frédéric nauczyciel 1968 fr

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FRÉDÉRIC
NAUCZYCIEL
1968
FR
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Oh, Baltimore
Man, it’s hard just to live,
just to live.
—
Nina Simone, Baltimore, 1978
Frédéric Nauczyciel a probablement gardé
de son travail d’administrateur dans la
danse contemporaine le goût du horschamp et du pas de côté. Depuis 2003, il a
emboîté une carrière d’artiste. En 2008, il
expose un immense tirage du public assis
dans les gradins de la cour d’honneur au
Festival d’Avignon pendant la
représentation du Roi Lear, une
photographie plein cadre réalisée avec un
temps de pause égal à la durée du
spectacle (4 h 30, entracte compris). En
2009, il témoigne de la vie locale à Pantin,
en banlieue parisienne, puis répond,
l’année suivante, à une commande 1 par un
ensemble de neuf portraits, « Le Temps
devant ». Les images, fortement mises en
scène selon une inspiration picturale (le
siglo de oro espagnol notamment),
évoquent l’utopie rurale, une manière
d’être au monde, le rapport au temps qui
passe et insistent sur la qualité de la
relation instaurée avec ses « sujets ».
Avec son installation vidéo The
Fire Flies, Francesca, Baltimore, Frédéric
Nauczyciel nous propose une triple
projection immersive dans un flux d’images
et de musiques venues de la communauté
des voguers de Baltimore – avec les
intrusions sophistiquées de Francesca à
New York. À l’extérieur de la boîte vidéo, un
long travelling de Baltimore en plein jour
pousse le spectateur à « traverser »
symboliquement la route pour entrer dans
le vif du sujet. L’artiste confie : « J’étais venu
chercher Omar 2, j’ai rencontré les voguers
– les lucioles que Pier Paolo Pasolini
recherchait dans les faubourgs de Naples.
Des cygnes noirs des ghettos. » Il a travaillé
pendant plusieurs mois avec ces groupes
pluri-marginalisés (noirs, pauvres,
homosexuels ou transgenres) afin d’en
capter la quintessence des formes de
résistance et d’affirmation mises en œuvre.
IPhone à la main, il filme des séances de
démaquillage, d’habillage, d’errances
urbaines, des « bals ». Le ball est une
réunion underground où les voguers, en
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relation avec leur house 3, viennent se
défier, en performant à partir de figures
imposées (Hands, Catwalk, Duckwalk,
Spins and Dips, Floor). La multiplicité des
catégories offre une place à chacun, on se
mesure l’un à l’autre, pour des trophées
dérisoires mais symboliques. Entre
glamour et legendary. L’enjeu des balls est
la capacité de chacun à s’improviser, se
créer une personnalité – être real.
Le vogueing (ou voguing pour
les nouvelles générations) est né dans des
quartiers noirs ou latinos comme Harlem à
la fin des années 1960. Détournant des
poses de mannequins (des femmes
blanches majoritairement) en couverture
du magazine Vogue, il se réapproprie des
signes culturels, s’invente des stratégies de
survie. Le mouvement est définitivement
popularisé à la fin des années 1980 par
Malcolm McLaren et son single Deep In
Vogue et, vidé de tout contenu social, par
Madonna dans son clip Vogue. Le
documentaire de Jennie Livingston Paris Is
Burning (1991) demeure une référence.
Frédéric Nauczyciel parvient à
infuser dans son travail une « part intime du
réel », entre réalité, autobiographie et
fiction, en nous emportant dans un
montage précis, des cuts dynamiques, des
répliques pointues et une circulation des
images en adéquation avec le système mis
en place dans le voguing.
Les lucioles de Baltimore ne
brillent que quand elles volent…
Julien Blanpied
1 — Centre d’art et de photographie de Lectoure.
2 — Omar Devon Little, personnage haut en couleur de la série télévisée
The Wire, trafiquant de drogue, homosexuel, noir, a un sens du code moral
strict et ne dévie jamais de ses règles ; il n’est pas menaçant à l’égard des
personnes non impliquées dans le « jeu ».
3 — Les houses (aussi appelées drag houses ou drag families) sont des
groupes composés majoritairement d’hommes homosexuels ou
transgenres, afro-américains ou latinos, réunis sous l’autorité (le respect)
d’une house mother ou d’un father. Elles sont une forme de famille
adoptive, substitut de la famille biologique en crise. Les noms des houses
font souvent référence au milieu de la mode (House of Chanel, Milan,
Revlon, Balenciaga anciennement Miyake Mugler…).
VOGUE ! Baltimore, Eubie Blake Centre
2011
Tirages Ilfochrome, 152 × 122 cm
Programme « Hors les murs », Institut français
Production MAC/VAL
[147] Vogue ! Baltimore # Kory Goose Revlon
[147-149]
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VOGUE ! Baltimore, Eubie Blake Centre
2011
THE FIRE FLIES
2011
[148] Vogue ! Baltimore # David Revlon
[149] Vogue ! Baltimore # Ezra Swan
It’s All About Omar # Without Sanctuary
(saison 1, épisode pilote)
Baltimore, avec DDM
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conversation
avec
FRÉDÉRIC NAUCZYCIEL
—
Quelle place occupent dans votre
œuvre les pièces que vous exposez
au MAC/VAL ?
