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142 Oh, Baltimore Man, it’s hard just to live, just to live. — Nina Simone,   Baltimore, 1978 Frédéric Nauczyciel a probablement gardé de son travail d’administrateur dans la danse contemporaine le goût du horschamp et du pas de côté. Depuis 2003, il a emboîté une carrière d’artiste. En 2008, il expose un immense tirage du public assis dans les gradins de la cour d’honneur au Festival d’Avignon pendant la représentation du Roi Lear, une photographie plein cadre réalisée avec un temps de pause égal à la durée du spectacle (4 h 30, entracte compris). En 2009, il témoigne de la vie locale à Pantin, en banlieue parisienne, puis répond, l’année suivante, à une commande 1 par un ensemble de neuf portraits, « Le Temps devant ». Les images, fortement mises en scène selon une inspiration picturale (le siglo de oro espagnol notamment), évoquent l’utopie rurale, une manière d’être au monde, le rapport au temps qui passe et insistent sur la qualité de la relation instaurée avec ses « sujets ». Avec son installation vidéo The Fire Flies, Francesca, Baltimore, Frédéric Nauczyciel nous propose une triple projection immersive dans un flux d’images et de musiques venues de la communauté des voguers de Baltimore – avec les intrusions sophistiquées de Francesca à New York. À l’extérieur de la boîte vidéo, un long travelling de Baltimore en plein jour pousse le spectateur à « traverser » symboliquement la route pour entrer dans le vif du sujet. L’artiste confie : « J’étais venu chercher Omar 2, j’ai rencontré les voguers – les lucioles que Pier Paolo Pasolini recherchait dans les faubourgs de Naples. Des cygnes noirs des ghettos. » Il a travaillé pendant plusieurs mois avec ces groupes pluri-marginalisés (noirs, pauvres, homosexuels ou transgenres) afin d’en capter la quintessence des formes de résistance et d’affirmation mises en œuvre. IPhone à la main, il filme des séances de démaquillage, d’habillage, d’errances urbaines, des « bals ». Le ball est une réunion underground où les voguers, en

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relation avec leur house 3, viennent se défier, en performant à partir de figures imposées (Hands, Catwalk, Duckwalk, Spins and Dips, Floor). La multiplicité des catégories offre une place à chacun, on se mesure l’un à l’autre, pour des trophées dérisoires mais symboliques. Entre glamour et legendary. L’enjeu des balls est la capacité de chacun à s’improviser, se créer une personnalité – être real. Le vogueing (ou voguing pour les nouvelles générations) est né dans des quartiers noirs ou latinos comme Harlem à la fin des années 1960. Détournant des poses de mannequins (des femmes blanches majoritairement) en couverture du magazine Vogue, il se réapproprie des signes culturels, s’invente des stratégies de survie. Le mouvement est définitivement popularisé à la fin des années 1980 par Malcolm McLaren et son single Deep In Vogue et, vidé de tout contenu social, par Madonna dans son clip Vogue. Le documentaire de Jennie Livingston Paris Is Burning (1991) demeure une référence. Frédéric Nauczyciel parvient à infuser dans son travail une « part intime du réel », entre réalité, autobiographie et fiction, en nous emportant dans un montage précis, des cuts dynamiques, des répliques pointues et une circulation des images en adéquation avec le système mis en place dans le voguing. Les lucioles de Baltimore ne brillent que quand elles volent… Julien Blanpied

1 — Centre d’art et de photographie de Lectoure. 2 — Omar Devon Little, personnage haut en couleur de la série télévisée The Wire, trafiquant de drogue, homosexuel, noir, a un sens du code moral strict et ne dévie jamais de ses règles ; il n’est pas menaçant à l’égard des personnes non impliquées dans le « jeu ». 3 — Les houses (aussi appelées drag houses ou drag families) sont des groupes composés majoritairement d’hommes homosexuels ou transgenres, afro-américains ou latinos, réunis sous l’autorité (le respect) d’une house mother ou d’un father. Elles sont une forme de famille adoptive, substitut de la famille biologique en crise. Les noms des houses font souvent référence au milieu de la mode (House of Chanel, Milan, Revlon, Balenciaga anciennement Miyake Mugler…).

