This performed event, organised on the initiative of N/Z journal and hosted by Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, will be an opportunity to share and give visibility to the many exchanges that have taken place over the years between artist Agnès Geoffray and curator Vanessa Desclaux.
Convulsion, hypnosis, fainting, levitation and syncope — these will be the leitmotivs of this evening event, which will involve literary exchanges, readings and accounts, and the sharing of images, etchings and photographs, to reveal the fantastical dimension of these states of suspension.
The evening will close with a piece by Agnès Geoffray, located at the crossroads between performance and photography, that will revisit these myriad positions somewhere between collapse and elevation.
With performers Mordjane Mira and Selwan Cherfi.
All my thanks to Benjamin L. Aman for his sound contribution.
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“For a long time now, hanging, suspended bodies, halted gestures and frozen words have haunted both my photographic work and my writing. These figures just keep coming back. I play with these cessations and suspensions, situated somewhere between collapse and ascension. The fascinating thing about suspension is missing time. We know nothing about the time that precedes it and can barely make out the time that comes after — a suspended movement where everything is still possible. It is a time of resistance. This stretching-out of time, this frozen expectation is a resistance to the tragedy yet to come.
As my exchanges with Vanessa Desclaux developed, a gradual slippage from suspension to syncope ocurred. This break in reality, this floating of time, this cessation became an eclipse. A gentle decline or a brutal collapse in order to distance oneself from reality“.
A.G.
Schéma / Pensées échangées entre Vanessa Desclaux et Agnès Geoffray
© Agnès Geoffray / Vanessa Desclaux
FREE ENTRANCE ON RESERVATION at
reservation@leslaboratoires.org or by phone 01 53 56 15 90
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Agnès Geoffray is born in 1973 in Saint-Chamond, France. Her artistic practice involves writing and photography. She has been in residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and at Villa Medici, The French Academy in Rome. Her work is currently being shown in the exhibition Soulèvements at Le Jeu de Paume in Paris, and as part of Un Musée imaginé at the Centre Pompidou in Metz. Se has exhibited her work at the Kunsthaus in Zurich, the Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna, at Magasin in Grenoble, Mac Val in Virty-sur-Seine, the Centre de la Photographie in Geneva, the Centre Photographique d’Ile-de-France in Pontault-Combault, and the Frac Auvergne in Clermont-Ferrand. Her work has also been included in the public collection of the Fond National d’Art Contemporain in Paris, the Frac Auvergne in Clermont-Ferrand, the Mac Val in Vitry-sur-Seine, the Centre Pompidou Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris and the Musée de L’Elysée in Lausanne. Three books on her work have been published by La Lettre Volée in Brussels: Ultieme Hallucinatie, Profond silence and, very recently, Les Captives.
Independent curator, art critic and lecturer at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Art in Dijon, Vanessa Desclaux has recently completed a PhD in Curating at Goldmiths, University of London. Her doctoral project explores the conditions in which curatorial practice and the figure of the exhibition curator operate and shift in the contemporary context. Her recent projects include Se prendre au jeu : rêves, repetitions et autres detours, at the Frac Franche-Comté (2015), Une exposition qui bégaie, at the CRAC Alsace (2014), and Anna Barham, Agnès Geoffray, Nathania Rubin at galerie Jousse Entreprise as part of the Nouvelles vagues festival at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2013). In 2014 she also published a book titled Matt Mullican Projections Landscapes, with Amsterdam publisher If I Can’t Dance I Don’t Want To Be Part of Your Revolution. She is currently associate curator at La Galerie art centre in Noisy-le-Sec, until July 2017.
Arialist and circus scenographer, Selwan Cherfi works with the circus arts in various universes (creation, circus, cabaret, parks, tv, events ...), mainly trapeze, smooth rope and fabric. Author of several shows (including the last Passage) he loves to work in a duo or in a team, to discover new worlds and meet new challenges. For this reason he joined Agnes Geoffray and Mordjane Mira in this performance and for once he will keep his feet on the ground. __ www.selwancirque.com
All started for Mordjane Mira a few years ago when she enrolled in a theater school where she learned singing, dance, theatrical performance, text work, mask and improvisation; while following in parallel the learning the aerial and more specifically the fixed trapeze. It continued to grow through new disciplines such as grand ballant, aerial fabric, contortion and acting. This allowed him to participate in projects in cabaret, gala, short author films, in an experimental feature film with the Nobel Prize winner Gao Xingjian and in performances like Hentai Circus staged by Karelle Prugnaud or Passage of Selwan Cherfi. __ www.mordjanemira.com