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visible/invisible #4 : cine concert

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« The story of an object is always a personal story, and often a love story »
François Vigouroux

This cine concert is the last event in a socially engaged project we have been leading since autumn 2022. During these months, we have met many different residents of Dunkirk, asking each one of them to bring a photograph or an object which was important to them, and to tell us its story. This has led to a series of exhibitions and readings.

The cine concert regroups some of these stories in a performance set to electro-acoustic music. The individual experiences intersect with amateur films set in Dunkirk, from the collection Archipop and the Centre de la Mémoire Urbaine d’Agglomération (Centre of regional urban memory), to create a portrait of a town and its inhabitants over the years.

Performed by : Sylvie Caron, Martine Depesker, Viviane Gehin, Odile Schapmann, Fabienne Verburght, Lilou Vergult, Claudine Galloo.
On video : Brigitte Arie, Luka Capron, Christine Carlier, Orlane Darras, Dominique Demazeux, Hugues Duquenoy, Anna Sara Koterba, Valérie Jacob, Pascal Machu, Pascal Pasquier, Jessica Waeles, Brigitte Willaert, Aida Zerroug.
Guitarists : Benoit Drapier, Laurent Maltry, Serge Riraine, Alain Westeel.
Partners : Maison de quartier Pasteur, FAM le relais des Moëres, SAA Teteghem, La BiB, Collège Guilleminot, Association Nous Aussi, Association les Littoerales.
A Ciel 56 project, with the Château Coquelle, Archipop, le Centre de la Mémoire Urbaine d’Agglomération and the cinema Studio 43.

watch an excerpt

photos des archives personnelles des participants, et photos des collections LEFOL, POULEYN, CCAD, PESCIALLO. © Archipop 2022

Visible/invisible #3 : musical posters

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The third part of the project was a series of 12 posters with QR codes, which were shown in the park surrounding the Château Coquelle, and on a water tower in the centre of Dunkirk. The exhibitions were put up with the help of the participants.

A pebble, a horse shoe, a little angel found in the trenches during WW1, a family wedding : each image or object has its own story. The stories were set to music and soundscapes composed by Eric Sterenfeld. By scanning the QR code, the audience could hear this story as they contemplated the image. 12 echo chambers.

Participants : Christine, Martine, Sylvie, Viviane, Stan, Lilou, Camille L., Pascal, Fabienne, Clementine, Hugues et Camille L.B.

Music : Eric Sterenfeld / Photos : Kate France

Thanks to the team of the Château Coquelle.

listen to the 12 stories set to music
read the article in la Voix du Nord
watch the film of the water tower

visible/invisible #2 : recital

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The second episode of the project took place in August 2022, as part of the summer university organised by the association Les Littoraeles at the LAAC (Lieu D’Art et d’Action Contemporain) Dunkirk. The theme for the session was “memories and traces”.

In the morning, there were conferences on amateur archives including a showing of a film of a huge tanker being launched from Dunkirk in the 1950s.

In the afternoons 27 people, each of whom had bought their photo or object, participated in a series of workshops culminating in a recital of texts set to electroacoustic music.

visible/invisible #1: exhibition

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Exhibition and reading in Dunkirk Central Library

We worked with eighty 14 and 15 year old students and three staff members of Guilleminot secondary school, from February to June 2022.

Each student bought in a photograph or an object that was important to them , and showed it to their classmates. Talking about personal issues at school was a very new experience, and there were some emotional moments and surprises.

The project continued with writing workshops, recording and photography over the next few months, in collaboration with the teachers and with three students from Dunkirk Art School.

The exhibition at Dunkirk’s central library, the BiB, showed the texts, photographs, and some of the objects themselves in a display case. Two videos weaved together images from the recorded texts and sound. For the opening, several students read out their texts accompanied by live music .

visible/invisible

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Visible/Invisible is a new socially engaged project led by Ciel 56 in partnership with le Chateau Coquelle, a cultural centre in Dunkirk which specialises in photography and story telling.

We will be working with a large cross section of people and institutions, to create a series of events including a ciné-concert and indoor and outdoor exhibitions in 2022.

