interview with Latifa Laâbissi about Grimace du réel, by Gilles Amalvi

Grimace du réel is a programme which assembles plays, film projections, debates. In what way for you does this project integrate itself with the Dancing Museum?
The first thing is the possibility offered by the Museum to create a time apart: a time that can allow to bring to light the archeology of a work, to unfold its stakes, to bring back the sources: sources of inspiration, of reflexion. Within a “normal” type of showing there isn’t necessarily the opportunity to do so – even if a certain number of people who present my work usually do it with a lot of subtlety. The Dancing Museum allows to show the conditions of emergence of the works; to see what actualizes and historicizes itself... Besides, the fact that Boris Charmatz calls this institution “museum”, puts forward a certain amount of interesting questions. Each project housed there invents a new fiction, which integrates itself, and displaces the fiction of the museum. I went through the museum differently at the time of rebutoh, when I reinterpreted an extract of the witch by Mary Wigman, in a drawn out version... Every time, heterogeneous layers are unfolded, de-hierarchizing the notion of museum icon – wether through quotation, through actualization or through creation...

L’horreur comique (Comical horror) – the first title suggested for this programme – sends back to a cycle of films shown at Beaubourg – which developed the link between laughter and cruelty. What does that idea of comical horror send back to in your own work?
There is the cycle and the book: L’horreur comique, esthétique du slapstick (comical horror, the aesthetics of slapstick). The texts collected in Philippe-Alain Michaud’s book were an important source of inspiration for me. I found in them a closeness to what I am trying to articulate on stage, a closeness finally greater than to other choreographic works. The question of the decoding of the discourse levels is rather uncommon in the choreographic field. There is also a dimension of “social criticism“ that seems to me almost taboo. During the cycle, I saw again some works I already knew, but the fact that they were assembled and problematized together allowed to read them differently. I would like that type of rereading of the works to take place in Grimace du réel.

In your opinion, how can a choregraphic work mobilize together the dimensions of body, of social criticism – operate their assembling and their decoding?
I think it’s an area of thought and work that is fairly difficult to approach. Probably the strong influence of American dance – the development of an abstract culture – had an impact in the field of choreography. The influence of Merce Cunningham in particular – by whom actually I was trained in part. When one observes some aspects of Valeska Gert’s work, one is much closer to those questions. Today, the question of the face remaind quite unexplored. It’s a very important notion for me – the human figure, the disfigurement, the wry face. Comical horror shows it very clearly: one is confronted to a repressed part of modernity. For example, I was quite surprised to see to what extent the nudity in Self Portrait camouflage could be difficult to watch; for some spectators, it was almost unbearable. Beyond nudity itself, the exhibited figure confronts us to a social and political body. That body is not easy to represent, nor is it easy to watch. I wasn’t trying to be deliberately provocative: I consider Self Portrait rather like a musical score. If one analyses it from the point of view of the body, it is a series of tensions, in a rather extreme slowness. But everything depends on the way of loading the figure, of loading it with signs, in contextualizing it, operating an assemblage – assemblage that doesn’t get merged into a straightforward narrative, but tells something else than the purely physical aspect of the body.

With this notion of “figure“, one touches at the same time the terror, the joy of having a body, and the representation of the other. How are those two dimensions summoned in Grimace du réel?
I believe what’s important about programming is to remain in the mission of art: to show works. At the same time, to bring to light the archeology of the works, to show their conditions of emergence – when has it been done, when, what shock does it produce, what load of reality – it’s necessarily to be in direct contact with reality. The encounters with the public will allow, I hope, to put in relation the various layers exposed. But the event of the encounter is not an easy one to create either. For an interesting exchange to emerge, it is important to establish a reciprocation between what the works evoke for every one, what touches us – and the translations, the passages which take place towards a reflection on a social state.

For this project, you have invited Brazilian choreographer Luiz De Abreu. Does his work bring about a new perspective – a particular binding between European colonization, and Indian and African cultures?
Yes – but I believe that as well as in Self Portrait camouflage as in O samba do crioulo doido, the subject is rather: how the thought is colonized. Today, we live in an period that is emblematic of such a colonization of the imaginary – in France and in more general way. In Self Portrait camouflage, the colonial question is a symptom, it indicates something about the internal organization of the play. This play is a fiction and a self-fiction. The historical dimension is brought into play, in the way those fictions are put together, but the play constantly overflows that context. The opening towards the works by Luiz brings in another series of layers – that concern the fact of being Black and homosexual in Brazil, without ever being reduced to this only. I hope the spectators will discover his work without focusing on a particular dimension.

I get the impression that we have a creative paradox there. For example, in his play I wanna be wanna be, Boyzie Cekwana starts by making up his face with black shapes, then he paints it entirely in black, before covering it with white talcum powder – in the way of the white actors of the “minstrel shows”, who made up their face in black. A Black who paints himself in black, then in white... One could say that those works try to capture an impossible image, because already captured by a dominant imaginary...
Yes, I think it might be the function of the “figure” that I was speaking of: to be sufficiently plastic, elusive, in order to succeed to “trap that impossible image”... In Self Portrait, I tried to to see to it that the built figure is never trapped in a particular place, that it can’t be reduced to a mere point of what composes it. Even if at some moment, very clearly, I interpellate the politicians, I make myself the spokeswoman of a popular figure, with a North African accent – the figure is never exactly what it claims to be. In the first part, the less deciphered, one finds oneself again in front of something strange, something foreign. Afterwords, it is an heterogeneous figure, recognizable by some signs, but which summons various levels, in order to have different modes of impact on the imaginary.

