) and the weather conditions in place.
Sound performance and Presentation of the project
Wednesday June 23rd at 15h30
Robertina Šebjanič
AQUATOCENE / SUBAQUATIC QUEST FOR SERENITY
Audiovisual performance, since 2016
Aquatocene / Subaquatic Quest for Serenity investigates the phenomenon of underwater noise pollution created by humankind in the seas and oceans. The sound compositions are a re-mix between the bioacoustics of marine life (shrimps, fish, sea urchins etc.), the aquatic acoustics and the presence of human generated noise in the world’s oceans and seas. Over the last few years, Robertina has made a number of recordings using hydrophones in different locations around the globe. Underwater noise affects a great number of marine life forms which depend on the sub-aquatic sonic environment to survive.
Sound performance followed by a public discussion with scientists
Wednesday June 23rd at 14h00
Thomas Tilly
CODEX AMPHIBIA (AN INTERPRETATION OF THE EXPLOSIVE BREEDING PHENOMENON)
Sound performance, 2018
Codex Amphibia is a project resulting from a collaboration between the musician Thomas Tilly and the herpetologist researcher Antoine Fouquet, during a field study in Guyana in 2016. On the Mountain of Kaw, December 2016, thousands of frogs gather in a few tens of square meters for a unique night of sexual frenzy. Out of the intimacy of this reproductive explosion, Thomas Tilly created Codex Amphibia, a dialogue between the sound fragments captured from the field and the electronic elements subsequently added in the studio, sometimes presented alone and sometimes mixed together. Thus, across the sound pieces, a back and forth is established between the natural acoustic lines and their artificial interpretations.
Concert
Tuesday June 22nd at 21h00
Voogt – Madely Schott & Phabrice Petitdemange
MERAKI
Video with sound and color (56 min)
Between September and November 2018, Voogt, the duo made up of Madely Schott and Phabrice Petitdemange, took over an abandoned campsite adjacent to a beach littered with plastic remains layered with the ebb and flow of the Mediterranean Sea. This playground, deserted for twenty years, was initially called Camp Gournia Moon. Equipped with a solar panel to ensure a minimum of autonomy, they set out to clean up, slowly but surely, the beach. Immersed in this post-apocalyptic setting isolated from the synergy of everyday life, they decided to film this quest on the basis of the following premise: « The human has conquered himself. Two survivors face the vestiges of a world of which they have only vague memories. «
FIRST screening
Thursday June 24th at 21h30
The WA & Olabo
FOUNTAIN
Video, 37min, 2014 / 2015
Fountain shows in a hybrid form the making and filmed performance of a several month journey featuring the two artists. Starting from the simple observation that water is a common good privatized by the giants of capitalism, we follow them from the « taking » of metal bars supporting the protective fences of the Nestlé factory to their hijacking as a drilling tool in a desert region of Morocco.
The screening of Fountain will be followed bt a presentation of the works of the artist The Wa as well as a program of « The Wa & friends » videos around the themes of Métaboles.
Screening
Friday June 25th Juin à 20h30
Meeting and Conference
Friday June 25th à 21h30
Video program « The Wa & friends«
Friday June 25th à 21h30
Wildproject Editions
Invitation
How do we reorganize human societies in terms of their relationships with living things and put an end to the ongoing extinction of life on Earth?
This is the task to which Wildproject wants to contribute, an independent publishing house which has worked to import and acclimatize ecological thinking into French within the past decade 2010–2020.
From philosophical revolutions to political struggles, the evolution of the house bears witness to a decade of editorial effervescence and hybridization of issues. Having been at the forefront of ecological thinking, Wildproject now intends to contribute to the implementation of their works.
Invitation of Wildproject Editions
Saturday June 26th at 15h00
Postcoïtum
Concert
Postcoïtum is the project of Damien Ravnich and Bertrand Wolff, built around the marriage of instrumental and electronic music, calling out to the hybrid influences of idm textures, indie rock rhythms or industrial sounds. The duo traps us with a set of curious sounds before swallowing us up whole with the hypnotic force of a narrative melodic-rhythmic system. The suggested universe then leaves room for possibilities by taking us towards the transcendent, the tragic and the incongruous with a vast and eclectic soundscape.
Concert
Saturday June 26th at 20h30
Zar Electrik
Concert
When we talk about Zar Electrik, we are talking about music without codes and without borders.
It is the meeting of two friends in Marseille: Anass Zine, his bewitching voice with Maghrebian influences as well as his many traditional instruments (gumbri, oud …) and Arthur Péneau, with his deep voice, who introduces hybrid African influences through his kora which he mystifies with electric effects. Then the connection with Miosine (Didier Simione) sublimates the whole, the last element of the trio.
Concert
Saturday June 26th at 20h30
DJ La Sirocco
DJ Set
As a multidirectional DJ, the Sirocco blows a torrid wind on all the dance floors she shakes up, from Brussels to El Jadida, from Firenze to Istanbul, from Doomkerke to the island of Tinos… and Marseille.
A Gemini ascendant scorpion, its double loops stuck onto the roller rink of your musical desires. Globe-trotter of the beat, she juggles between afro-disco, hip-hop & bass music, Congolese rumba, chaâbi, and many other musical gems.
DJ Set
Wednesday June 23rd at 21h00
The Residencies
Félix Blume (France, 1984) is a sound artist and sound engineer. He currently works and lives between Mexico, Brazil and France. Guest in residence from March to June 2021, he proposes essaim (swarm), which invites us to partake in several listening experiences, going from the whole (the beehive) to the individual (the bee).