VOGUE ! Baltimore, Eubie Blake Centre 2011 Tirages Ilfochrome, 152 × 122 cm Programme « Hors les murs », Institut français Production MAC/VAL [147] Vogue ! Baltimore # Kory Goose Revlon

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148 conversation avec FRÉDÉRIC NAUCZYCIEL — Quelle place occupent dans votre œuvre les pièces que vous exposez au MAC/VAL ? The Fire Flies 1, ce sont des lucioles, la flamboyance des homosexuels et transgenres des ghettos noirs de Baltimore qui se performent la nuit dans des balls. Au-delà de la question communautaire, des individus mettent en place des stratégies – une poétique – de survie qui renvoient aux lucioles de Pasolini dans les faubourgs de Naples et à la sensualité des Noirs américains selon James Baldwin (The Fire, Next Time). En me rendant à Baltimore 2, je ne pensais pas conduire un projet d’une telle envergure ni m’intéresser au voguing. J’y allais sur les traces d’Omar qui a popularisé la banjee realness, cette posture de fierté des hommes homosexuels des ghettos en résistance à la culture dominante, une forme de dissimulation choisie, destinée à déjouer les attentes. Je voulais rapporter en Europe des images qui présenteraient une autre vision du glamour de banlieue. Baltimore, c’est comme si toute la Petite Couronne s’était déversée dans le centre de Paris. La pièce The Fire Flies exposée au MAC/VAL est comme le making off d’un travail plus vaste en cours, documentant à la fois son processus et son sujet. Constituée d’une installation vidéo et de grandes photographies, elle met en tension, sur le mur extérieur d’une boîte, une traversée de Baltimore en apparence monotone (La Traversée, boucle de 46’) et, à l’intérieur de la boîte, une plongée dans des sous-cultures qui affleurent peu en surface (The Fire Flies, boucle de 58’). Une porte dérobée invite à y pénétrer, à « traverser ». Sur trois des murs intérieurs se déploient des séquences quasi brutes, en format vertical ou horizontal, rythmées par la musique et les sons, avec des temps morts, des accélérations, des plans séquences plus longs, des ruptures au blanc qui éblouissent pour laisser des ambiances sonores ouvrir à l’imaginaire. L’éclatement du montage rend compte de

manière volontairement lacunaire d’une réalité qui ne peut se livrer complètement et met la vision en défaut lors des passages rapides d’un mur à l’autre. L’absence de sous-titres invite à appréhender ce langage des corps très codifié, à l’éprouver plutôt qu’à le comprendre. La boucle vidéo propose une progression des documents bruts vers des séquences plus formelles, des sons scandés des balls à la musique baroque, progression parallèle à celle du travail de création lui-même. Quatre photographies de la série Vogue ! Baltimore sur deux murs extérieurs de la boîte déconstruisent les mouvements du voguing et indiquent le statut de « mise en scène documentaire » de la pièce. Je touche au plus proche de ma manière de faire : ne rien décider à l’avance et ne rien inscrire dans l’obligation. J’ai compris que je n’avais pas à me limiter à la pratique photographique et j’ai ouvert à tout ce qui pourrait rendre compte de l’expérience et mettre en jeu le corps, de la vidéo à la danse. C’est aussi la première fois que j’envisage une aventure collective. Ce travail est né du désir d’approfondir une relation dans la durée. Je n’en avais pas anticipé toutes les ramifications. Je retrouve dans ce travail mon amour de la science-fiction – Abyss, Minority Report, l’hologramme de Star Wars qui sort de D2R2, ou encore Les Enfants du paradis ou la lanterne magique du Dracula de Coppola. J’y reconnais aussi mes premiers héros, Bourvil en PasseMuraille, Fred Astaire et Gene Kelly. Enfant puis adolescent dans une banlieue nouvelle à l’américaine, j’écoutais la soul music à la radio, sans comprendre le sens politique des paroles. Ce travail me permet de revisiter ma propre histoire qui, d’une certaine façon, a été occultée par la place qu’a prise dans ma famille la mémoire d’Auschwitz. Il va également redéfinir ma manière de produire, de chercher de l’argent. Je résistais jusqu’à présent à partager quelque chose de la création avec une galerie ou un producteur ; il me fallait d’abord appréhender tous les enjeux de mon travail.

149 Vous dites que vous étiez parti chercher Omar (personnage emblématique de la série américaine The Wire) à Baltimore. Qui avez-vous trouvé finalement ? Omar est une icône moderne qui parle à tous parce qu’il est lui-même et qu’il invente sa propre géographie. Je ne pensais pas au départ travailler avec des voguers avant de comprendre qu’Omar est, avec sa banjee realness, une facette plus récente de la culture du voguing. Cette capacité d’improvisation des Noirs américains, cette manière de s’inventer à chaque instant est magnifiée dans les balls. En réalité, les voguers de Baltimore sont tous Omar, selon la situation ou le moment de la journée. Dans quelle mesure votre travail explore-t-il les liens entre l’individu et la communauté ? Je suis allé à Baltimore pour écrire une fiction documentaire sur le modèle de The Wire, imaginer des mises en scène photographiques qui aborderaient la réalité de Baltimore du point de vue d’Omar. Avant de réaliser les épisodes de cette série photographique, où les voguers créeraient les personnages de leur propre vie, il me fallait d’abord comprendre les enjeux de cette communauté. J’ai rencontré un groupe de personnes, des amis et une famille. Ayant choisi certains d’entre eux pour un travail, je les ai déplacés dans un studio de photographie et de danse. J’ai ainsi fait des allers et retours entre leur territoire et le mien. Enregistré des moments de vie, d’intimité, de balls, de prises de vue et des scènes documentaires. Le plan séquence sur le parking, un moment d’attente avant un ball exceptionnellement donné en extérieur, présente nombre d’entre eux que l’on retrouve dans d’autres séquences du film. J’ai commencé à travailler avec Marquis, Kory et David Revlon – et, par extension, avec l’ensemble de la « maison » Revlon. J’ai fait venir d’autres voguers d’autres maisons dont j’aimais le style. J’ai impliqué d’autres figures, tels DDM, un rappeur ouvertement gay, Shawnna Alexander, une drag queen burlesque de

