Clea residency
Ciel 56 were selected for a four month CLEA residency in the Lens-Lievin district in the north of France. Together with four other collectives, we worked with people from schools, art centres, theatres, retirement homes, social centres, mediatheques on a series of collective creative gestures around the theme “territory and movement”.
Some images : walks, memory, family photos, protest, masks
I am writing to you from a faraway land
video with La Ferme du Vinatier
I am writing to you from a faraway land was a video project led by Kate France and Sylvie Reteuna with the patients and staff of the hospital Le Vinatier in Lyon between September and December 2017.
The participants were asked to create a letter addressed to someone – alive or dead, real or fictionnal. The letter could be written, drawn, danced or spoken. Then, together, we tried to imagine how this letter could be translated into a filmed event.
The film was entirely shot in the hospital grounds : Winter skies, landscaped parks, colonnades, and endless building work frame the messages. “Everything trembles here”, “I’m thinking about you,”
La Ferme du Vinatier is a cultural centre inside the psychiatric hospital Le Vinatier. It is based in old farm buildings which have been transformed to contain exhibition and performance spaces. This innovative establishment acts as an interface between culture and heath issues, and proposes creative projects, courses and workshops as well as a yearlong programmation for different publics.
First shown at La Ferme du Vinatier: 20th December, 21st December 2017 as part of the festival Noël au Balcon.
Festival psy (Lorquin), organised by the Centre National de l’Audiovisuel en Santé Mentale (CSASM) projection 6th June 2018.
Inecat Art et Thérapie 30th september 2018
“Journées Cinéma et Psychiatrie” Thursday 6th December 2018, Lyon
My Childhood
a film by Bill Douglas (1972)
cine-concert by Eric Sterenfeld and Kate France
first performance 21st March 2017, Magic Cinéma, Bobigny
“Surely it is imagery that is the language of cinema, a brand new language that almost a hundred years after its discovery is still to be properly learnt. The silent cinema started to learn it…Sometimes I fear it may be a lost language” Bill Douglas
My Childhood (1972), My Ain Folk (1973) and My Way Home (1978) provide a painfully intense picture of a harsh upbringing marked by poverty, isolation and the complex family background of a boy who only gradually discovers that his father is the man who lives down the road and that his mother is in an asylum. All three films were closely modelled on the director’s own experiences and memories. They were largely filmed in Newcraighall, the mining village on the outskirts of Edinburgh where Bill Douglas was born on 17th April 1934 and where he spent his childhood.
“The Bill Douglas trilogy is not a silent film. In the three films, we are presented with precise moments of memory, in a series of still images which dilute time; the poetry of the images stands as a contrast to the harsh life described in the films. Sound and dialogue are rarely used, and serve to emphasize silence …The atmosphere of these images has inspired me to create a set of sounds to accompany the film, combining sounds from urban and industrial life, from nature, electro-acoustic layers reflecting the grey/black of the mine, and acoustic instruments. The progression of the sound will mirror that of the trilogy, moving from darkness to light.” Eric Sterenfeld
Produced by the Magic Cinéma Bobigny, with additional funding from the SACEM
Starling
Flying Birds. Excellent birds. Watch them fly. There they go. / Falling Snow. Excellent snow. Watch it fall. Here it comes. / Long words. Excellent words. I can hear them now. This is the picture (Laurie Anderson)
Starling is a text, music and video piece about migration, music and language.
Starlings are migratory birds who are well known for their spectacular mumurations. they are also accomplished imitators, kept as pets since long ago for their capacity to copy human speech, other birds songs and even the sounds of machinery. A starling will mix its own songs and the sounds surrounding it, with slight variations, to weave a long soliloquy which is never exactly the same twice.
We wish to explore the links between migration, language and music, in relation to the larger pattern… We have chosen the starling as a symbol of the theme of migration, a theme which is so omnipresent and important at the moment that it imposes itself a fortiori. Like starlings, we want to weave words, sounds and music to compose a soliloquy made up of many voices, changing, adaptable and free.
To make a piece which, like a bird’s song, is never exactly the same.
