Here and elsewhere

Communities: chosen or endured

as part of "That which is already there"

Ateliers Médicis sets up a place for dialogue, experimentation, innovation and sharing beyond the usual social and political categories. 
Artists returning from residencies share their stories and perspectives, in the form of conversations or from the stage, through words or performance.

Les Ateliers Médicis construisent un lieu où dialoguer, expérimenter, innover et partager au-delà des catégories sociales et politiques habituelles.   

De retour de résidences, les artistes partagent leurs récits et points de vues, autour de conversations ou sur scène, à travers la parole ou la performance.

Doctoral researcher Chayma Drira gathers numerous people together and sets up a transatlantic correspondence between Clichy-sous-Bois and Chicago, thus instigating an alternative and independent form of diplomacy via the dynamic forces of working-class neighbourhoods. Dancer Michel "Meech" Onomo reinterprets a performance by Faheem Majeed developed at Chicago’s South Side Community Art Center. Actor and theatre director Sébastien Kheroufi shares with Pierre Bourdieu and Peter Handke a compelling need to rid us of our inhibitions, to start with our fantasies in order to destroy them.

Friday, 2 June 2023

Proud displays

as part of "That which is already there"

Artists gather, engage and interrogate each other to retrieve or invent memories that are proud and fluid, brimming with a thousand stories.

Parading around, getting moving, demonstrating Double Dutch with Pascale Obolo and the Vitry-sur-Seine club, Dappan Koothu (a traditional southern Indian street dance) with dancer and choreographer Feroz Sahoulamide, and electro dance with Electro Street. The artist Justine Berthillot, together with the musician Xavier Roumagnac, celebrates skating, using rhythm and acrobatics.

Saturday, 3 June 2023

"Nuit blanche"

as part of "That which is already there"

For this year’s Nuit Blanche (All-Nighter), the artist and writer Aristide Barraud shares a private thought in public on the Centre Pompidou Piazza. Like a socio-poetic lightning bolt, it appears stuck to the paving, in large letters: "But who would I be had I grown up somewhere else?" The work then becomes interactive, allowing everyone to add their own words to the "grand collage".

Inside, in gallery 3, fashion shows like no others are taking place. Bodies sashay and defy the space full of creations by Article 15k, Smaïl Kanouté and XULY.Bët. Then it’s time to rest and explore dreams in the immersive universe conjured up by Camille Juthier. The artist transforms the gallery 3 into an immersive space. Visitors are plunged into darkness and then invited to lie down and observe materials and lights, to the accompaniment of an audio performance by Mélodie Blaison and Low Lov.

Saturday, 3 june 2023, from 8 pm

Step up

as part of "That which is already there"

Artists take over spaces that are unoccupied, silenced or confiscated and cause them to evolve – socially, politically or artistically. It’s about speaking out and not waiting to be invited to do so. Ateliers Médicis’ ambition is to be a place that is spoken from, and not about.

Stepping up is about "giving shape" to ideas and, therefore, inhabiting them. Local interactive media project Étincelle plays host to architecture firm Encore Heureux and architect Meriem Chabani. The sociologist and writer Kaoutar Harchi, in a reading, broaches the issue of intimacies colliding in social and collective realities. Architect and researcher Francesco Sebregondi and architect Feda Wardak discuss the impacts of the buildings that surround us and, conversely, the question of what architectural power citizens have.
"That which is already there" concludes with bodies and words stepping up in the gallery, with performances by Chris Cyrille, Silina Syan and Seumboy Vrainom :€.

Sunday, 4 June 2023