DECENTREDERSPACE

L’Espace est Consommable, L’Espace est Comestible

Sisters From Another Mister

Notre regard d’artiste flâneur. En regardant l’espace comme consommables. En regardant l’espace comme étant comestible. Pendant notre séjour a Marseille nous avons crée deux interventions artistiques ; une basé sur une série de promenades en entourant les ensembles résidentiels fermé en marchant en contact continue entre nous (notre épaule) et le murs/portails, le projet sera documenté avec images et vidéo et le résultat final sera le vêtement consommé que nous portions. Notre deuxième intervention, ici présentée, repose sur la carte des résidences fermé de Marseille. Nous avons retracé et recoupé toutes les résidences fermé sur du papier comestible et nous invitons les habitants de Marseille a manger les petits
découpages. flyer inside

Nous sommes 3 artistes (suisse, anglaise et lithuanie) ensemble nous formons SistersFromAnotherMister
www.sistersfromanothermister.co.uk, nous vivons et travaillons a Londres et pendant la semaine entre le 19 et le 25 Mai nous allons participer a une mini-residence a Marseille au DeCenterDerEspace https://decentrederspace.org/. La recherche de DeCenterDerEspace est basé sur une exploration critique d’échanges culturelles par nouvelle méthodes d’échanges de pratiques artistiques.

The Zaha Hadidist’s return to Marseille

Steven Ounanian & Joanne Wardrop

The year is 2082:

‘We have developed a number of Medical technologies to ease the anxieties and concerns of the transition. Knowing what we do, we feel an obligation to aid our ancestors with their growing pains. Thus we have sent forth two Hadidist time travellers, with cures from our new world to help the ancient civilisation transform itself into the new Hadidist Order.’

The Zaha Hadidists have touched down in Marseille, to heal and to worship before the kaaba of Euromediterranee. Offering potions, tinctures and remedies from the near future. They will be working their healing and well-being in and around the Vieux Port from May 1-May 3.

A Steven Ounanian and Joanne Wardrop project for DeCentreDerSpace mini-residency (Marseille-Provence Capital of Culture 2013). Sponsored by CSM, counterproductions, Radio Montagne Noir, the Hadidist Foundation, Marseille OFF and the Reunion Island Distillery.

If Culture hasn’t yet answered your prayers… Si la Culture n’a pas encore répondu à vos prières…

Steven Ounanian and Joanne Wardrop – Marseille avril – mai 2013

Du 27 avril au 3 mai, votre maquette en carton bien à vous de la Tour Zaha Hadid, Joanne Wardrop et Steven Ounaninan viendront vendre des ex-votos, des potions et remèdes pour tous vos problèmes physique et métaphysiques. Si la culture a crée pour vous une Cité-Moderne, et vous n’en êtes pas encore très satisfaits, ne vous en faites pas, nous arrivons pour soigner votre anxiété et vos ennuis de santé qui ont pris racine dans la Cité-Moderne.

Apportez vos maladies douleurs, anxiété et malheurs quleconques, et nous vous offrons une consultation gratuite pour appliquer et metttre en place un traitement spécifique… Ensemble nous rechercherons la santé et l’épanouissement.

Inside Out Blues (Sur L’Envers Blues)

Song-film/Performance by Anne Robinson

Song-film: The song Inside Out Blues makes a sound thread for a film: the voice is on the inside coming out.. Surrealist thinker Artaud’s last work, written for French radio, To Have Done With the Judgement of God worked with the extremes of unsettling ‘mad’ noises, shouts, cries and glossolalia. Artaud particularly wanted workers, people working with their hands and bodies, perhaps those most imprisoned in the body, to hear his work. Scheduled to air early in 1948, it was pulled from the broadcasting schedule at the last minute. The night before it had been due to air, a programme was broadcast on French radio advocating engagement with American popular culture as an antidote to the recently ended Nazi occupation: intentional hegemonic repression. Repression still visible in the gross gentrifying of Marseilles as ‘capital of capital’.

The blues is an American form and an African form, a human form, a workers’ form… a passionate, convulsive, cruel, direct and affecting kind of utterance with a deep magic mojo invocation of what is lost and what could be.. voices raising disembodied inside-out spirits of the lost and dispossessed and of Artaud the mad radio star of Marseilles who left and never came back and of maddened, suicided painters in the southern light. The voice comes from the inside and emerges as noise we feel as much as understand, a spirit form carried on the air while the body creeps, crawls, contorts and cringes.