For this project, we are collaborating with the artist Annick Sterkendreis, who in her series of photos Posture, Imposture approches the theme of migration through metaphor. When she realised that migrating people and birds tend to gather at the same coastal towns, she embarked on a voyage of two years with a simple bird mask…
texts and video : Kate France / music : Eric Sterenfeld / photographs : Annick Sterkendries / performed by : Kate France and Eric Sterenfeld
Coproduction : festival Récits sans Frontières organised by le Château Coquelle awith the support of the Communauté Urbaine de Dunkerque. Residencies : Anis Gras, le lieu de l’autre, Arcueil, le LoKal, Saint Denis, la maison des Métallos, le Bateau Feu, scène Nationale de Dunkerque.
Starling was first shown in November 2017 at Armbouts Cappel and Chateau Coquelle, Dunkirk, and in March 2018 at Cap Etoile, Montreuil
photo © Annick Sterkendries
La forêt dans la ville (the forest in the town)
community project
La forêt dans la ville (the forest in the town)
“Walk straight ahead / Listen to no one / Trust not in the walls or doorways / For they will mislead / And close behind you / As you walk through / The forest, not knowing / Where you’ve come from / Or where you’re going … / If anywhere at all.” Renée Paule
Theatre and video community project led by Kate France with the Centre Sociale Georges Brassens and the CCAS de Bondy. A project with La Compagnie (direction Jean-Michel Rabeux and Clara Rousseau)
In fairy stories, the dark forest is a place to be lost or saved, a place of unknown dangers and unexpected encounters, where nothing is quite what it seems. The city too can be seen as a forest, full of dangers and strange meetings, where a miracle can be just round the corner.
In the Middle Ages, the forest of Bondy stretched over half of the territory of the Seine Saint Denis region. Now, there are only a few traces left; The town has swallowed up the forest, but the forest still has a strong imaginary imprint on the people living in Bondy.
This project involved two groups of inhabitants: retired people who have lived in Bondy all their lives, and immigrants who are currently learning French – although some of them have lived in Bondy for years.
We explored the links between our perception of the forest and the town, drawing on poems, songs, stories and the participants’ own experiences. The story of Red Riding Hood quickly became a narrative thread. We went out in disguise to the streets of Bondy, and to the preserved parts of the forest, and soon, like Little Red Riding Hood we strayed from the path…
The participants: Sonia Amadieu, Kili Aroumougame, Charlotte Causse, Bertine Djouan, Khadidja Jaffri, Monique Lacherez, Marie Marc, Florence Podin, Georges Podin, Françoise Seignez, Mireille Usayisenga
texts : Claudine Galea, Kate France, chanson du peuple Sioux / music : Balfa Brothers, Ceux qui marchent debout, Olivier Messiaen, Richard Wagner
Project with la Compagnie, direction Jean-Michel Rabeux and Clara Rousseau / administration and public relations : Fanny Delalandre and Anne Gaëlle Drouot / accountant: Philippe Dubois / Financial partners : DRAC Île-de-France (appel à projet Culture et lien social), ville de Bondy dans le cadre du dispositif FIA, Service de la vie associative de Bondy et Centre social Georges Brassens.
Public presentation at Bondy Town Hall, 7th February 2017
Weathertime Dunkirk
a day of workshops
Saturday 28th may 2016 from 10h to 23h. Fructose, Hangar 4, IV. Route du Quai Freycinet 3, Môle 1, Dunkerque.
As a follow up to the project Le Temps qu’il fait, which took place in Dunkirk all through 2015, we proposed a day of international workshops (dance, music, painting, film) on the theme of “le temps” which in French has two meanings: weather and time. These workshops were open to artists, residents, amateurs, professionals, of all ages from both sides of the Channel.
After the workshops we spent time together in a collective moment, and then watched the film Weathertime, ( produced by Dover Arts Development with participants from England, France and Belgium.) with improvised musical accompaniment from Paul Cheneour and Eric Sterenfeld.
The evening ended with a meal provided by local association de Troquet en Troquet and dancing.
With the artists: Phoebe Dingwall (painting), Kate France (video), Éric Sterenfeld (music), Erika Zueneli (dance). Catering : de Troquet en Troquet
Proposed by Kate France and Sylvie Reteuna in partnership with la Maison de Quartier La Timonerie and DAD-Dover Arts Development. With support from la Communauté Urbaine de Dunkerque and la Ville de Dunkerque.