The Fire Flies 1, ce sont des lucioles, la
flamboyance des homosexuels et
transgenres des ghettos noirs de Baltimore
qui se performent la nuit dans des balls.
Au-delà de la question communautaire, des
individus mettent en place des stratégies
– une poétique – de survie qui renvoient
aux lucioles de Pasolini dans les faubourgs
de Naples et à la sensualité des Noirs
américains selon James Baldwin (The Fire,
Next Time).
En me rendant à Baltimore 2, je
ne pensais pas conduire un projet d’une
telle envergure ni m’intéresser au voguing.
J’y allais sur les traces d’Omar qui a
popularisé la banjee realness, cette
posture de fierté des hommes
homosexuels des ghettos en résistance à
la culture dominante, une forme de
dissimulation choisie, destinée à déjouer
les attentes. Je voulais rapporter en Europe
des images qui présenteraient une autre
vision du glamour de banlieue. Baltimore,
c’est comme si toute la Petite Couronne
s’était déversée dans le centre de Paris.
La pièce The Fire Flies exposée
au MAC/VAL est comme le making off d’un
travail plus vaste en cours, documentant à
la fois son processus et son sujet.
Constituée d’une installation vidéo et de
grandes photographies, elle met en
tension, sur le mur extérieur d’une boîte,
une traversée de Baltimore en apparence
monotone (La Traversée, boucle de 46’) et,
à l’intérieur de la boîte, une plongée dans
des sous-cultures qui affleurent peu en
surface (The Fire Flies, boucle de 58’). Une
porte dérobée invite à y pénétrer, à
« traverser ». Sur trois des murs intérieurs se
déploient des séquences quasi brutes, en
format vertical ou horizontal, rythmées par
la musique et les sons, avec des temps
morts, des accélérations, des plans
séquences plus longs, des ruptures au
blanc qui éblouissent pour laisser des
ambiances sonores ouvrir à l’imaginaire.
L’éclatement du montage rend compte de
manière volontairement lacunaire d’une
réalité qui ne peut se livrer complètement
et met la vision en défaut lors des
passages rapides d’un mur à l’autre.
L’absence de sous-titres invite à
appréhender ce langage des corps très
codifié, à l’éprouver plutôt qu’à le
comprendre. La boucle vidéo propose une
progression des documents bruts vers des
séquences plus formelles, des sons
scandés des balls à la musique baroque,
progression parallèle à celle du travail de
création lui-même. Quatre photographies
de la série Vogue ! Baltimore sur deux murs
extérieurs de la boîte déconstruisent les
mouvements du voguing et indiquent le
statut de « mise en scène documentaire »
de la pièce.
Je touche au plus proche de
ma manière de faire : ne rien décider à
l’avance et ne rien inscrire dans
l’obligation. J’ai compris que je n’avais pas
à me limiter à la pratique photographique
et j’ai ouvert à tout ce qui pourrait rendre
compte de l’expérience et mettre en jeu le
corps, de la vidéo à la danse. C’est aussi la
première fois que j’envisage une aventure
collective. Ce travail est né du désir
d’approfondir une relation dans la durée. Je
n’en avais pas anticipé toutes les
ramifications.
Je retrouve dans ce travail mon
amour de la science-fiction – Abyss,
Minority Report, l’hologramme de Star
Wars qui sort de D2R2, ou encore Les
Enfants du paradis ou la lanterne magique
du Dracula de Coppola. J’y reconnais aussi
mes premiers héros, Bourvil en PasseMuraille, Fred Astaire et Gene Kelly. Enfant
puis adolescent dans une banlieue
nouvelle à l’américaine, j’écoutais la soul
music à la radio, sans comprendre le sens
politique des paroles.
Ce travail me permet de
revisiter ma propre histoire qui, d’une
certaine façon, a été occultée par la place
qu’a prise dans ma famille la mémoire
d’Auschwitz.
Il va également redéfinir ma
manière de produire, de chercher de
l’argent. Je résistais jusqu’à présent à
partager quelque chose de la création avec
une galerie ou un producteur ; il me fallait
d’abord appréhender tous les enjeux de
mon travail.
149
Vous dites que vous étiez parti
chercher Omar (personnage
emblématique de la série
américaine The Wire) à Baltimore.
Qui avez-vous trouvé finalement ?
Omar est une icône moderne qui parle à
tous parce qu’il est lui-même et qu’il
invente sa propre géographie. Je ne
pensais pas au départ travailler avec des
voguers avant de comprendre qu’Omar est,
avec sa banjee realness, une facette plus
récente de la culture du voguing.
Cette capacité d’improvisation
des Noirs américains, cette manière de
s’inventer à chaque instant est magnifiée
dans les balls. En réalité, les voguers de
Baltimore sont tous Omar, selon la
situation ou le moment de la journée.
Dans quelle mesure votre travail
explore-t-il les liens entre l’individu
et la communauté ?
Je suis allé à Baltimore pour écrire une
fiction documentaire sur le modèle de The
Wire, imaginer des mises en scène
photographiques qui aborderaient la réalité
de Baltimore du point de vue d’Omar. Avant
de réaliser les épisodes de cette série
photographique, où les voguers créeraient
les personnages de leur propre vie, il me
fallait d’abord comprendre les enjeux de
cette communauté.