Through the proposed programme, which includes your solo, Self Portrait camouflage, the film Flaming creatures, and the solo by Luiz De Abreu – a double dimension arises, bringing into light the relation between “politics of the colonized body” and “politics of the genre”. Do both dimensions seem to you indefectibly bound together?
Yes, insofar as those questions meet on the level of the minority. Concerning Jack Smith’s film, beyond the impact it had on me – I believe it is the way it disfigures what composes it, that interests me. There are the formal reasons which build up a figure of horror, and the way those figures work on the question of minority. I believe it is at work in each of his projects.

Among the films you quote as being important sources for you, there is also The Mad Masters by Jean Rouch. To reformulate the question differently, in what way do films like The Mad Masters and Flaming creatures tell us something about this minority body – about a body that escapes the conventions of society’s gaze?
I would say that the strength of those works is a result of their potential of emancipation – the way they assert and liberate themselves. Unlike Flaming creatures, Jean Rouch’s The Mad Masters is not a fiction, but a documentary. The question of emancipation is at it’s core. Jean Rouch documents a rite directly in relation with the colonial situation – a rite which reverses the codes of the colonial power. For Smith’s films it is different, fiction produces a detachment from the medium, a shifting of the gaze. The way the bodies are shown is taken charge of with great strength, and re-situates the gaze within the social space. In that sense, the film acts like a virus, a virus we would all be infected with. Generally speaking, I am only interested in works that consider subjectivation as a complex fact, to be constantly resituated.

The project includes a section called “public speech”. How will it be managed, and how visible will it be during the week-end?
We are working on it presently. At the start, there is a very simple idea: the Garage is situated in a quarter, and the border should be less impenetrable between this place and the people living around it. So I suggested to meet the associations working in this quarter, while remaining careful – because as an artist, I am not a place, I amnot into problematics of “relation avec le public”. My question would rather be: who is it aimed at?

Could those plays, which constitute “acts of subjectivation”, allow collective forms of subjectivation?
It started with that idea, which is exactly what is at stake – but I think it should be moderated a bit. Wouldn’t it be another project, independant from this programme? A project on the long-range, where one could show works, discuss about them, work on the table... One must take care of not instrumentalizing the work itself, as well as the public. Grimace du réel is different from a project like Thomas Hirschorn’s Precarious Museum, which is very clear about its goals – wether one agrees with them or not. To be slightly cynical, the risk, when one mixes art, pedagogy, and the political intentions... is to get trapped in questions of quotas: a quota of foreigners, a quota of women, a quota of handicapped persons... Not to mention that Self Portrait camouflage, Flaming creatures, or O samba do crioulo doido are not exactly works that are easy to grasp...

This programme will include conferences, debates. What kind of points of view do you plan to meet with?
The idea is to start from the artworks, to carry out a deciphering, to bring their archeology into light. After that, we are now thinking about the intervening parties. The question is to decide in what field – rather the aesthetic or the historical one? If I invite a historian specialized in the colonial questions, the risk is to pull the reading towards that side. I wouldn’t want it to be the filter that allows to interpret everything. I would also wish the programme to include other cinematographic works. I asked Luiz De Abreu to point out to me some films that were sources in his research work – in order to confront different references. After that, maybe some other films will be shown of Jack Smith, whose work is not well known. I’m also thinking of Jean Rouch’s films, and of Notes for an African Oresteia by Pasolini, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul by Fassbinder, Divine Intervention by Elia Suleiman... By the way, there is a very fine interview with Elia Suleiman, where he talks about the link between the comical and the horrific – the way the comical works for him like a survival strategy.

In your solo as well as in Luiz De Abreu’s, one finds the idea of dressing in the flag. What does such clothing correspond to for you?
The first time I saw Luiz’s solo, it was as part of a programme at the LiFE in Saint Nazaire. Christophe Wavelet had spoken to me of the subject of his work, but not of its formal aspect. As a result, when I saw the use he made of the flag, I was surprised and amused. In the case of Self Portrait, I first looked for signs with a certain degree de ciphering. The flag is very explicit, but it covers various levels of reading, it combines with other signs. Once I had decided that it was a sign I wished to use, I tried to incorporate it in the fiction – I dress in it, and I go as far as ingurgitating it... Once I had been able to give it different statuses, I could accept it as a sign one could set a trap in to. And then the tricoloured stripes were cut in the length.. so, depending on the way it is used, it doesn’t say the same thing... At some times, it’s not the French flag, it’s the Dutch one... It even helped me once in Beaubourg... The stage manager told me: with the new laws, one isn’t allowed to use the flag, it can become an insult to the symbols of the Republic. And I said to him: but it’s not the French flag, it’s the Dutch flag! The fact of using or not those signs with “low degree of ciphering” is really something I’ve been wondering about. It is also the case for the North African accent. These are signs wich can quite quickly trap us on the question of meaning.

Finally, each element of the play can be read on the side of the “self-portrait”, and on the side of the “camouflage”...
Absolutely. Each element of the dramatic assembling plays with that equilibrium. Part of the drama is built around the speech: a mute speech, a speech imitating the accent of North Africa... but the only moment where one hears my “real” voice, is when I say: “It’s strange, there is always a moment where I feel a slight anguish...” It’s my only frontal address. I believe everything is a matter of dosage.

Interview by Gilles Amalvi - Rennes, January 8th 2010