Le temps qu’il fait, le temps qui passe
Installation for the festival “Récits sans Frontières”
A space where words become images and images become stories…
This project ran parallel to le temps qu’il fait recital/concert
With the same notebooks as a starting point, we created an installation in which the photos taken in the workshops led by Château Coquelle and a reading of a year’s entries in the diary were put together. We decided to reconstitute a “loge de concierge” with a bed, shelves of knick knacks, a table with coffee cups… The photos were tucked all over the room, in the side of the mirror, in boxes on the table, and the sound of the diary ran continuously.
The installation also included the avant première of the film Weathertime, produced by Dover Arts Development for Culture Kent.
“Weathertime brings together works by 30 selected artists from England, France and Belgium, who created a visual diary of the weather across the ‘maritory’ of the Straits of Dover last September. Each artist produced a work of art in response to the weather on a particular day in September 2015. These responses – made in a range of media from painting to print to text – have been woven together to make a fascinating 30-minute film, with a soundtrack from musicians Paul Cheneour, Francois Le Roux and Marjorie Van Halteren mixed by Marcus Bishop.” DAD
Coproduction : festival Récits sans Frontières organised by le Château Coquelle and supported by de la Communauté Urbaine de Dunkerque
Exhibition from 15th January to au 5th March 2016, Château Coquelle, Dunkerque
Anrafa reads les Paroles du Sage
Le temps qu’il fait
recital/concert
« If the future and the past exist, I would like to know where they are… “ (Saint Augustin)
At the origin and heart of this project are the diaries of Madeleine, the “concierge” of the building where Sylvie Reteuna lived for many years. Each day she would note down the weather in great detail, including the temperature, but also national and world events (“start of Ramadan”, speech by Mitterand”), and domestic details (“Defrosted the fridge”, “lunch with Christian”). There were the Sundays when “I stayed at home” and a recurrent and enigmatic phrase “My wardrobe cracked”
Taking the diaries as a starting point, we decided to put into place a community project in Dunkirk on the theme of “le temps”, which in French means both weather and time. Working with different structures – three social centres, a library, a secondary school, an arts centre, an association run by mentally challenged people and the conservatoire of Dunkirk – we assembled a group of participants, establishing a programme of workshops all through 2015. There were writing workshops at the library, photo workshops with the Chateau Coquelle and theatre workshops in the social centres. We worked closely with the composer Stéphane Taniel, and at the end of the year presented a recital/concert where the participants were joined by a string quartet and a pianist.
Le Temps qu’il fait gave birth to other projects. We worked with a class of 13 year olds over 6 months to make a performance Calme je suis comme le temps gris which included writing, sound and photos. We presented an installation of photos and texts at the Chateau Coquelle Arts Centre le temps qu’il fait, le temps qui passe. And we met Joanna Jones and Clare Smith of Dover Arts Development, with whom we invented an international version Weathertime, which culminated in a collective film and a day of pluridisciplinary workshops in the artist’s space Fructose, on the docks of Dunkirk.
Devised by : Kate France (Ciel 56) and Sylvie Reteuna (La Sibylle) / Composer : Stéphane Taniel / Text research : Sylvie Reteuna / Video : Kate France
Performed by : Christelle Andries, Leo Andries, Jonathan Borowski, Noella Cattiau, Joelle David, Christiane Diana, Thérèse Galliot, Kamel Kerboua, Anne Sara Koterba, Anrafa Mohammed ali, Isabelle Vanbelle et Fabrice Vannobel
Musicians : Emmanuelle Maggesi : piano / Frédéric Daudin-Clavaud : violin / François Delannoy : violin / Max Dupuis : viola / Véronique Rousselle : cello
Conducted by : Kate France
Participation, research : Pauline Beys, Kevin Bignolas, Jean-Luc Duval, Viviane Gehin, Marie-Jo Gobert, Christophe Gruwez, Bertrand Heroguer, Marie Annick Lapert, David Lepoutre, Véronique Malhomme, Andréa Manceau, Thierry Robic, Benoit Rubben, Anne Ryckeboer, Edith Van Hove
Administration : Christine Tournecuillert – Conduite Accompagnée
Production : La Sibylle / Partners : les Maisons de quartier La Timonerie, Soubise et Ile Jeanty, Le Château Coquelle, le Réseau des bibliothèques de Dunkerque, le Collège Guilleminot, l’Association Nous Aussi, Conservatoire de Musique et d’Art Dramatique de Dunkerque / Financial support from : l’ADUGES, la Ville de Dunkerque, le Conseil départemental du Nord et la Communauté Urbaine de Dunkerque / Thanks to Bateau Feu – Scène Nationale de Dunkerque.