J’ai rencontré un groupe de
personnes, des amis et une famille. Ayant
choisi certains d’entre eux pour un travail,
je les ai déplacés dans un studio de
photographie et de danse. J’ai ainsi fait des
allers et retours entre leur territoire et le
mien. Enregistré des moments de vie,
d’intimité, de balls, de prises de vue et des
scènes documentaires. Le plan séquence
sur le parking, un moment d’attente avant
un ball exceptionnellement donné en
extérieur, présente nombre d’entre eux que
l’on retrouve dans d’autres séquences du
film.
J’ai commencé à travailler avec
Marquis, Kory et David Revlon – et, par
extension, avec l’ensemble de la « maison »
Revlon. J’ai fait venir d’autres voguers
d’autres maisons dont j’aimais le style. J’ai
impliqué d’autres figures, tels DDM, un
rappeur ouvertement gay, Shawnna
Alexander, une drag queen burlesque de
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Baltimore, ou Francesca de New York.
J’ai ainsi isolé des individus du
groupe en donnant à chacun une place
singulière. Le voguing est fait de cette
dualité : le singulier dans la multitude. Il
s’agit, dans la communauté, d’être unique.
J’ai aussi laissé la place à des scènes plus
personnelles, des blagues sonores et
vidéos que l’on m’envoyait, comme ce tube
de l’été, Chouchou, ou le « Talking Carl » qui
me demande de revenir à Paris !
Cette manière de creuser le
destin individuel à l’intérieur d’un groupe
était un moyen de m’approcher au plus
près de la réalité. L’intime introduit dans
l’œuvre un élément d’identification qui
déjoue l’observation et implique le
regardeur. Ainsi opère la fable sociale.
Avec votre iPhone, en tant
qu’artiste en immersion dans un
groupe ou une communauté,
n’empruntez-vous pas la posture
d’un anthropologue moderne ?
Quelle place laissez-vous à l’Autre
dans le processus de réalisation de
vos œuvres ?
L’iPhone s’est imposé au départ comme
capteur de moments. Il est passé de main
en main, a été posé au sol pendant des
prises de vue. J’ai reçu des films que
d’autres avaient faits ; proposé à certains
de se filmer, en mon absence. La séquence
de rupture que Francesca m’a envoyée en
même temps qu’à son destinataire,
moment insensé, drôle et émouvant qui
soulève toutes les questions d’un
postcolonialisme de genre, m’a donné
l’envie de faire ce film.
Il est d’ailleurs réalisé non
uniquement avec un iPhone, mais surtout
avec toutes les applications de l’iPhone.
Via Facebook, j’entrais en contact, postais
des images, collectais des messages ou
des statuts. Je repassais tout à travers
l’iPhone, refilmais le film de Marie Losier,
réalisais un travelling avec la musique
d’Emanuel Xavier dans la voiture… Cette
plasticité de l’outil m’a permis de simplifier
le montage et le mixage du film, pour me
concentrer sur une rythmique, un
déploiement des images dans l’espace. La
verticalité des images filmées introduisant
un format non conventionnel, un film éclaté
s’imposait qui rende compte de
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l’engagement des corps dans l’espace.
La banalité de l’objet m’a
surtout permis une spontanéité du regard,
avec une règle simple : ne pas être dans
une posture d’observateur, a fortiori
d’anthropologue, mais être toujours dans le
plaisir et dans le jeu.
Très vite, mes « personnages »
ont joué ce jeu et s’en sont emparé. Par
exemple, lors d’une improvisation sur un
concerto de Bach en studio, Marquis livre
un regard caméra et s’en amuse.
L’impression d’immersion est donc en
partie une illusion.
Après l’étude réalisée en studio
avec Kory, avant d’aller recréer la pose
dans la ville, dans son quartier, en costume,
je lui ai parlé de la danseuse de Degas, qui
était alors exposée au musée de Baltimore.
L’histoire de cette jeune fille ayant le visage
d’une prostituée lui a plu, et il s’est
approprié le personnage. La séquence où
Francesca se démaquille a été décidée par
elle, et mise en scène très simplement,
avec l’iPhone collé sur le miroir.
En définitive, c’est la manière
dont l’Autre s’empare de mes propositions
qui m’intéresse.
Quelle place accordez-vous au
politique ?
Baltimore est une ville où toute résistance
semble avoir disparu parce que le pouvoir
lui-même a quitté la ville. Il est difficile d’y
tenir un projet, d’y trouver des ressources
et d’y impliquer durablement des gens. En
faisant des allers et retours entre leur
monde et le mien, nous avons tenté de
briser la frontière symbolique du ghetto et
rendu possible un ailleurs.
C’est ainsi que la musique
classique est apparue. Nous faisions des
prises de vue dans la rue et je mettais de la
musique classique dans la voiture, pour
dérouter la police, le cas échéant. Bach leur
a plu. Nous avons tenté l’expérience d’une
pratique en studio, à trois, puis à trente.
J’avais l’intuition que les codes de la danse
baroque pouvaient résonner avec les codes
du voguing. Que la musique de Bach
pouvait mettre en lumière la féminité et
l’élégance du Vogue femme. L’intensité des
compositions de Bach et leur rigueur
mathématique étaient à même de les
soutenir dans la durée, eux qui flamboient,
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donnent leur vie* 3 dans des confrontations
ultrabrèves.