The starting point is the personal archive – photo, film or object – and the stories which surround it.

 

 

Our metamorphoses

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As part of our residency in Calais in the middle of the Covid pandemic, we decided to collaborate with the artist Bérengère Vallet on a series of workshops around the theme of transformation and metamorphosis. We worked with primary and secondary schools, including some young unaccompanied exiles, a kindergarten, and two socio-medical centres. Each group approached the idea of transformation with a different artistic process : disguises and masks, portraits that become transformed, traces that disappear…

Despite lockdown lots of things happened, and this video is the trace of the different “artistic gestures” that were created. We were due to hold a projection in the cinema in Calais, a moment when the different participants could meet and exchange, however the sanitary crisis prevented this happening, so we decided to make the video public.
with : FAM Arc-en-Ciel
Collège République
Ecole maternelle Archimède
IME le Lutin des Bleuets
Collège Jean Jaures
Ecole Elémentaire Parmentier Bachelet

music : Eric Sterenfeld
visual artist : Berengère Vallet
video : Kate France

Quarantine

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Quarantined in Paris with a broken wrist and no equipment, I started making little films with my left hand and my telephone. In the strange world of shutdown, stop motion films allowed me to stop and start time as I wished, inside miniature worlds.

The films were included in the collection DAD Artists at Home, a collection of artworks made during the lockdown, organised by Dover Arts Development and curated by Louisa Love

more about DAD Artists at Home

Calais residency

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From September 28th 2020, we will be taking up our residency in Calais, interrupted by the sanitary situation in spring 2020.

For two months, we will be working with the artist Berengère Vallet on a series of different artistic gestures around the theme of metamorphosis.

Sirens

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Il vous faudra bien passer près des sirènes

(You will have to pass the Sirens)

This film was made during a recent  Clea residency, (Contrat Local d’Education Artistique) in Lens-Liévin, in the heart of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin

The Louvre-Lens wanted to initiate a workshop with asylum seekers currently housed in Liévin, and they wanted this workshop to connect with their Homer exhibition which is up until autumn. At the same time, the cultural centre of Avion was interested in creating a project which would explore different generations of people who have immigrated to the region – whether recently or years ago. The mining industry, for example,  recruited people from Italy, Poland, Algeria or Morocco at various periods.

I decided to link the two structures in a voice/vidéo project, and to take as our starting point the episode of the Sirens in book XII of the Odyssey.

In the Odyssey (book XII), Circe says to Ulysses: “You will have to pass the Sirens first. They charm all mortals who come near to them… but lost is he who listens to their song. Pass by without stopping…”  The Sirens’ song is beautiful, haunting, deadly … and in a language no-one understands. The idea of using voices and languages, the link with travelling – or passing by – seemed to resonate with the participants.

I asked the 11 participants to each choose a song, a story or a poem in their mother tongue. I then recorded them speaking or singing,  and together we tried to imagine what images could accompany their voice. Certains themes emerged through their diversity : home and lack of home, childhood memories, anger, hope…

A film by Kate France

partners:  the Louvre-Lens, the CADA (Centre d’Accueil des Demandeurs d’Asile) and the CAO (Centre d’Accueil et d’Orientation) and the Jean Ferrat Cultural Centre, Avion.

with : Fatima Aatar, Nada Abbas, Raad Abbas, Dany Blin, Zineb Bouziane, Junior, Jacques Lempicki, Babylas Malonga, Mimi, Giovanni et Antionette Palmieri, Nshteyman Suleman

Music : Gavin Bryars, Bana C4, Eric Sterenfeld and traditional songs
Texts : Nizar Qabbani, Warsan Shire, Marisha Data, and the participants

Thankyou to Loraine Vilain for the engraving workshop, Matthieu Morseau and Giordano Melilli for organising, Joelle Dagher and Magdalena Matthieu for helping with translations.

Projections:

May 25 2019 at the auditorium of the Louvre-Lens, as part of the Amnesty International weekend “Migrations”

June 20 2019, cinéma le Familia, Avion

link to film