Kapwani Kiwanga / Patricia et Marie-France Martin
This new session of Partitions (Performances) associates two forms of discourse marked by one and the same interest in the counter-culture and popular culture as sources of references capable of underwriting a scientific argument and turning fiction into nothing less than authentic facts.
Kapwani Kiwanga finds the sources of a possible history of Africa’s astronomical heritage in B movies and the imagery of the Afro-futurist movement. In the performance series “Patrick”, Patricia and Marie-France Martin proceed by way of linguistic distancing and digression, mixing genres and blurring categories.
Kapwani Kiwanga / Afrogalactique : Les manuscripts de l’espace profond
For her third participation in the Scores (Performances) programme, Kapwani Kiwanga is presenting the last part of her Afrogalactique trilogy, this time broaching Africa’s astronomical heritage. Started in 2011, the aim of the Afrogalactiques reports is to question the notion of Afro-futurism by a re-writing of hegemonic narratives about Africa. Playing an anthropologist of the future, in her richly documented performances she mixes historical facts and elements of fiction, exploring the history of possible kinds of United States of Africa.
Kapwani Kiwanga was born in 1978 in Hamilton, Canada. After studying Anthropology and Comparative Religions at McGill University in Montreal, she was involved in the “Le seine” research programme at the Paris School of Fine Arts, then at Le Fresnoy – National studio of contemporary art, Her films have been twice nominated at the BAFA, and won prizes at many festivals. She has presented her work in particular in Paris at the Centre Pompidou and the Jeu de Paume, the Glasgow Contemporary Art Centre, the International Biennal of Contemporary Art in Almeria, Spain, at the Kassel Documentary Film Festival, and at Kaleidoscope Arena in Rome, and is currently showing her work at Salt Istanbul. She is represented by the Tanja Wagner gallery in Berlin.
Patricia et Marie-France Martin / Patrick, simplement
Since 2008, between the world of visual arts and live spectacle, the twin sisters Patricia and Marie-France Martin have been developing a series of performances, each devised as an episode in nothing less than a saga, in which “Patrick” is the anti-hero. Drawing the outlines of a character with infinite incarnations inspired as much by Patrick Bateman of American Psycho as by Patrick Juvet and Patrick Modiano. Since “Patrick tu viens?” and “Patrick, reviens!”, in 2008, the Martin sisters have had fun hijacking the popular series genre in forms of lectures making use as much of the popularization of a philosophical, literary and psychoanalytical line of thinking as the effects of a “Cabaret Voltaire”, fuelled by popular songs.
Born in Sierre in Switzerland, they are both graduates of the Paris School of Fine Arts. They have presented their work in particular in Paris at the Centre Pompidou as part of the New Festival, at the Swiss Cultural Centre and, recently, at the Museum of Hunting and Nature in Brussels, at the Halles in Schaerbeck and in Bozar – Palais des Beaux-Arts, at the Frac Alsace, at the actOral festival in Marseille, at La Ferme du Buisson, and at the CCA in Warsaw, in Poland.
With the support of the Swiss Embassy in France.
