The Centre for the Less Good Idea is an interdisciplinary incubator space for the arts based in Maboneng, Johannesburg

MAY 2024 | THE CENTRE FOR THE LESS GOOD IDEA in residency AT THE FONDATION CARTIER, PARIS

In May 2024, the Fondation Cartier invited The Centre for the Less Good Idea into a residency to produce a programme of workshops, performances, concerts and encounters with over 30 artists from across South Africa, Benin, Belgium, Holland, Austria, and France.

From 14 to 20 May 2024, The Centre took over all the spaces of the Fondation Cartier for a week of experimental creation.

The programme opened with Collapses & Defences, a performance that demonstrated The Centre's creative manifesto. This was followed by three intensive workshop days and evenings of HOW | Showing the Making workshops and, over the weekend, a short festival of collaborative performances, concerts and discussions.

The Centre’s residency at Fondation Cartier was an experiment and saw artists devising and workshopping during the days, and performing in the evenings. It was an intensive, collaborative, and generative week and it is in this context, that these works have been made.

A central element of the works produced and shown during this residency was that of language and translation. A recurring question was: What is lost and gained in taking one language into another? How does this change the meaning, the intention, or the reception of the work?

All of the translators in the room were, in one way or another, from the world of performance, and brought a unique approach to the language. Omid Hashemi, Luc de Wit, Pélagie Gbaguidi, Anna Seiderer, and Julien Faure Conorton all demonstrated, through their particular approach to language, the expansion of French through global, historical migration.

So, translation itself became an essential aspect of the residency, both in the framing and facilitation of the works presented, and through its ability to invite audiences into the work and engage in their own processes of meaning-making through the translations, mistranslations, and multiple languages of performance.

— David Mann

CREDITS

This experimental residency and its resulting performative moments were curated by Isabelle Gaudefroy & Mélanie Alves de Sousa of Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in collaboration with Bronwyn Lace of The Centre for the Less Good Idea.

The Centre for the Less Good Idea

ARTISTIC GENERAL DIRECTOR | Isabelle Gaudefroy
NOMADIC NIGHTS CURATOR | Mélanie Alves de Sousa
PROJECT MANAGER | Rachel Spengler
ADMINISTRATION AND PRODUCTION Suzanne Girault
ASSISTANT FOR NOMADIC NIGHTS | Elsa Brunel-Masson
DIGITAL PRODUCER | Solène Dupont-Delestraint
DIRECTOR OF CINEMATOGRAPHY | Olivier Lambert (Lumento)
CINEMATOGRAPHERS | Olivier Lambert, Cédric Loustaunau & Manon Tarasconi
EDITORS | Quentin Bonnet & Thomas Salva
PHOTOGRAPHERS | Cyril Marcilhacy & Vassili Feodoroff

THE OFFICE performing arts + film

MANAGING DIRECTOR | Laurie Cearley
SENIOR PRODUCER | Lynn Koek
COMPANY MANAGER | Elly Obeney
STAGE MANAGER | Meghan Williams
TECHNICAL DIRECTOR | Brendon Boyd/BOYD Designs
LIGHTING DESIGNER | Elena Gui

Special thanks to the William Kentridge Studio:

Linda Leibowitz, Natalie Dembo, Damon Garstang, Anne McIlleron, Anne Blom, Taryn Buccellato, Jessica Jones, Chris-Waldo de Wet, Jacques van Staden, Joey Netshiombo, Diego Sillands & Thandi Nkabinde