FRÉDÉRIC NAUCZYCIEL Baltimore, ou Francesca de New York. J’ai ainsi isolé des individus du groupe en donnant à chacun une place singulière. Le voguing est fait de cette dualité : le singulier dans la multitude. Il s’agit, dans la communauté, d’être unique. J’ai aussi laissé la place à des scènes plus personnelles, des blagues sonores et vidéos que l’on m’envoyait, comme ce tube de l’été, Chouchou, ou le « Talking Carl » qui me demande de revenir à Paris ! Cette manière de creuser le destin individuel à l’intérieur d’un groupe était un moyen de m’approcher au plus près de la réalité. L’intime introduit dans l’œuvre un élément d’identification qui déjoue l’observation et implique le regardeur. Ainsi opère la fable sociale. Avec votre iPhone, en tant qu’artiste en immersion dans un groupe ou une communauté, n’empruntez-vous pas la posture d’un anthropologue moderne ? Quelle place laissez-vous à l’Autre dans le processus de réalisation de vos œuvres ? L’iPhone s’est imposé au départ comme capteur de moments. Il est passé de main en main, a été posé au sol pendant des prises de vue. J’ai reçu des films que d’autres avaient faits ; proposé à certains de se filmer, en mon absence. La séquence de rupture que Francesca m’a envoyée en même temps qu’à son destinataire, moment insensé, drôle et émouvant qui soulève toutes les questions d’un postcolonialisme de genre, m’a donné l’envie de faire ce film. Il est d’ailleurs réalisé non uniquement avec un iPhone, mais surtout avec toutes les applications de l’iPhone. Via Facebook, j’entrais en contact, postais des images, collectais des messages ou des statuts. Je repassais tout à travers l’iPhone, refilmais le film de Marie Losier, réalisais un travelling avec la musique d’Emanuel Xavier dans la voiture… Cette plasticité de l’outil m’a permis de simplifier le montage et le mixage du film, pour me concentrer sur une rythmique, un déploiement des images dans l’espace. La verticalité des images filmées introduisant un format non conventionnel, un film éclaté s’imposait qui rende compte de

150 l’engagement des corps dans l’espace. La banalité de l’objet m’a surtout permis une spontanéité du regard, avec une règle simple : ne pas être dans une posture d’observateur, a fortiori d’anthropologue, mais être toujours dans le plaisir et dans le jeu. Très vite, mes « personnages » ont joué ce jeu et s’en sont emparé. Par exemple, lors d’une improvisation sur un concerto de Bach en studio, Marquis livre un regard caméra et s’en amuse. L’impression d’immersion est donc en partie une illusion. Après l’étude réalisée en studio avec Kory, avant d’aller recréer la pose dans la ville, dans son quartier, en costume, je lui ai parlé de la danseuse de Degas, qui était alors exposée au musée de Baltimore. L’histoire de cette jeune fille ayant le visage d’une prostituée lui a plu, et il s’est approprié le personnage. La séquence où Francesca se démaquille a été décidée par elle, et mise en scène très simplement, avec l’iPhone collé sur le miroir. En définitive, c’est la manière dont l’Autre s’empare de mes propositions qui m’intéresse. Quelle place accordez-vous au politique ? Baltimore est une ville où toute résistance semble avoir disparu parce que le pouvoir lui-même a quitté la ville. Il est difficile d’y tenir un projet, d’y trouver des ressources et d’y impliquer durablement des gens. En faisant des allers et retours entre leur monde et le mien, nous avons tenté de briser la frontière symbolique du ghetto et rendu possible un ailleurs. C’est ainsi que la musique classique est apparue. Nous faisions des prises de vue dans la rue et je mettais de la musique classique dans la voiture, pour dérouter la police, le cas échéant. Bach leur a plu. Nous avons tenté l’expérience d’une pratique en studio, à trois, puis à trente. J’avais l’intuition que les codes de la danse baroque pouvaient résonner avec les codes du voguing. Que la musique de Bach pouvait mettre en lumière la féminité et l’élégance du Vogue femme. L’intensité des compositions de Bach et leur rigueur mathématique étaient à même de les soutenir dans la durée, eux qui flamboient,

