Atlas of Bifurcations

Opening evening

of the Diep~haven 2021 Festival
festival of ideas and contemporary creation

where:
D.S.N. – Scène Nationale de Dieppe, Normandy
Auditorium

when:
Friday, October 22 – 6:30-10 p.m.

With Arno Bertina (writer), James Noël (poet), Sophie Wahnich (historian), Aliocha Imhoff & Kantuta Quirós (festival directors).
And the screening of Children of Unquiet by Mikhail Karikis (2013-2014, 15 min)

 

Born in 1975, Arno Bertina is the author of some fifteen books, including Le Dehors ou la migration des truites (Actes Sud 2001); the abundant Anima Motrix (Verticales 2006), which recounts the drift or flight of a politician from the North to the South of Italy; and Des châteaux qui brûlent (Verticales 2017; Folio 2019). In this fiction, a secretary of state is sequestered by the employees of a Breton slaughterhouse about to be placed in judicial liquidation.  In March 2020, Verticales published L’Age de la première passe, a long documentary account of work done in the Congo with street girls, minors prostituting themselves to survive. Arno Bertina has also adapted Malcolm Lowry’s Sous le Volcan and Les Démons, by Dostoyevsky (with Oliver Rohe) for France Culture. He was a resident at the Villa Medici (Rome) in 2004-2005. A critical volume appeared in the summer of 2018, published by Classiques-Garnier in the collection “Ecrivains francophones”. Arno Bertina is publishing Ceux qui trop supportent. Le combat des ex-GM&S (2017-2020) (Verticales, 2021), about the struggle of the GM&S factory workers.

 

James Noël is a poet, born in Haiti in 1978. He lives in Veules-les-Roses. Among his latest published collections: Le Pyromane adolescent, followed by Le Sang visible du vitrier (Points, 2015); Anthologie de poésie haïtienne contemporaine (Points, 2015); La Migration des murs (Galaade, 2016). He also hosts the magnificent journal IntranQu’îllités. Adored by his prestigious elders, James Noël is today one of the major voices of contemporary Haitian poetry. With his harsh and sensitive pen, his poems oscillate between hymns to the flesh and punches, such as the incandescent Pyromane Adolescent or Cheval de feu. After an Anthology of Contemporary Haitian Poetry under his direction, his poetic pamphlet La Migration des murs (The Migration of the Walls), which began in the rubble of the earthquake and ended at the Villa Medici, James Noël published his very first novel: Belle merveille (Zulma, 2017). A novel in poetic prose, luminous, where memories of the earthquake also give way to the author’s lucid and ironic tone on international aid. James Noël writes in Creole with his left hand and in French with his right hand, not hesitating to call upon musicians to enrich his texts. He also created with Pascale Monnin, IntranQu’îllités , a literary and artistic review where “in a brilliant complicity, the images escort the texts without illustrating or commenting on them” as Mkenzie Orcel says.

 

Sophie Wahnich is director of research at the CNRS (IIAC/EHESS), she works between history, anthropology and political studies on the French Revolution. She questions our present by listening to the advice, opinions and perplexities experienced by our revolutionary ancestors. She has worked more particularly on emotions as a faculty of judgment during the revolutionary moment in the following works L’impossible citoyen l’étranger dans le discours de la Révolution française, Paris, Albin Michel 1997- réédition semi-poche 2010, La liberté ou la mort, essai sur la terreur et le terrorisme, La fabrique édition, 2003, (translation in English by Verso, in German by Matthes & Seitz), La longue patience du peuple, 1792 naissance de la République, Paris, Payot 2008, Les émotions la Révolution française et le présent, Paris CNRS éditions, 2009, la Révolution française n’est pas un mythe, Paris, Klincksieck, 2017.
“And what do those who want neither virtue nor terror want?” asked Saint Just in the spring of the year 1794. And what do those who want neither programmed degrowth nor refugees, nor climatic or political migrants want, and terrorise those who protest in the very name of the democratic heritage of an awareness of a community of destiny for humanity and henceforth for all living things? (…) How can we cope? Can we cope? Between past and present, we will try to open up avenues of reflection for a subversive and perhaps restorative political proposal.” (Sophie Wahnich)

