September 5
Alongside historian of architecture Sébastien Radouan, the CommonLab group walked through the urban, political and social history of Bobigny, Pantin, Aubervilliers and La Courneuve.
Sébastien Radouan is an associate lecturer at ENSA Paris La Villette, a member of the AHTTEP team of the AUSser laboratory, and a member of the Association pour un Musée du Logement Populaire or AMuLoP. His research focuses on the history of social housing, urban planning and heritage in the second half of the 20th century. Born and still living in Bobigny, he has carried out a number of research projects in the Seine-Saint-Denis region, including his doctoral thesis on the renewal of Saint-Denis's city centre.
September 6
Open rehearsal around Fajar by Adama Diop
The cohort attended an open rehearsal of Fajar by Adama Diop. After twenty years living in Senegal, followed by twenty years in France, Adama Diop’s Fajar stems from his experience of otherness, seeking to evoke the complex realities and multiple individual destinies obscured by the term 'migrant'.
Adama Diop is an actor and director born in Dakar, Senegal. He arrived in France in 2002 to train at the ENSAD in Montpellier and then at the CNSAD in Paris. His many experiences as an actor have led him to collaborate with the company Si Vous Pouviez Lécher Mon Cœur and Julien Gosselin, as well as with Tiago Rodrigues and Frank Castorf. Alongside his artistic activity, Adama Diop is involved in teaching and has founded an acting school in Dakar.
Conversation with Nadia Yala Kisukidi
The afternoon was dedicated to a conversation with Nadia Yala Kisukidi. The philosopher shared with the Lab artists her experience of otherness, her choice of fiction as a means of exploring her own identity, and the process that led her to write her first novel, La dissociation, in 2022.
Nadia Yala Kisukidi is a French philosopher, writer and academic, who has re-examined the notion of "blackness" with its colonial implications in France and the rest of Europe. Also interested in contemporary art, she has been selected as one of two curators for the 2020 Yango Biennale in DRC. Kisukidi, who has written widely on French and African philosophy, published Bergson ou l'humanité créatrice in 2013 and a novel, La Dissociation, in 2022.
September 7
The morning was dedicated to a group exchange moderated by Virginie Dupray, where each artist had the opportunity to introduce his.her work.
Smaïl Kanouté presented a series of short films dealing with the condition of the black community in the world at different times. With his short films, Smaïl explored how the imagination takes hold of movement to tell personal and collective stories, and how identity, beyond mere heritage, is constructed through creation.
Literally a "choreo-grapher", Smaïl Kanouté blurs boundaries between dance and the visual arts. A graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, he is a graphic designer, visual artist, video artist, dancer and choreographer.
September 8
Open rehearsal around Médecine générale by Ludovic Lagarde
In residency at the MC93, Ludovic Lagarde welcomed the C-Lab artists just a few days before the premiere of this new play based on a text by Olivier Cadiot.
Ludovic Lagarde likes to place his work in durable artistic collaborations. It was at the end of the 1980s that he met Olivier Cadiot, from whom he commissioned a first play, Sisters and Brothers. This was the beginning of a long companionship that would see the director draw from the writer's poetic and novelistic work to deploy all his art. Starting with his cadenced and musical writing, he has composed shows as different as powerful, always accompanied by research on sound and image.
September 8 & 9
Master classe with Nacera Belaza
During the two-day workshop, Nacera Belaza showed how to subtract the body from the mind by freeing it from the often-unconscious resistance and barriers that hinder it. Imagination becomes a vehicle for consciousness, allowing it to circulate freely inside and outside the body, in dialogue with its environment. It’s about identifying one’s own patterns, habits and expectations to escape them.
Nacera Belaza was born in Medea Algeria. She moved to France at the age of five. After a literature degree, she founded in 1989 her own dance company. Self-taught, she entered dance driven by the necessity to express herself and unravel the complexity of a dual cultural background. Her language emerged from the confined body, somehow imprisoned by cultural constraints during childhood and adolescence, drawing first from inner material, and later on from literature. After studying Modern Literature at the University of Reims, she set up her own company in Paris in 1989. Her work earned her the title of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2015. In France, Nacera Belaza was awarded the Syndicat de la Critique Prize for her piece Le Cri and the SACD Choreographic Prize in 2017. In 2021, she was named one of the 100 Women of Culture by the French association Femmes de Culture. She is associate artist to the Théâtre National de Chaillot in Paris and the MC93 in Bobigny and member of Common Stories Advisory Committee.
September 11-15
Anti-Université by Adeline Rosenstein
A research space for project bearers, Adeline Rosenstein’s Anti-Université grew up from the observation that many emerging artists lack spaces to try and implement approaches that are as fragile as vital; how can they research without having to find immediate artistic answers, without having to come up with quick seductive proposals? Built on the principle of sharing references and research techniques, the workshop will keep a generous eye on things so as to encourage formal daring and protect artists' reputations in the event of clumsy groping on serious subjects. Accompanied by Talu, Adeline Rosenstein is working on sensitive feedback methodology so that these risky and concrete attempts meet the perspectives of the other participants without excluding them. Or a certain utopia of happy disagreement!
Settled in Brussels, director, actress and author Adeline Rosenstein (1971) is a native of Geneva and a German citizen. Her approach, which can be described as documentary theatre writing, brings her face to face with questions of society and history in an approach that is both committed and reflexive. After training as a clown with Pierre Dubey in Geneva, she graduated from the Nissan Nativ acting school in Jerusalem in 1995, before completing her training with a Bat-HfS-Ernst Busch directing diploma in Berlin in 2002. The Décris-ravage series, a six-episode documentary project on the question of Palestine won the 2014 Prix de la Critique and the 2016 Prix SACD Découvertes. Between 2019 and 2022 she created the four episodes of Laboratoire Poison a documentary show about the representation and repression of four resistance movements.
Talu is a non-binary trans theatre and film actor, rapper and singer who trained at the Conservatoire de Liège in Belgium and works with Adeline Rosenstein's Maison Ravage company and the Gender Panik self-support and music collective in Brussels. They are currently particularly interested in the dynamics of mediation, intra-community justice and reparation in minority groups, in the creation and maintenance of empowering material solidarities independent of the institution, and in the production of narratives and artistic forms that feed these dynamics.
The week ended with presentations of some of the artists' projects to smaller groups (MC93 staff and audiences invited by the artists).
September 15
The artists met Anna Novovic, deputy artistic director of the Riksteatern to discuss about their expectations for the Stockholm fortnight.
September 16
A two-hour collective feedback session, moderated by Virginie Dupray, was held.
© Virginie Dupray