FRIDAY 7 JUNE, 2013, 6pm - 9pm
Launch of the publication, “Carrefours culturels des décolonisations: Revues, films, festivals – Des années 1940 à 1970 (Résonances contemporaines)” [Cultural Crossroads of Decolonization: Magazines, Films, Festivals – From 1940 to 1970 (Contemporary Resonances)]

The collaboration between Bétonsalon Centre for Art and Research and the University of Paris, Diderot-Paris 7 made possible the development of a uniquely formatted seminar, at middle distance between university instruction and an artistic workshop.

Taking their respective doctoral projects as points of departure, Lotte Arndt and Julie Ramage, instructors of the image workshop of the licence 2 lettres et arts (Bachelor of Literature and Arts) at the University of Paris, Diderot-Paris 7, led this seminar on the theme of “the cultural crossroads of decolonization”, which was held throughout the semester at Bétonsalon Centre for Art and Research.

On the basis of magazines, films and festivals dated from 1940 to 1970, participants gained knowledge of decisive moments of reference, key in the cultural negotiations of decolonization. Beyond working with the historical context of these films and festivals, the task consisted of elaborating queries in an individual form that would respond, extend or contest the cultural items and events presented in the seminar.

How can these archives inform present struggles? How do they change perceptions of our everyday lives? These were the guiding questions across the breadth of the seminar, visible in the publication produced by participants.

SATURDAY 29 JUNE, 11am
Guided tour and performance

Guided tour of the exhibition by Mélanie Bouteloup, curator of the show and director of Bétonsalon - Centre for art and research

Performance by Violaine Lochu

How do we remember oral forms? What transformations occur during the retelling of a story that was not conceived in writing? The artist and singer Violaine Lochu proposes two new takes on the question: a video and a performance. Chinese whispers takes the popular game of broken telephone as its point of departure. A French nursery rhyme is repeated from one person to the next by non-francophones; mistakes of articulation and pronunciation slip easily into the telling and erode the meaning. In the video, the artist has compiled the material of these stories and repeats the transformed nursery rhyme as a ritornello. The performance Fabula pursues the same line of inquiry by presenting oblivion and fixation as two other factors in the alteration of an oral culture. Violaine Lochu takes up the tale of the Red Riding Hood, which has been transcribed from the oral tradition by numerous authors, including the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault. In a play of intonations, silences, and recitation from memory, the artist reveals the rough patches, fissures and grey areas that form the fluctuating identity of all narratives of oral storytelling, and which become lost in the writing process. She puts into effect a complex dynamic of the intermingling, disappearances and reappearances, specific to folktales. Violaine Lochu poetically updates and redoubles the accidents inherent to all forms of oral transmission: oblivions, deformations and sudden appearances which make up the uncertainties of a thought that is at once alive, contingent and shared. (F.K)

Within the framework of the project « Les Narrateurs » for the 2013 edition of Hospitalités 2013 / tram Bétonsalon – Centre d’art et de recherche, CAC Brétigny, YGREC ENSAPC, la maison rouge