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donnent leur vie* 3 dans des confrontations ultrabrèves. Je leur proposais ainsi de pousser les limites pour amplifier la manière dont le voguing apprend à transcender les vicissitudes de la vie, à s’inventer, à se performer avec bravoure (fierceness*) pour devenir un jour legendary*, libéré du regard de l’Autre. Legendary, c’est aussi le titre donné à l’atelier organisé au MAC/VAL et conçu comme un laboratoire. Il a réuni Marquis, David et Kory Revlon, ainsi que de jeunes stagiaires de la région parisienne, pour moitié déjà initiés au voguing. J’ai voulu déplacer les pratiques de chacun, mettre les voguers au contact de la danse baroque française et de la danse contemporaine, initier les autres aux fondamentaux du voguing. Cette hybridation des cultures m’intéresse. Elle correspond à la façon dont le voguing de Baltimore, qui n’a pas l’héritage des grandes figures newyorkaises, continue de s’inventer et de se nourrir de toutes les influences. La restitution publique mélangeait les codes du voguing et de la danse baroque avec des éléments tirés de la réalité de Baltimore. Dans un lieu d’art, la reproduction de la Baltimore Lean, cette « danse des drogués » aux coins des rues qui se penchent sans jamais tomber, convoquait d’autres images. Celle du chorégraphe Andy Degroat, mon mentor, au corps fatigué, déguisé en black mamma SDF et déjantée, qui se traîne au milieu de ces corps jeunes magnifiés par les talons aiguille, portant une rose à la main, parle de la déchéance. Mais exacerbe, en creux, la présence possible de l’élégance, d’une poétique de la survie.

THE FIRE FLIES, FRANCESCA, BALTIMORE 2011-2012 Installation vidéo, 2 boucles indépendantes : La Traversée, 46'19 ; The Fire Flies, 58'07 Photogrammes 1 — En anglais, the fireflies : les lucioles ; the fire flies : le feu vole. 2 — Programme « Hors les murs », Institut français. 3 — Les astérisques signalent des idiomes propres au langage de la communauté.

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FIREFLIES, BALTIMORE 2011-2012

FIREFLIES, BALTIMORE 2011-2012

Firefly # David Revlon

Firefly # Mike Peele Revlon

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MARYLÈNE NEGRO 1957

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What role does the Other play in the creation of your works? It is a necessary point of reference but not very dramatic for me. I hope, but don’t expect, we will make contact with aliens during my lifetime, which would really be something. Considering the vastness of the universe, it seems reasonable to believe they are there. What role does politics play? Politics is the bloodstream of art. When politics die, the work is destroyed or goes into storage waiting for a resurrection. I have spent the last 18 months interviewing and writing the biography of Irena Sedlecka, an 83-year-old sculptor with a remarkable fate and life history. Trained at the Fine Art Academy in Prague immediately after World War II, she was very talented and as a very young woman became one of the most celebrated Socialist Realist superstars. She produced mainly figurative works depicting communist heroes on a monumental scale, most of which were later destroyed during the Velvet Revolution. In 1966 she did a U-turn and escaped communism in a Skoda, leaving everything behind and smuggling three children in a dramatic journey across Europe. She settled in London and supported her family by sculpting souvenir models for the British Museum and then props for commercials, before slowly returning to portraits of British actors. Thirty years after her arrival in the UK, where she had been largely unknown or ignored, the glam rock band Queen rediscovered her as the most talented sculptor in Britain and commissioned her to create a larger-than-life memorial statue of Freddie Mercury, who had passed away of Aids a few years before. This is where Socialist Realism and glam rock truly meet, and where an artist survives nearly a century of European upheavals and artistic trends as the political landscape is shifting under her feet. The whole story is available free online: www.freddieontheplinth.co.uk. Are humour verging on the grotesque and the reappropriation of signs traditionally assigned to masculinity ways of conquering new territories? As an artist, I can’t complain of a lack of territory. In the realm of imagination, everything is always available. Making a joke is the quickest way to get there. When you create situations like First Woman on the Moon, do you see them as motors of fiction? On a sunny day they are motors, on a rainy day the fictions will do. Do you think that the way your documentary film is received has shifted, more than ten years after it was made? How do you see a feminist reinterpretation of your project in 2012? I am curious to find out. From the outset the work has always been used in every kind of way, by so many different people. An Australian gender studies department sent me congratulations, while I received hate mail from some American feminists who objected to my planting of the American flag on a Dutch beach, which they saw as an imperialist act. The Dutch anarchist association AAA (Association of Autonomous Astronauts), who wanted to break NASA’s monopoly, went as far as to demand the project be cancelled. When I invited everyone to join me on the moon, random people made a toast in champagne and proclaimed themselves ‘The