Je leur proposais ainsi de
pousser les limites pour amplifier la
manière dont le voguing apprend à
transcender les vicissitudes de la vie, à
s’inventer, à se performer avec bravoure
(fierceness*) pour devenir un jour
legendary*, libéré du regard de l’Autre.
Legendary, c’est aussi le titre
donné à l’atelier organisé au MAC/VAL et
conçu comme un laboratoire. Il a réuni
Marquis, David et Kory Revlon, ainsi que de
jeunes stagiaires de la région parisienne,
pour moitié déjà initiés au voguing. J’ai
voulu déplacer les pratiques de chacun,
mettre les voguers au contact de la danse
baroque française et de la danse
contemporaine, initier les autres aux
fondamentaux du voguing.
Cette hybridation des cultures
m’intéresse. Elle correspond à la façon
dont le voguing de Baltimore, qui n’a pas
l’héritage des grandes figures newyorkaises, continue de s’inventer et de se
nourrir de toutes les influences.
La restitution publique
mélangeait les codes du voguing et de la
danse baroque avec des éléments tirés de
la réalité de Baltimore. Dans un lieu d’art,
la reproduction de la Baltimore Lean, cette
« danse des drogués » aux coins des rues
qui se penchent sans jamais tomber,
convoquait d’autres images. Celle du
chorégraphe Andy Degroat, mon mentor, au
corps fatigué, déguisé en black mamma
SDF et déjantée, qui se traîne au milieu de
ces corps jeunes magnifiés par les talons
aiguille, portant une rose à la main, parle
de la déchéance. Mais exacerbe, en creux,
la présence possible de l’élégance, d’une
poétique de la survie.
THE FIRE FLIES, FRANCESCA, BALTIMORE
2011-2012
Installation vidéo, 2 boucles indépendantes :
La Traversée, 46'19 ; The Fire Flies, 58'07
Photogrammes
1 — En anglais, the fireflies : les lucioles ; the fire flies : le feu vole.
2 — Programme « Hors les murs », Institut français.
3 — Les astérisques signalent des idiomes propres au langage
de la communauté.
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FIREFLIES, BALTIMORE
2011-2012
FIREFLIES, BALTIMORE
2011-2012
Firefly # David Revlon
Firefly # Mike Peele Revlon
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MARYLÈNE
NEGRO
1957
FIREFLIES, BALTIMORE
2011-2012
Firefly # Kory Goose Revlon
FR
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ENGLISH texts
What role does the Other play in the
creation of your works?
It is a necessary point of reference but not very
dramatic for me. I hope, but don’t expect, we will
make contact with aliens during my lifetime,
which would really be something. Considering
the vastness of the universe, it seems reasonable
to believe they are there.
What role does politics play?
Politics is the bloodstream of art. When
politics die, the work is destroyed or goes into
storage waiting for a resurrection. I have spent
the last 18 months interviewing and writing the
biography of Irena Sedlecka, an 83-year-old
sculptor with a remarkable fate and life history.
Trained at the Fine Art Academy in Prague
immediately after World War II, she was very
talented and as a very young woman became
one of the most celebrated Socialist Realist
superstars. She produced mainly figurative
works depicting communist heroes on a
monumental scale, most of which were later
destroyed during the Velvet Revolution. In 1966
she did a U-turn and escaped communism in a
Skoda, leaving everything behind and smuggling
three children in a dramatic journey across
Europe. She settled in London and supported her
family by sculpting souvenir models for the
British Museum and then props for commercials,
before slowly returning to portraits of British
actors. Thirty years after her arrival in the UK,
where she had been largely unknown or ignored,
the glam rock band Queen rediscovered her as
the most talented sculptor in Britain and
commissioned her to create a larger-than-life
memorial statue of Freddie Mercury, who had
passed away of Aids a few years before. This is
where Socialist Realism and glam rock truly
meet, and where an artist survives nearly a
century of European upheavals and artistic
trends as the political landscape is shifting under
her feet. The whole story is available free online:
www.freddieontheplinth.co.uk.
Are humour verging on the grotesque and
the reappropriation of signs traditionally
assigned to masculinity ways of conquering
new territories?
As an artist, I can’t complain of a lack of territory.
In the realm of imagination, everything is always
available. Making a joke is the quickest way to
get there.
When you create situations like First
Woman on the Moon, do you see them as
motors of fiction?
On a sunny day they are motors, on a rainy day
the fictions will do.
Do you think that the way your documentary
film is received has shifted, more than ten
years after it was made? How do you see a
feminist reinterpretation of your project in
2012?
