How do we begin to look at an image collectively, collaboratively, and in an embodied way? What are the ways in which a visual archive – entrenched in the heavy histories of colonialism and rendered silent through an extractive approach to photography – can begin to speak? In provoking and surfacing the narratives embedded in these archives, it is music, performance, improvisation and collaboration that can become vital tools for re-reading images in a contemporary way.
Since 2022, The Centre for the Less Good Idea has been exploring Arts, Archives & Performances, an experimental, performative and playful research project for exchange and dialogue between artists and thinkers whose practices are devoted to the material traces of colonial history Attached to this has been a series of conferences, co-organised by Bronwyn Lace (SO Academy, Johannesburg, South Africa), Didier Houénoudé (University of Abomey Calavi, Benin) & Anna Seiderer (University of Paris 8, France) all developed within the framework of the research project Animated Images, Controversial Memories [CINEMAF].
At Fondation Cartier, this central provocation of looking at an image, collectively, returns. Situated in the Fondation Cartier, discussants Anna Seiderer, Christine Barthe, Pélagie Gbaguidi,
Bronwyn Lace, Julien Faure-Conorton, Omid Hashemi, Neo Muyanga & Marcus Neustetter were joined by performers Vusi Mdoyi, Micca Manganye, Teresa Phuti Mojela & Angelo
Moustapha, to go beyond the standard analysis and dissection of an image and to discover what happens when one’s body is asked to commune with the image.
Muyanga serves as a key driver in this regard, arranging the audience into a four-part harmony, to recognise and recite some of the key words that emerged through engaging the images: people, ancestors, ceremony and ritual. Ultimately, a procession emerges, and leads outside to the Fondation Cartier’s garden, a space of natural and organic communing.
CREDITS
DISCUSSANTS | Avec Anna Seiderer, Christine Barthe, Pélagie Gbaguidi, Bronwyn Lace, Julien Faure-Conorton, Omid Hashemi, Neo Muyanga & Marcus Neustetter
PERFORMERS | Vusi Mdoyi, Micca Manganye, Teresa Phuti Mojela & Angelo Moustapha, with thanks to the Paris 8 interns
FOOTAGE | Courtesy of Collection Archives de la Planète, Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Département des Hauts-de-Seine
All text by David Mann