first gay man on the moon’, ‘The first black man on the moon’, or ‘The first German man on the moon’. Everyone was taking their own snapshots, we had three commercial media stations onsite producing mainstream TV, a world famous fashion photographer showed up unannounced, the non-profit Casco Projects, who produced the event, had two of their own photographers sponsored by Hasselblad cameras onsite, the same company that had equipped Neil Armstrong in 1969 and who gave me their new camera to wear, which I used to shoot the public from my protagonist’s perspective. So the work was always a product of everyone’s collective point of view. I later reclaimed as much footage that I could get hold of from all these different sources and edited the video. It is my most widely circulated piece, showing in one place or another continuously for over ten years. I sent it to both Neil Armstrong and Arthur C. Clarke, who both acknowledged it with good humour. I remember watching Neil Armstrong on TV when I was two years old. I remember the excitement of my family around the TV, and since he watched me perform the same way, a circle was closed. We were both aware of each other’s existence. Today the distance between the fiction and reality has narrowed. There are more female astronauts, and I believe it is just a matter of a few years before the Chinese will actually put a woman on the moon, which will bring my work to its final conclusion and render it obsolete.

frédéric nauczyciel ‘Oh, Baltimore/Man, it’s hard just to live, just to live’ (Nina Simone, Baltimore, 1978) It may well be that Frédéric Nauczyciel’s work as an administrator in contemporary dance gave him a taste for the offbeat. Since 2003 he has been pursuing a career as an artist. In 2008 he exhibited a huge print of the public sitting in the Cour d’Honneur during a performance of King Lear at the Avignon Festival, a full-frame photo made with an exposure time identical to the duration of the show itself (four and a half hours, interval included). In 2009 he reported on life in Pantin, a northern Parisian suburb, while the following year he responded to a commission 1 by producing a set of nine portraits, Le Temps devant. The images are emphatically staged and have a strong painterly quality (the Spanish siglo de oro is an important reference) and evoke rural utopias, a way of being in the world, and our relationship to passing time. They stress the quality of the relationship developed with the ‘subjects’. In his three-channel video installation The Fire Flies, Francesca, Baltimore, Nauczyciel immerses us in a flow of images and music from the community of ‘voguers’ in Baltimore. Outside the video box, a long travelling shot through the daytime city symbolically carries spectators across its fabric and into the meat of the subject. ‘I came looking for Omar,’ 2 says the artist, ‘and I met the voguers – the fireflies that Pier Paolo Pasolini looked for in the suburbs of Naples. The black swans of the ghettos.’ He spent several months with these groups marginalised by their colour (black), status (poor) and sexuality (gay, transgender) in order to capture the quintessence of the forms of resistance and affirmation that they had developed. iPhone in hand, he filmed them making up, dressing and wandering the city, and also their balls, which are underground meetings where the voguers, organised into ‘houses’, 3 compete to do the best hands, catwalks, duckwalks, spins and dips, and floors. The variety of categories gives everyone a chance to shine. The trophies are materially

insignificant but symbolically charged. It’s all about glamour and legend. The point of the balls is to improvise, to create a personality for oneself: to be real. Voguing came into being in Black and Latin quarters such as Harlem in the late 1960s. Appropriating the poses of models (mainly white women) on the cover of Vogue, it laid claim to cultural signs and invented strategies for survival. The movement entered the mainstream in the late 1980s when Malcolm McLaren put out his single Deep In Vogue and Madonna, voiding it of its social content, released her clip Vogue. Jennie Livingston’s documentary Paris Is Burning (1991) remains a key reference here. Frédéric Nauczyciel once again manages to enter an ‘intimate part of the real’, a mix of reality, autobiography and fiction, by means of precise editing, dynamic cuts, sharp dialogue and a circulation of images that correlates to the system developed by voguing. The fireflies of Baltimore shine only when they fly . . . Julien Blanpied 1– From the Centre d’Art et de Photographie in Lectoure. 2– Omar Devon Little, a colourful character in the TV drama series The Wire, a Black, gay drug pusher, has a strict moral code and never deviates from his rules. He never threatens people who are not involved in the ‘game.’ 3– The ‘houses’ (also called ‘drag houses’ or ‘drag families’) are groups made up mainly of Afro-American or Latino homosexual or trans-gender men, brought together under the authority (respect) of a ‘house mother’ or ‘father.’ They are a kind of adoptive family, a substitute for the crisis-afflicted biological family. The names of the houses often refer to fashion (House of Chanel, Milan, Revlon, Balenciaga, formerly Miyake Mugler).

conversation with frédéric nauczyciel How does the work you are exhibiting at the MAC/VAL relate to the rest of your oeuvre? The Fire Flies 1 are flamboyant homosexuals and transsexuals from the black ghettos of Baltimore who perform their identity at night-time balls. Beyond the question of community, it’s about individuals who develop strategies – a poetics – of survival, reminiscent of Pasolini’s fireflies in the suburbs of Naples and the sensuality of black Americans as described by James Baldwin (The Fire Next Time). When I travelled to Baltimore 2 I wasn’t thinking of doing a project on such a scale, or developing an interest in voguing. I was going to follow in the tracks of Omar, the man who popularised ‘banjee realness’, this posture of pride adopted by homosexual men as a way of resisting the dominant culture, a kind of deliberate dissimulation designed to confound expectations. Baltimore is a bit like how central Paris would be like if it were made up of the deprived areas found in its suburbs. The work at the MAC/VAL, The Fire Flies, is like the ‘making of’ of an ongoing bigger project. Consisting of a video installation and large-format photos, it juxtaposes, on the outside