I am curious to find out. From the outset the work
has always been used in every kind of way, by so
many different people. An Australian gender
studies department sent me congratulations,
while I received hate mail from some American
feminists who objected to my planting of the
American flag on a Dutch beach, which they saw
as an imperialist act. The Dutch anarchist
association AAA (Association of Autonomous
Astronauts), who wanted to break NASA’s
monopoly, went as far as to demand the project
be cancelled. When I invited everyone to join me
on the moon, random people made a toast in
champagne and proclaimed themselves ‘The
first gay man on the moon’, ‘The first black man
on the moon’, or ‘The first German man on the
moon’. Everyone was taking their own snapshots,
we had three commercial media stations onsite
producing mainstream TV, a world famous
fashion photographer showed up unannounced,
the non-profit Casco Projects, who produced the
event, had two of their own photographers
sponsored by Hasselblad cameras onsite, the
same company that had equipped Neil
Armstrong in 1969 and who gave me their new
camera to wear, which I used to shoot the public
from my protagonist’s perspective. So the work
was always a product of everyone’s collective
point of view. I later reclaimed as much footage
that I could get hold of from all these different
sources and edited the video. It is my most
widely circulated piece, showing in one place or
another continuously for over ten years. I sent it
to both Neil Armstrong and Arthur C. Clarke, who
both acknowledged it with good humour. I
remember watching Neil Armstrong on TV when I
was two years old. I remember the excitement of
my family around the TV, and since he watched
me perform the same way, a circle was closed.
We were both aware of each other’s existence.
Today the distance between the fiction and
reality has narrowed. There are more female
astronauts, and I believe it is just a matter of a
few years before the Chinese will actually put a
woman on the moon, which will bring my work to
its final conclusion and render it obsolete.
frédéric nauczyciel
‘Oh, Baltimore/Man, it’s hard just to live, just to
live’ (Nina Simone, Baltimore, 1978)
It may well be that Frédéric Nauczyciel’s work as
an administrator in contemporary dance gave
him a taste for the offbeat. Since 2003 he has
been pursuing a career as an artist. In 2008 he
exhibited a huge print of the public sitting in the
Cour d’Honneur during a performance of King
Lear at the Avignon Festival, a full-frame photo
made with an exposure time identical to the
duration of the show itself (four and a half hours,
interval included). In 2009 he reported on life in
Pantin, a northern Parisian suburb, while the
following year he responded to a commission 1 by
producing a set of nine portraits, Le Temps
devant. The images are emphatically staged and
have a strong painterly quality (the Spanish siglo
de oro is an important reference) and evoke rural
utopias, a way of being in the world, and our
relationship to passing time. They stress the
quality of the relationship developed with the
‘subjects’.
In his three-channel video installation
The Fire Flies, Francesca, Baltimore, Nauczyciel
immerses us in a flow of images and music from
the community of ‘voguers’ in Baltimore. Outside
the video box, a long travelling shot through the
daytime city symbolically carries spectators
across its fabric and into the meat of the subject.
‘I came looking for Omar,’ 2 says the artist, ‘and I
met the voguers – the fireflies that Pier Paolo
Pasolini looked for in the suburbs of Naples. The
black swans of the ghettos.’ He spent several
months with these groups marginalised by their
colour (black), status (poor) and sexuality (gay,
transgender) in order to capture the
quintessence of the forms of resistance and
affirmation that they had developed. iPhone in
hand, he filmed them making up, dressing and
wandering the city, and also their balls, which are
underground meetings where the voguers,
organised into ‘houses’, 3 compete to do the best
hands, catwalks, duckwalks, spins and dips, and
floors. The variety of categories gives everyone a
chance to shine. The trophies are materially
insignificant but symbolically charged. It’s all
about glamour and legend. The point of the balls
is to improvise, to create a personality for
oneself: to be real.
Voguing came into being in Black and
Latin quarters such as Harlem in the late 1960s.
Appropriating the poses of models (mainly white
women) on the cover of Vogue, it laid claim to
cultural signs and invented strategies for
survival. The movement entered the mainstream
in the late 1980s when Malcolm McLaren put out
his single Deep In Vogue and Madonna, voiding it
of its social content, released her clip Vogue.
Jennie Livingston’s documentary Paris Is Burning
(1991) remains a key reference here.
Frédéric Nauczyciel once again
manages to enter an ‘intimate part of the real’, a
mix of reality, autobiography and fiction, by
means of precise editing, dynamic cuts, sharp
dialogue and a circulation of images that
correlates to the system developed by voguing.
The fireflies of Baltimore shine only
when they fly . . .
Julien Blanpied
1–
From the Centre d’Art
et de Photographie in Lectoure.
2–
Omar Devon Little, a colourful character
in the TV drama series The Wire, a Black,
gay drug pusher, has a strict moral code
and never deviates from his rules.
He never threatens people who are
not involved in the ‘game.’
3–
The ‘houses’ (also called ‘drag houses’
or ‘drag families’) are groups made up
mainly of Afro-American or Latino
homosexual or trans-gender men,
brought together under the authority
(respect) of a ‘house mother’ or ‘father.’
They are a kind of adoptive family,
a substitute for the crisis-afflicted
biological family. The names of the
houses often refer to fashion
(House of Chanel, Milan, Revlon,
Balenciaga, formerly Miyake Mugler).
conversation
with
frédéric nauczyciel
How does the work you are exhibiting at the
MAC/VAL relate to the rest of your oeuvre?
The Fire Flies 1 are flamboyant homosexuals and
transsexuals from the black ghettos of Baltimore
who perform their identity at night-time balls.
Beyond the question of community, it’s about
individuals who develop strategies – a poetics
– of survival, reminiscent of Pasolini’s fireflies in
the suburbs of Naples and the sensuality of black
Americans as described by James Baldwin (The
Fire Next Time).