Screening of Children of Unquiet by Mikhail Karikis, 2013-2014, 15 min.
Children of Unquiet (2013-14) was created with a group of forty-five children living in Valle del Diavolo, Italy, a volcanically active region in Tuscany that inspired Dante’s Inferno. The site of the world’s first geothermal power plant, the area has recently become depopulated following the automation of the process of generating energy.
Karikis’s film orchestrates a speculative children’s take-over of an industrial village abandoned by their parents’ generation. These children explore the village through song and play. They read about insects and love from philosophical texts by Toni Negri and Michael Hardt, and they create an aural portrait of their surroundings by imitating sounds they hear – hissing steam, subterranean rumbling and industrial droning – harmonising both with the environment and with each other.
Karikis’s film presents the timeless power of the area’s natural landscape in counterpoint to the decay of its settlements and socio-economic structures. It also suggests the possibility of collective expression, hopeful and imaginative resistance for future generations.

Mikhail Karikis is a Greek-British artist based in London and Lisbon. His work in moving image, sound, performance and other media is exhibited in leading contemporary art biennials, museums and film festivals internationally. Through collaborations with individuals and/or communities located beyond the circles of contemporary art and (in recent years) with children, teenagers, young adults and people with disabilities, Karikis develops socially embedded projects that prompt an activist imaginary and rouse the potential to imagine possible or desired futures of self-determination and potency. Centering on listening as an artistic strategy and focusing on themes of social and environmental justice, his projects highlight alternative modes of human action and solidarity, while nurturing critical attention, dignity and tenderness. Shortlisted for the Film London Jarman Award, UK (2016 & 2019) Karikis exhibits widely. Recent solo exhibitions include Ferocious Love, Tate Liverpool, UK (2020); Children of Unquiet, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino, IT (2019); For Many Voices, MIMA, UK (2019-2020); I Hear You, De la Warr Pavilion, UK (2019-2020); Mikhail Karikis, MORI Art Museum, Tokyo, JP (2o19); No Ordinary Protest, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2018-2019); Ain’t Got No Fear, Turku Art Museum, FI (2018); The Chalk Factory, Aarhus 2017 European Capital of Culture, DK (2017); Love Is the Institution of Revolution, Casino Luxembourg Forum d’art Contemporain, LU (2017) and elsewhere.  His work has shown at 2nd Riga Biennial, LV (2020); Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2016, IN; British Art Show 8, UK (2015-2017); Steirischer Herbst, AT (2015); 5th Thessaloniki Biennale, GR (2015); 19th Biennale of Sydney, AU (2014); Mediacity Seoul/SeMA Biennale, Seoul, KR (2014); Videonale 14, Kunstmusuem Bonn, DE (2013); 2nd Aichi Triennale, Nagoya, JP (2013); Manifesta 9, Ghenk, BE (2012); Danish Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennale, IT (2011). Selected group museum exhibitions include Care Society, Gyeongnam Art Museum, KR (2021); Earthbeats, Kunsthaus Zurich, CH (2021); Ear to the Ground, New Orleans Museum of Art, US (2019); State of Union, Ian Potter Museum, Melbourne, AU (2018); Staging Film, Busan Museum of Art, KR (2016); Art in the Age of Energy and Raw Material, FKA Witte de With, NL (2015); Listening: Hayward Touring (Baltic 39 & The Bluecoat), UK (2014-2015); Inside, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, FR (2014-2015); Assembly, TATE Britain, London, UK (2014); Aquatopia, TATE St Ives & Nottingham Contemporary, UK (2013-2014). Karikis has performed internationally including at Royal Opera House Covent Garden, London, and Barbican Theatre, London. His sound works have been published world-wide by Bjork, DJ Spooky, UNICEF, MIT and on Sub Rosa records, and broadcast on most major European national radio stations including the BBC Radio 3, RAI3 and Radio France.