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of a box, what appears to be a monotonous drive through Baltimore (La Traversée, looped, 45’) with, on the inside, an immersion in the subcultures that are not very visible on the surface (The Fire Flies, looped, 58’). A hidden door invites visitors to enter, to ‘cross over’. On three of the inner walls almost unedited sequences play out, in vertical or horizontal format, punctuated by music and sounds, with still moments, accelerations, longer sequences, and white passages that allow the acoustic ambiences to connect with the imaginary. The fragmentation of the editing conveys in a deliberately incomplete way a reality that cannot be grasped completely and defies sight in its quick transitions from one wall to another. The absence of subtitles invites us to focus on this highly codified bodily language, to experience it rather than understand it. The video loop presents a progression from raw documents to more formal sequences, from the emphatic sounds of the balls to Baroque music, a progression that parallels that of the creative work itself. Four photos from the Vogue! Baltimore series on two external walls of the box deconstruct the movements of voguing and indicate that the piece is a ‘documentary staging’. I really go deep here into my way of doing things: deciding nothing in advance and making nothing an obligation. I realised that I did not have to restrict myself to photography: I was open to anything that could convey the experience and bring into play the body, from video to dance. It was also the first time that I had considered a collective venture. This work came out of the desire to develop a relationship over time. I didn’t foresee all the ramifications. For me, the work encapsulates my love of science fiction – Abyss, Minority Report, the Star Wars hologram coming out of D2R2 – and also Les Enfants du Paradis and the magic lantern in Coppola’s Dracula. I also recognise my first heroes, Bourvil in Passe Muraille, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. As a child and then a teenager in a new, American-style suburb, I used to listen to soul music on the radio, without understanding the political meaning of the words. This piece has allowed me to revisit my own history, which, in a way, was obscured by the importance that the memory of Auschwitz took on in my family. It will also redefine my way of producing art and of raising money. Up to now I have resisted sharing anything of the creative process with a gallery or a producer. I had to first understand all the issues connected with my work. You said you went looking for Omar (an emblematic character from the American series The Wire) in Baltimore. Who did you find in the end? Omar is a modern icon who speaks to us all because he is himself and invents his own geography. I didn’t initially think I would work with the voguers, but I realised that Omar, with his ‘banjee realness’, is a more recent facet of voguing culture. This capacity for improvisation that black Americans have, this way of constantly reinventing themselves, is magnified in the balls. In fact, the voguers of Baltimore can all be Omar, depending on the situation or time of day. To what extent does your work explore the connections between the individual and the community? I went to Baltimore to write a documentary fiction in the style of The Wire, to devise photographs that would approach the reality of

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Baltimore from Omar’s viewpoint. Before making the episodes of that photographic series, in which they would create the characters in their own life, I had to understand what the issues were for the community of voguers. I met a community, individuals, friends and a family. I chose a number of them for my work. I moved them into a photography studio, a dance studio. I was thus making back and forth movements between their territory and mine. I recorded moments of life, of intimacy, the balls, took posed and documentary shots. The sequence shot on the parking lot, while waiting for a ball that, most unusually, was being held outside, shows a lot of the people who appear in other sequences of the film. I started working with Marquis, Kory and David Revlon – and, by extension, with all the members of the House of Revlon. I brought in voguers from other houses whose style I liked. I involved other figures, such as DDM, an openly gay rapper, Shawnna Alexander, a burlesque drag queen from Baltimore, and Francesca from New York. I thus isolated individuals from the groups, giving each one a singular place. Voguing is made up of that same duality, the singular in the multitude. It’s a question of being unique within the community. I also left room for more personal scenes, for aural and visual jokes that were sent to me, like the summer hit, Chouchou, or the ‘Talking Carl’, asking me to go back to Paris! This exploration of individual destiny within a group is a way of getting as close to reality as possible. The intimate introduces an element of identification into the work that challenges observation and involves the beholder. That’s how the social fable operates. By immersing yourself in a group or community, with your iPhone, wasn’t your artistic position a bit like that of a modern anthropologist? What role does the Other play in the creation of your works? The iPhone was an obvious choice for capturing moments. It was passed around, was put on the ground when photos were taken. I received films taken by others, and suggested that others film themselves in my absence. The moment of rupture that Francesca sent me at the same time as to its addressee – a mad, funny, moving moment that raises all the questions about a post-colonialism of gender – made me want to make this film. In fact, it wasn’t made only with an iPhone, but above all with all the iPhone apps. I used Facebook to contact people, to post images, collect images and statuses. I put everything through my iPhone, refilmed Marie Losier’s film, did a travelling shot with music by Emanuel Xavier in the car. This tool’s flexibility allowed me to simplify the editing and mixing of the film. The verticality of the films introduced an unconventional format, which made for a fragmented film that would reflect the way the bodies navigated space. Above all, this commonplace device allowed me to see things spontaneously, with a simple rule: not to adopt the position of an observer, let alone that of an anthropologist, but rather to revel in pleasure, in play. It wasn’t long before my ‘characters’ played the game and made it their own. Take, for example, that sequence when, while improvising on a Bach concerto in the studio, Marquis sneaks a playful look at the camera. The impression of immersion is therefore partly an illusion. After the study done in the studio with Kory, before going and recreating the pose in the city, in his quarter, in costume, I spoke to him about Degas’s Dancer. It was on display at the