When I travelled to Baltimore 2 I wasn’t
thinking of doing a project on such a scale, or
developing an interest in voguing. I was going to
follow in the tracks of Omar, the man who
popularised ‘banjee realness’, this posture of
pride adopted by homosexual men as a way of
resisting the dominant culture, a kind of
deliberate dissimulation designed to confound
expectations. Baltimore is a bit like how central
Paris would be like if it were made up of the
deprived areas found in its suburbs.
The work at the MAC/VAL, The Fire Flies,
is like the ‘making of’ of an ongoing bigger
project. Consisting of a video installation and
large-format photos, it juxtaposes, on the outside
ENGLISH texts
of a box, what appears to be a monotonous drive
through Baltimore (La Traversée, looped, 45’)
with, on the inside, an immersion in the
subcultures that are not very visible on the
surface (The Fire Flies, looped, 58’). A hidden
door invites visitors to enter, to ‘cross over’. On
three of the inner walls almost unedited
sequences play out, in vertical or horizontal
format, punctuated by music and sounds, with
still moments, accelerations, longer sequences,
and white passages that allow the acoustic
ambiences to connect with the imaginary. The
fragmentation of the editing conveys in a
deliberately incomplete way a reality that cannot
be grasped completely and defies sight in its
quick transitions from one wall to another. The
absence of subtitles invites us to focus on this
highly codified bodily language, to experience it
rather than understand it. The video loop
presents a progression from raw documents to
more formal sequences, from the emphatic
sounds of the balls to Baroque music, a
progression that parallels that of the creative
work itself. Four photos from the Vogue!
Baltimore series on two external walls of the box
deconstruct the movements of voguing and
indicate that the piece is a ‘documentary
staging’.
I really go deep here into my way of
doing things: deciding nothing in advance and
making nothing an obligation. I realised that I did
not have to restrict myself to photography: I was
open to anything that could convey the
experience and bring into play the body, from
video to dance. It was also the first time that I
had considered a collective venture. This work
came out of the desire to develop a relationship
over time. I didn’t foresee all the ramifications.
For me, the work encapsulates my love
of science fiction – Abyss, Minority Report, the
Star Wars hologram coming out of D2R2 – and
also Les Enfants du Paradis and the magic
lantern in Coppola’s Dracula. I also recognise my
first heroes, Bourvil in Passe Muraille, Fred
Astaire and Gene Kelly. As a child and then a
teenager in a new, American-style suburb, I used
to listen to soul music on the radio, without
understanding the political meaning of the
words.
This piece has allowed me to revisit my
own history, which, in a way, was obscured by the
importance that the memory of Auschwitz took
on in my family.
It will also redefine my way of producing
art and of raising money. Up to now I have
resisted sharing anything of the creative process
with a gallery or a producer. I had to first
understand all the issues connected with my
work.
You said you went looking for Omar (an
emblematic character from the American
series The Wire) in Baltimore. Who did you
find in the end?
Omar is a modern icon who speaks to us all
because he is himself and invents his own
geography. I didn’t initially think I would work
with the voguers, but I realised that Omar, with
his ‘banjee realness’, is a more recent facet of
voguing culture.
This capacity for improvisation that
black Americans have, this way of constantly
reinventing themselves, is magnified in the balls.
In fact, the voguers of Baltimore can all be Omar,
depending on the situation or time of day.
To what extent does your work explore the
connections between the individual and the
community?
I went to Baltimore to write a documentary
fiction in the style of The Wire, to devise
photographs that would approach the reality of
242
243
ENGLISH texts
Baltimore from Omar’s viewpoint. Before making
the episodes of that photographic series, in
which they would create the characters in their
own life, I had to understand what the issues
were for the community of voguers.
I met a community, individuals, friends
and a family. I chose a number of them for my
work. I moved them into a photography studio, a
dance studio. I was thus making back and forth
movements between their territory and mine. I
recorded moments of life, of intimacy, the balls,
took posed and documentary shots. The
sequence shot on the parking lot, while waiting
for a ball that, most unusually, was being held
outside, shows a lot of the people who appear in
other sequences of the film.
I started working with Marquis, Kory
and David Revlon – and, by extension, with all the
members of the House of Revlon. I brought in
voguers from other houses whose style I liked. I
involved other figures, such as DDM, an openly
gay rapper, Shawnna Alexander, a burlesque drag
queen from Baltimore, and Francesca from New
York.
I thus isolated individuals from the
groups, giving each one a singular place. Voguing
is made up of that same duality, the singular in
the multitude. It’s a question of being unique
within the community. I also left room for more
personal scenes, for aural and visual jokes that
were sent to me, like the summer hit, Chouchou,
or the ‘Talking Carl’, asking me to go back to
Paris!
This exploration of individual destiny
within a group is a way of getting as close to
reality as possible. The intimate introduces an
element of identification into the work that
challenges observation and involves the
beholder. That’s how the social fable operates.
By immersing yourself in a group or
community, with your iPhone, wasn’t your
artistic position a bit like that of a modern
anthropologist? What role does the Other
play in the creation of your works?
The iPhone was an obvious choice for capturing
moments. It was passed around, was put on the
ground when photos were taken. I received films
taken by others, and suggested that others film
themselves in my absence. The moment of
rupture that Francesca sent me at the same time
as to its addressee – a mad, funny, moving
moment that raises all the questions about a
post-colonialism of gender – made me want to
make this film.