On the edge of fortress Europe, the voice can cross borders in frenzied dance that soars over the razor wires of the rich and dives /’divers’ under the sea. ‘chantier: acces interdit’ become ‘à chanter pour la liberté’… across the laws and borders made to keep people out, to let the outside-in. Algerian, Tunisian, African invisible spirits fleeting on the streets, out of sight, fleeting, migrant, but also on the other side, letting the inside-out.. millions of others closed in, chained, imprisoned in the new fortresses of capital.. not allowed out to the edge of the sea, to the boats and the deep.. ‘Acces Interdit’, you are being filmed..

Performance:

A blues invoking the spirits of Artaud and the workers of Marseille and drawing on the texts Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society and To Have Done With the Judgement of God, is passed on from singer to encountered listener to singer again in a series of encounters through the streets until there is a moment of voices all at once singing through the city. Voices rise in a deranged, murmuring wave. The singer dances and the spirit of Artaud, Van Gogh and a thousand un-named workers dance ‘as in a frenzy of dancehalls’ back in the streets of Marseille.

Extract from song/text used on streets on May 28th, 2013:

‘At the time you have been given and wherever you may be, please sing this line to the tune you learned or to another tune:

Just like in the frenzy of the dancehalls

I’m dancing inside out

Just like in the frenzy of the dancehalls

I’m dancing on the wrong side out

(Repeat for a few minutes or for as long as you can)

‘Inside Out Blues’ ..is based on the final part of a radio play by Antonin Artaud called ‘To Have Done With the Judgement of God’. This text was to have been broadcast on the radio in France on on February 2, 1948, but it was cancelled and Artaud died a month later. The piece follows his idea of the Theatre of Cruelty, with screams, cries and other unsettling sounds. Artaud was born and grew up in Marseilles and later became a poet, film actor, theatre director and surrealist. He is,without doubt, one of the most influential artistic and intellectual figures of the 20th century, but he has been absent from these streets during the 2013 ‘city of culture’. Artaud especially wanted his radio play to be heard by workers.’

Rhône Nucléaire: the Folklore of Cultural Capital

Miyuki Kasahara & Calum F. Kerr

The Rhone is one of the major European rivers, rising in Switzerland and running throughout southeastern France it has been an important inland trade and transportation route since Greek and Roman times, connecting the cities of Arles, Avignon, Valence, Vienne and Lyon to the Mediterranean ports of Fos, Marseille and Sète.

There are 59 nuclear power stations in France. France relies on nuclear power for nearly 80% of its electricity. Although consuming only 20% the rest is exported to other European countries, the UK being one of the biggest importers of this electricity from France.

The Rhone has 5 different nuclear plants along its banks – Bugey, St. Alban, Cruas, Tricastin and Phénix with a total of 15 power stations. In May 2013 Miyuki Kasahara and Calum F. Kerr walked various points along the ‘nuclear corridor’ of the Rhone Valley. Their experiences recorded primarily through sound recording and film, included Marcule Nuclear Research Facility and Tricastin near Pierrelatte, one of the largest Nuclear plants run by major suppliers Areva and EDF*. They also searched for a nuclear waste storage facility at Monteux and a food irradiation plant in Marseille.

In a popular medieval legend, the ‘Tarasque’ is a terrible, scaly, bison-like dragon that burns everything it touches. The Tarasque escapes from hell near Nerluc (modern-day Tarascon) on the Rhone, destroying boats and swallowing riverside inhabitants. The story of Tarasque and Saint Martha is very similar to that of “Beauty and the Beast”. The French government and other countries have fallen in love with Nuclear power. Have they become a modern day Tarasque falling in love with Saint Martha? Or are they ‘Dracs’ another Provençal legend, a creature that draws humans into the river, tempting them with precious rewards?

A related strand examined the work of the mysterious William Branch-Johnson, the English writer of ‘Folktales of Provence’ in 1927. Jeanne Louise Calment (1875-1997) the oldest documented person lived in Arles and died age 122. Born in 1893, William Branch-Johnson has no recorded death day, is he alive in Provence and as ancient as Jeanne Louise? In May 2013 the artists followed in the footsteps of ‘Folktales of Provence’ combining Branch’s local knowledge with a search for modern-day legends surrounding Marseille-Provence Capital of Culture 2013. Travelling through the region, Tarascon; Les Baux; Salon; St Remy; Alyscamps; the ancient necropolis at Arles; Pont Saint-Bénezet in Avignon and the Romani Festival of St Sarah at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer deep in the Carmargue, where the Rhone meets the sea.

*EDF is one of the major sponsors of Marseille-Provence Capital of Culture 2013.