Baltimore museum at the time. The story of this young girl whose face is that of a prostitute appealed to him, and he appropriated the character. The sequence in which Francesca takes her make-up off was something she decided. It was very simply staged, with an iPhone stuck to the mirror. Ultimately, what interests me is the way the Other takes over my propositions. What role does politics play? Baltimore is a city from which all resistance seems to have disappeared because power itself has abandoned the city. It is difficult to sustain a project there and to get people involved in the long-term. By going back and forth between their world and mine, we tried to break down the symbolic frontier of the ghetto and to make another place possible. That’s how classical music came into it. We took photos in the street and I had classical music on in the car to confuse the police, if necessary. They liked Bach. We tried it out in a studio, with three of us, then thirty. I had the intuition that the codes of Baroque dance could resonate with the codes of voguing, that Bach’s music could highlight the femininity and elegance of ‘vogue fem’.3 The intensity of Bach’s compositions and their mathematical rigour could sustain them over time, when they ‘give their life’ in the extremely brief confrontations. I thus proposed that they push back the limits in order to amplify the way in which voguing teaches one how to transcend life’s vicissitudes, to reinvent oneself, to perform with ‘fierceness’ so as to one day become ‘legendary’, freed from the Other’s gaze. Legendary* was also the title I gave to the workshop organised at the MAC/VAL, which was conceived as a laboratory, with Marquis, David and Kory Revlon and young interns from the Paris region, half of whom already knew about voguing. I wanted to displace the different sides’ practices, to put the voguers in contact with French Baroque and contemporary dance, and to initiate the others into the fundamentals of voguing. I find this hybridising of cultures interesting. It corresponds to the way in which Baltimore voguing, which doesn’t have the same heritage as that of the leading New Yorker figures, continues to reinvent itself, and draw on all kinds of influences. The public re-creation combined voguing codes and those of Baroque dance with elements excerpted from the reality of Baltimore. In an art venue, the reproduction of the ‘Baltimore Lean’, that, ‘dance of the druggies’ on street corners who bend but never fall, summoned up other images – that of the choreographer Andy Degroat, my mentor, with his tired body, disguised as a crazy black momma street person, dragging herself around amidst these young bodies enhanced by high heels, holding a rose. The image speaks of decadence, but implicitly exacerbates the possible presence of elegance, of a poetics of survival. 1– The title can be read as a reference to the luminous insect, but also to fire that flies. 2– Hors les Murs-Institut Français’ programme. 3– Idioms used by the voguing community.

Numerous fluxes run through our lives and inundate our everyday existences. Faced with a sea of images and information, we are lucky indeed if don’t get swept away and know where we stand. Here, the artist creates a situation, a framework, to confront the disturbing evidence. The piece Et maintenant: 06 21 58 43 67 includes visitors in its creative process by inviting them to take their hands out of their pockets and tap out a text message. With this multiform installation (which spreads over the museum tickets, the banner outside and the wall leading to the entrance hall), Marylène Negro buttonholes the inquisitive and entrusts them with the responsibility of elaborating part of the work. Every year, thousands of billions of text messages are sent around the world, an astronomical figure. In this interactive work, the vertiginously great is invited to participate: the texts that are sent remain anonymous, they are transcribed in real time on a screen and follow each other without being archived. Anything can happen, no censorship constrains freedom of expression. To answer this call is so take a stance and make a choice, to signal one’s life, one’s existence. As with her invitation at the Musée d’Art Contemporain in Strasbourg in 2004, titled Viens (Come), demand is great. We don’t know what will happen, what will manifest itself and how. The work is multi-handed: the author is no longer a solitary demiurge, the authorial figure is in crisis. The texting and the texts are an integral part of the work. This delegating confirms the importance of the beholder in the creative process. The film Daymondes offers us a journey around the world in 80 minutes. By spending four months filming images in the daily newspaper Le Monde, Marylène Negro condenses Jules Verne’s feat and shows a subjective horizon of current reality in late 2011 and early 2012. For three months or more, she filmed the images, manipulated them so that we have time to look at them, to appropriate them, to savour them. By seeking to define her position in relation to them, the artist takes an interest in their materiality; the close-ups that she initiates immerse us physically in journalistic photographs, which are at once documentary and elegant. The soundtrack of the film Daymondes begins and ends with an orchestra tuning up. The wind, unpredictably alternating between blowing and still, slips in between these two instrumental compositions and becomes our companion for this great journey through the world. Guided by her instinct, Negro did not discriminate in what she collected: political facts rub shoulders with cultural and sporting events and adverts. She offers complete decontextualisation: we do not always recognise what we see and the text is only very rarely visible. The glut of images in which we live from day to day – made banal by the digitalisation of imagery – leads to a certain loss of attention. By recycling previously produced images, without adding a single one, Negro resists, refuses the logic of productivism and is careful not to amplify the phenomenon of over-representation. She simply puts her finger on something, makes our eyes alight somewhere. Negro’s art reaches out to the Other. It gives ‘people material for spending time with themselves’, for asking questions and taking a stance. Between allocentrism and collusion, the artist is constantly addressing the passer-by and inviting them to take hold of a situation. In consulting others, she is probing herself. The Other becomes a perfect mirror, an extension of the self. Charlie Godin