» Click here to learn more
Léna Hiriartborde is an artist of hybrid forms, mixing performance, photography, writing, installation, sound pieces and videos, from which a touch of humor and self-mockery often slip between. She is invited as a guest in residence from the 17th to 22nd of May 2021 at Jeanne Barret.
» Click here to learn more
Mediation
Doing “with” and not “for,” such is the credo of the mediations put in place within Jeanne Barret. The challenge is to make residents want to participate in the life of their neighborhood and the village of the Crottes, to activate the urban space in order to reclaim it, to develop a common history through artistic languages, to participate in a creative process in a horizontal and collaborative way.
The mediation put in place is also based on the programming of the place. It is designed in a spirit of co-construction and transversality between the knowledge of all, the knowledge of the residents of Jeanne Barret and the inhabitants.
The Métaboles project makes it possible to experiment with a new method of mediation, namely the increasing participation of the public with the exhibition over an extended period of time. Workshops on artistic practice, the exchanges of ideas and urban walks on the theme of nature are set up by two cultural mediators to identify the challenges of such a theme within a territory where nature is rarely present or even invisible. How do we pay attention to the environment around us? How do we take care of the living? How can we act on ecological issues?
Residents will be able to take up this subject and contribute their vision, which will then be transcribed and enhanced in a dedicated space during Métaboles. Their words and productions will thus be included in the demonstration process. At the end of the project, these reflections, exchanges and views could lead to decision-making for concrete transformation within the neighborhood.
From June 22nd to 26th, screenings will be reserved for schoolchildren, followed by a mediation and a workshop.
Discussions on this theme will continue throughout the summer with young people from the La Cabucelle district as part of the C’est mon Patrimoine call for projects. Artist Léna Hiriartborde invites them to explore the notion of mimicry. This working time opens up a reflection on the notion of the point of view, and by extension on that of camouflage. What better way to understand otherness and become an accomplice to it, than to project yourself in your place and imitate it? What better way to observe this non-human world than to escape its senses? “Mimicry” has given rise to surprising interactions in the animal and plant world. The young people will create photographic scenes where the subject seeks to disappear, hiding or imitating the environment. This work will give rise to restitution during the European Heritage Days on September 18th and 19th.
Program
TUESDAY JUNE 22 ! OPENING !
17h30
*Opening Day* vernissage of installations and exhibition visit in the presence of the artists. Installation «Essaim» by Félix Blume, installation «Skotopoiesis» by Špela Petrič, sculpture «Brèches mécaniques» by Luce Moreau, video «Sous réserve de» by Léna Hiriartborde, sculptures by Alexandre Chanoine.
19h30
Sound performance and activation of sculptures by Alexandre Chanoine with Félix Blume
21h00
«Codex Amphibia (Phonotaxis)» Concert by Thomas Tilly followed by the intervention «Codex amphibia : composer sur un fil».
WEDNESDAY JUNE 23
14h00
«Aquatocene» Sound performance by Robertina Šebjanič followed by a public disccusion in the presence of the scientists Christian Tamburini, Thierry Perez et Delphine Thibault.
15h30
«Une voix parcourt le Rhône» Sound performance by Julie Rousse followed by an encounter with the artist.
17h30
Exhibition visit in the presence of the artists.
20h00
Screening of the film «Paparuda» and «Southwind» by Maxime Berthou and Mark Požlep
21h00
Encounter / Conference with Maxime Berthou on his recent works * dégustation of ‘moonshine’ from the projet Southwind + DJ set La Sirocco
THURSDAY JUNE 24
17h30
Exhibition visit in the presence of the artists.
19h00
Encounter / Conference with Félix Blume
21h00
Lecture / Performance of poem «Tutoriel Biohardcore» by Antoine Boute
21h30
FIRST screening of the film «Méraki» by Voogt
FRIDAY JUNE 25
17h30
Exhibition visit in the presence of the artists.
18h30
Encounter / Conference with Špela Petrič
20h30
Screening of the film «Fountain» by The Wa and Olabo
21h30
Encounter / Conference with The Wa + video program «The Wa & Friends»
SATURDAY JUNE 26
15h00
Invitation to Wildproject Editions
16h30
Screening of the films « The Fish» by Jonathas de Andrade and «Curupira» by Félix Blume
18h00
Exhibition visit in the presence of the artists.
18h30
Performance «RDV à la source» by Lena Hiriartborde
20h30
// Concerts // Zar Electrik + Postcoïtum
Practical Informations
How do I get there?
By métro: M2 Bougainville
By bus: 72 Métro Bougainville/70 Salengro Cougit
When?
22 to 26 June 2021
From Tuesday to Saturday
Vernissage 22 June 2021 starting at 17h30
Doors open to the public 30 minutes before the time indicated on the program, in compliance with current health standards
DOORS CLOSE AT 22H45
How much?
It’s free!
Will there be food and drinks?
Mandatory membership to Ateliers Jeanne Barret for snacks and bar on site (Les Cuistotes)
The Partners
Métaboles is co-produced by 1979, Ateliers Jeanne Barret, D.D.A Contemporary Art, M2F Créations | LabGAMERZ and OTTO-Prod.
images
Photos : F. Kolandjian and Luce Moreau
diffusingdigitalart.org 