In fact, it wasn’t made only with an
iPhone, but above all with all the iPhone apps. I
used Facebook to contact people, to post
images, collect images and statuses. I put
everything through my iPhone, refilmed Marie
Losier’s film, did a travelling shot with music by
Emanuel Xavier in the car. This tool’s flexibility
allowed me to simplify the editing and mixing of
the film. The verticality of the films introduced an
unconventional format, which made for a
fragmented film that would reflect the way the
bodies navigated space.
Above all, this commonplace device
allowed me to see things spontaneously, with a
simple rule: not to adopt the position of an
observer, let alone that of an anthropologist, but
rather to revel in pleasure, in play.
It wasn’t long before my ‘characters’
played the game and made it their own. Take, for
example, that sequence when, while improvising
on a Bach concerto in the studio, Marquis sneaks
a playful look at the camera.
The impression of immersion is
therefore partly an illusion.
After the study done in the studio with
Kory, before going and recreating the pose in the
city, in his quarter, in costume, I spoke to him
about Degas’s Dancer. It was on display at the
Baltimore museum at the time. The story of this
young girl whose face is that of a prostitute
appealed to him, and he appropriated the
character.
The sequence in which Francesca takes
her make-up off was something she decided. It
was very simply staged, with an iPhone stuck to
the mirror.
Ultimately, what interests me is the way
the Other takes over my propositions.
What role does politics play?
Baltimore is a city from which all resistance
seems to have disappeared because power itself
has abandoned the city. It is difficult to sustain a
project there and to get people involved in the
long-term. By going back and forth between their
world and mine, we tried to break down the
symbolic frontier of the ghetto and to make
another place possible.
That’s how classical music came into it.
We took photos in the street and I had classical
music on in the car to confuse the police, if
necessary. They liked Bach. We tried it out in a
studio, with three of us, then thirty. I had the
intuition that the codes of Baroque dance could
resonate with the codes of voguing, that Bach’s
music could highlight the femininity and
elegance of ‘vogue fem’.3 The intensity of Bach’s
compositions and their mathematical rigour
could sustain them over time, when they ‘give
their life’ in the extremely brief confrontations.
I thus proposed that they push back the
limits in order to amplify the way in which
voguing teaches one how to transcend life’s
vicissitudes, to reinvent oneself, to perform with
‘fierceness’ so as to one day become ‘legendary’,
freed from the Other’s gaze.
Legendary* was also the title I gave to
the workshop organised at the MAC/VAL, which
was conceived as a laboratory, with Marquis,
David and Kory Revlon and young interns from
the Paris region, half of whom already knew
about voguing. I wanted to displace the different
sides’ practices, to put the voguers in contact
with French Baroque and contemporary dance,
and to initiate the others into the fundamentals
of voguing.
I find this hybridising of cultures
interesting. It corresponds to the way in which
Baltimore voguing, which doesn’t have the same
heritage as that of the leading New Yorker
figures, continues to reinvent itself, and draw on
all kinds of influences.
The public re-creation combined
voguing codes and those of Baroque dance with
elements excerpted from the reality of
Baltimore. In an art venue, the reproduction of
the ‘Baltimore Lean’, that, ‘dance of the druggies’
on street corners who bend but never fall,
summoned up other images – that of the
choreographer Andy Degroat, my mentor, with
his tired body, disguised as a crazy black
momma street person, dragging herself around
amidst these young bodies enhanced by high
heels, holding a rose. The image speaks of
decadence, but implicitly exacerbates the
possible presence of elegance, of a poetics of
survival.
1–
The title can be read as
a reference to the luminous insect,
but also to fire that flies.
2–
Hors les Murs-Institut Français’ programme.
3–
Idioms used by the voguing community.
Numerous fluxes run through our lives and
inundate our everyday existences. Faced with a
sea of images and information, we are lucky
indeed if don’t get swept away and know where
we stand. Here, the artist creates a situation, a
framework, to confront the disturbing evidence.
The piece Et maintenant: 06 21 58 43
67 includes visitors in its creative process by
inviting them to take their hands out of their
pockets and tap out a text message. With this
multiform installation (which spreads over the
museum tickets, the banner outside and the wall
leading to the entrance hall), Marylène Negro
buttonholes the inquisitive and entrusts them
with the responsibility of elaborating part of the
work. Every year, thousands of billions of text
messages are sent around the world, an
astronomical figure. In this interactive work, the
vertiginously great is invited to participate: the
texts that are sent remain anonymous, they are
transcribed in real time on a screen and follow
each other without being archived. Anything can
happen, no censorship constrains freedom of
expression. To answer this call is so take a stance
and make a choice, to signal one’s life, one’s
existence. As with her invitation at the Musée
d’Art Contemporain in Strasbourg in 2004, titled
Viens (Come), demand is great. We don’t know
what will happen, what will manifest itself and
how. The work is multi-handed: the author is no
longer a solitary demiurge, the authorial figure is
in crisis. The texting and the texts are an integral
part of the work. This delegating confirms the
importance of the beholder in the creative
process.