marylène negro

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conversation with marylène negro To what extent does your work explore the connections between the individual and the community? Come 06 76 45 37 56 (Strasbourg, 2004) — And you: a text on 06 33 65 00 37 (Le Mans, 2004) — A sign from you on 05 49 27 95 00 (Melle, 2003) — A sign from you on 01 47 97 36 38 (Chamarande, 2002) — Say something Call 02 47 66 92 13 (Tours, 1999) — Willst Du mir ein Foto geben? [Do you want to give me a photo?] (Warth, Switzerland, 2002) — Give me a photo of yourself (Rennes, 1997, and Dudelange, Luxembourg, 2000) —   [I appear/Come as you are/Neither Seen nor Heard] (Tokyo, 2003) — The Gift (Calgary, Canada, 1998) — Express yourself ‘Neither Seen nor Heard’ A film starring you (Galway, Ireland, 1998) — Come and give an image of yourself Shoot of ‘Ni vu-Ni connu’ A film with you (Poitiers, 1997) — Ruimte 126 m2 Direct aan de straat Centrum Amsterdam Warmoesstraat 139 TE HUUR OOK per dag Tel. 020-6381958 [126 sq m space. Giving onto the street. Central Amsterdam. Warmoesstraat 139. FOR RENT. Also by day. Tel . . .] (Amsterdam, 1993) — n Black thoughts n Blue thoughts n Red thoughts n Yellow ideas (Nancy, 1994) — n A very good chance n Quite a good chance n Not much chance n No chance at all (Poitiers, 1993) —  (since 1994: Poitiers, Limerick (Ireland), Paris, Milan, Châteaugiron, Saignon, Vassivière, Luxembourg) — A photo of you (Milan, 1997) — Fax a house Please fax us a house at our fax/phone number: +32 (03) 238 78 83 (Antwerp, 1993) — Rufen Sie die Telefonnummer 069-44 90 70 an. Es ertönt der Signalton des Anrufbeantworters. Sprechen Sie ohne Namensangabe lediglich der vier folgenden Ausdrücke auf das Band: n Oft n Von Zeit zu Zeit n Selten n Niemals [Call . . . After the answering tone, anonymously state one of the following four expressions: Often / From time to time / Sometimes / Never] (Frankfurt, 1993) — Choose a formula and then call 40 21 68 04, preceded by 16-1 if you are calling from outside the capital. On the answering machine, anonymously and without saying anything else, state the expression you have chosen from: n A little n A lot n Passionately n Madly n Not at all (Paris, 1992) — H, HH, HHH, HHHH (New York, 1992) — We are the people (Sète, 1993–Paris, 1997) — In Out (Jerusalem, 1992) — Choose a formula and then call 40 21 68 04, preceded by 16-1 if you are calling from outside the capital. On the answering machine, anonymously and without saying anything else, state the expression you have chosen from: n Very frightened n Quite frightened n Not very frightened n Not frightened at all (Paris, 1992). Invitations, challenges, solicitations, passwords . . . anything can happen when you make a public appeal. The receiver decides. Everyone has their own idea. Choosing to literally attach words to things, through the play of reversals and inversions between the personal and the public, between the inside and the outside, each being made hybrid and porous. Inscribing oneself in the collective landscape, seeing it as a terrain for conquest, drawing attention to transient tools, calling into question language norms. Allowing people to find their own mode of identification. This back and forth between private and public spheres is an attempt to amplify the sphere of art in order to make visible moments or figures of the social bond brought together in an illusory community. How do the pieces you are exhibiting at the