Le temps qu’il fait recital/concert was presented on the 15th December 2015 at the Auditorium Bizet, Dunkerque.
Calme je suis comme le temps gris : workshop from December 2014 to June 2015 with a class of 28 pupils from collège Guilleminot and the active participation of Séveriner Deraphaélis, Cathy Sellam et Bernadette Boérez.
A performance and exhibition of photos were presented at the school on the 18th June 2015. Click to hear the soundtrack of phrases written by the pupils. Sound: Eric Sterenfeld.
Listen to poems written and recited by the students, with music by Eric Sterenfeld:
Répétitions
intergenerational project
“What is difficult to repeat? The truth.” Laurys
The project Répétitions brought together a class of fourteen year olds with learning challenges and a group of senior citizens from the Paris suburb Bobigny over two years.
Of course “Répétitions” is a play on words (in French, répétition means rehearsal.) In the theatre we spend a lot of time repeating things. In real life as well. The idea of this project was to look at how people of different ages perceive repetition, whether in representation or personal experience. The participants, who had for the most part never been on stage before, came to weekly workshops over two years. They started in two separate age defined groups, and gradually got to know one another through letters, discussions and eventually joint workshops. The material for the show, including music, movement and original texts, grew out of the long workshop process. Each person was also interviewed on film, and the interviews were integrated into the final performance.
click here to watch part of the show’s video
THE PARTICIPANTS
Auguste Ahehehinnou, Ghislaine Bernier-Bourbon, Danielle Brenner, Charlotte Causse, Adelin Ionel Cirpaci, Raymonde Clerc, Mamadou Doucoure,Noëlle Doumbia, Soriba Drame, Néjat Férouse, Rouksana Fidaly, Mathieu Gilbert,Anna Gruber, Ali Hammadi, Monique Hommet, Jordan Mabiala, Araby Makadji, Mamadou Mané, Gnallé N’Diaye, Kardiatou N’Diaye, Laurys Nunes, Florence Podin, Georges Podin, Shazia Saleck, Françoise Seignez, Dama Tirera, Baraka Traore, Kasthuri Vyravippillai
CREATIVE TEAM
Project leader and director : Kate France / Dance : Érika Zueneli / Technical director : Denis Arlot / Costumes Sophie Hampe
WITH THE HELP AND SUPPORT OF
Bruno Cristin et Zora Ihadjadène (teachers from collège République) and Nathalie Pichot (librarian from Elsa Triolet library)
FOR LA COMPAGNIE
Anne-Gaëlle Adreit, Philippe Dubois, Jean-Claude Fonkenel, Plan Bey, Margot Quénéhervé, Jean-Michel Rabeux, Clara Rousseau, Marion Souliman, Anne-Laurence Vesperini
PARTNERSHIPS
Collège République , Bobigny : Sophie Nobécourt Laurence Riondet / Elsa Triolet Library, Bobigny : Brigitte Bignotti, Claire Dexheimer / CCAS Bondy: Nicolas Ajayi, Francisco Garcia, Thierry Riondet et Marie-Christine Viviano
THANKYOU TO
Gaëlle Brynhole and Margault Chavaroche from MC93, Pierre Bour and Line Uroz from the cultural section, Drancy, Corinne Cicolari, Sophie Rousseau and Éric Sterenfeld
FINANCIAL PARTNERS
La Fondation de France (programme Enfance-Culture), La DRAC Île de France (Culture et lien social, La Mission pour l’art et la culture au collège du département de la Seine-Saint-Denis)
Répétitions was performed at the TransPantin festival, Théâtre du Fil de l’Eau in March 2015