The film Daymondes offers us a journey
around the world in 80 minutes. By spending four
months filming images in the daily newspaper Le
Monde, Marylène Negro condenses Jules Verne’s
feat and shows a subjective horizon of current
reality in late 2011 and early 2012. For three
months or more, she filmed the images,
manipulated them so that we have time to look
at them, to appropriate them, to savour them. By
seeking to define her position in relation to them,
the artist takes an interest in their materiality;
the close-ups that she initiates immerse us
physically in journalistic photographs, which are
at once documentary and elegant. The
soundtrack of the film Daymondes begins and
ends with an orchestra tuning up. The wind,
unpredictably alternating between blowing and
still, slips in between these two instrumental
compositions and becomes our companion for
this great journey through the world. Guided by
her instinct, Negro did not discriminate in what
she collected: political facts rub shoulders with
cultural and sporting events and adverts. She
offers complete decontextualisation: we do not
always recognise what we see and the text is only
very rarely visible. The glut of images in which we
live from day to day – made banal by the
digitalisation of imagery – leads to a certain loss
of attention. By recycling previously produced
images, without adding a single one, Negro
resists, refuses the logic of productivism and is
careful not to amplify the phenomenon of
over-representation. She simply puts her finger
on something, makes our eyes alight
somewhere.
Negro’s art reaches out to the Other. It
gives ‘people material for spending time with
themselves’, for asking questions and taking a
stance. Between allocentrism and collusion, the
artist is constantly addressing the passer-by and
inviting them to take hold of a situation. In
consulting others, she is probing herself. The
Other becomes a perfect mirror, an extension of
the self.
Charlie Godin
marylène negro
ENGLISH texts
conversation
with
marylène negro
To what extent does your work explore the
connections between the individual and the
community?
Come 06 76 45 37 56 (Strasbourg, 2004) — And
you: a text on 06 33 65 00 37 (Le Mans, 2004)
— A sign from you on 05 49 27 95 00 (Melle,
2003) — A sign from you on 01 47 97 36 38
(Chamarande, 2002) — Say something Call 02
47 66 92 13 (Tours, 1999) — Willst Du mir ein
Foto geben? [Do you want to give me a photo?]
(Warth, Switzerland, 2002) — Give me a photo of
yourself (Rennes, 1997, and Dudelange,
Luxembourg, 2000) — [I appear/Come as you
are/Neither Seen nor Heard] (Tokyo, 2003) —
The Gift (Calgary, Canada, 1998) — Express
yourself ‘Neither Seen nor Heard’ A film starring
you (Galway, Ireland, 1998) — Come and give an
image of yourself Shoot of ‘Ni vu-Ni connu’ A film
with you (Poitiers, 1997) — Ruimte 126 m2
Direct aan de straat Centrum Amsterdam
Warmoesstraat 139 TE HUUR OOK per dag Tel.
020-6381958 [126 sq m space. Giving onto the
street. Central Amsterdam. Warmoesstraat 139.
FOR RENT. Also by day. Tel . . .] (Amsterdam,
1993) — n Black thoughts n Blue thoughts n Red
thoughts n Yellow ideas (Nancy, 1994) — n A
very good chance n Quite a good chance n Not
much chance n No chance at all (Poitiers, 1993)
—
(since 1994: Poitiers, Limerick
(Ireland), Paris, Milan, Châteaugiron, Saignon,
Vassivière, Luxembourg) — A photo of you
(Milan, 1997) — Fax a house Please fax us a
house at our fax/phone number: +32 (03) 238
78 83 (Antwerp, 1993) — Rufen Sie die
Telefonnummer 069-44 90 70 an. Es ertönt der
Signalton des Anrufbeantworters. Sprechen Sie
ohne Namensangabe lediglich der vier folgenden
Ausdrücke auf das Band: n Oft n Von Zeit zu Zeit n
Selten n Niemals [Call . . . After the answering
tone, anonymously state one of the following four
expressions: Often / From time to time /
Sometimes / Never] (Frankfurt, 1993) — Choose
a formula and then call 40 21 68 04, preceded
by 16-1 if you are calling from outside the
capital. On the answering machine, anonymously
and without saying anything else, state the
expression you have chosen from: n A little n A
lot n Passionately n Madly n Not at all (Paris,
1992) — H, HH, HHH, HHHH (New York,
1992) — We are the people (Sète, 1993–Paris,
1997) — In Out (Jerusalem, 1992) — Choose a
formula and then call 40 21 68 04, preceded by
16-1 if you are calling from outside the capital.
On the answering machine, anonymously and
without saying anything else, state the
expression you have chosen from: n Very
frightened n Quite frightened n Not very
frightened n Not frightened at all (Paris, 1992).
Invitations, challenges, solicitations,
passwords . . . anything can happen when you
make a public appeal. The receiver decides.
Everyone has their own idea. Choosing to literally
attach words to things, through the play of
reversals and inversions between the personal
and the public, between the inside and the
outside, each being made hybrid and porous.
Inscribing oneself in the collective landscape,
seeing it as a terrain for conquest, drawing
attention to transient tools, calling into question
language norms. Allowing people to find their
own mode of identification. This back and forth
between private and public spheres is an
attempt to amplify the sphere of art in order to
make visible moments or figures of the social
bond brought together in an illusory community.
How do the pieces you are exhibiting at the