Sandra Lahire, Terminals, 1986, 16 mm, 19’47”, Courtesy Sandra Lahire and LUX, London.
Sandra Lahire, Terminals, 1986, 16 mm, 19’47”, Courtesy Sandra Lahire and LUX, London.
A program inspired by Sandra Lahire’s cinema
Curated by Lotte Arndt, Maud Jacquin, and Émilie Renard
From June 11 to 15, 2026
With Line Ajan, Lotte Arndt, Myriam Bahaffou, Vincent Enjalbert, Maud Jacquin, Simon Ripoll-Hurier, Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou, Aram Lee,
Elena Lespes Muñoz, Émilie Renard, Katerina Thomadaki, Basyma Saad
and films by Karel Doing, Barbara Hammer,
P. Staff, Adrian Kahgee / Odeimin Runners Club, Elke Marhöfer with Mikhail Lylov, Ana Mendieta, Alisi Telengut, Ana Vaz.
“I shone, mica-scaled, and unfolded to pour myself out like a fluid”
This title, taken from Sylvia Plath’s poem Love Letter (1960), dissolves the boundary between the body and living matter: the “I” becomes by turns animal, mineral, and liquid. This trans-corporeal image resonates deeply with Sandra Lahire’s cinema and could just as easily apply to the film strip itself. Lahire’s work offers a starting point for collective thinking—together with guest artists and researchers, participating audiences, and the art center team—about our shared, yet differentiated, exposure to various forms of toxicity. From this site of shared vulnerability, the goal is to build forms of concern and solidarity with others, both human and non-human, and with the environment.
THURSDAY, JUNE 11 — 3:00 PM TO 9:00 PM
“Dwelling in Dissolution”
This expression by Stacy Alaimo invites us to live with the flows, materials, and organisms—with more or less beneficial or toxic effects—that traverse us. It is about recognizing our radical porosity to the environment, the “trans-corporeality” that materially connects us to the world.
3:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Collective translation guided by Vincent Enjalbert of a chapter from Stacy Alaimo’s book, Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times (2016).
7:30 PM
Simon Ripoll-Hurier, Galaxie Screening-performance
In the plains of Santerre, the horizontal line separating sky and earth gives the impression of a landscape-membrane. What if the air and the subsoil here were more inhabited than we think?
FRIDAY, JUNE 12 — 2:00 PM TO 10:00 PM
“Not alone in this big empty skin”
This quote is taken from Sandra Lahire’s film Arrows. It is the voice of a young woman suffering from anorexia, expressing the need to be inhabited by the other, within her very flesh. This call to no longer be alone in her body invites us to examine how the recognition of our vulnerabilities can ground an ethics of relation to others and to the environment.
2:00 PM Introduction
2:30 PM
“Film as the best path for me to make myself open, vulnerable, giving, sharing.” — Barbara Hammer
Introduction by Maud Jacquin to the screening of Barbara Hammer’s films: A Horse is not a Metaphor (2008) and Evidentiary Bodies (2018).
3:30 PM
Vulnerabilities and Coalitions
Collective shared reading guided by Émilie Renard.
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
“The Blood is a Sunset”
The title of this program is borrowed from Sylvia Plath’s poem The Surgeon at 2 AM (1961), quoted in Sandra Lahire’s film Edge.
Film program:
Barbara Hammer, Sanctus, 1990, 19’
P. Staff, Weed Killer, 2017, 16’
Ana Vaz, Atomic Garden, 2018, 8’
Ana Mendieta, Energy Charge, 1975, 1’
Adrian Kahgee/Odeimin Runners Club, Everything is Right Here, 2021, 6’
Alisi Telengut, The Fourfold, 2020, 7’
Karel Doing, A Patriot of these Woods, 2024-25, 10’
Elke Marhöfer with Mikhail Lylov, Shape-shifting, 2015, 18’
SATURDAY, JUNE 13 — 2:00 PM TO 8:00 PM
“The Proletarian Lung”
Stacy Alaimo borrows this image from American biologists Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins to demonstrate how oppressions of class, race, and gender are inscribed within bodies. We will examine the intersectional inequalities of exposure to toxicity and access to healthcare, as well as how they are rendered invisible.
2:00 PM Introduction
2:30 PM
Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou, …that creeps from the earth
Lecture
3:30 PM
Aram Lee and Lotte Arndt, Transcorporeality in Toxic Times
Lecture-performance (in English)
4:30 PM
Outside Gets Inside
Collective shared reading guided by Elena Lespes Muñoz.
6:00 PM
Screening of Basyma Saad’s film, Kink Retrograde (2022)
followed by a discussion between Basyma Saad and Line Ajan.
“ Sponges Kiss my Lichens Away”
This title is taken from Sylvia Plath’s poem The Stones, quoted in Edge. It will explore practices of material continuity as the foundation of an ethical relationship with the living beings.
7:00 PM
Myriam Bahaffou, Composting the ego, a necessary political act?
Lecture
MONDAY, JUNE 15 — 7:00 PM TO 9:00 PM
At MK2 Bibliothèque x Centre Pompidou
“Plutonium Blonde” Screening of Sandra Lahire’s four films on the devastation of nuclear power:
Terminals (1986), Plutonium Blonde (1986), Serpent River (1989), Uranium Hex (1987)
With Maud Jacquin and Katerina Thomadaki.
Prices : 13,90€ / TR 8,90€ / POP’ 5,90€ / Free with the mk2 pass
In partnership with Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, HiCSA: Histoire culturelle et sociale de l’art, and with the Centre Pompidou for the screening at mk2 Bibliothèque x Centre Pompidou.
Simon Ripoll-Hurier’s film Galaxie is supported by the Hauts-de-France Institute for Photography, with the Direction régionale des affaires culturelles d’Île-de-France —2023 Individual Creation Grant. Production: Tonnerre de l’Ouest.
