SILICE AMORPHE
Part I
" A journey through the state of matter. "
An Installation - Performance
by
Sarah Konté & Selma Stocker
Videos, Sculptures and Sound composed by Sarah Konté.
Danced by Luella Rebbeck & Selma Stocker.
Choreographed by Selma Stocker.
Silice AmorphE is an installation performance, using dance, video, sculpture and sound exploring the ever-changing state of materials.
As molecules in motion, two bodies dance through changing states of matter. Via the medium of glass, like an enchanting mirror, reflections blur the lines between what's seen and unseen.
Based on prayers written on the altar and left there as an offering to the Mirror-Hand, protective goddess of individuality, two bodies meet.
Exploring the quest for identity in a timeless world, two bodies come together and seek to adapt to a new being in the world. The song of a mermaid beckons, guiding them into this new world.
Between a voyage of initiation to a new land and into themselves, the bodies test themselves, look at each other and come together. Through the eyes of the other, an attempt to understand each other takes shape, and individualities become stronger together, in a shared sense of listening.
As molecules in motion, two bodies dance through changing states of matter. Via the medium of glass, like an enchanting mirror, reflections blur the lines between what's seen and unseen.
Based on prayers written on the altar and left there as an offering to the Mirror-Hand, protective goddess of individuality, two bodies meet.
Exploring the quest for identity in a timeless world, two bodies come together and seek to adapt to a new being in the world. The song of a mermaid beckons, guiding them into this new world.
Between a voyage of initiation to a new land and into themselves, the bodies test themselves, look at each other and come together. Through the eyes of the other, an attempt to understand each other takes shape, and individualities become stronger together, in a shared sense of listening.
Sarah Konté
Photos by © Basil Perot et Agathe Bourrée
Mind Channels - visual and sound installation - 2023
french version :
All that jazz
Il est peu de mots qui pose autant de désaccords que celui de jazz. Son origine, nébuleuse, le place tantôt dans un héritage africain (jasi qui signifie « vivre à toute allure, sous pression » ou jaizza « son lointain des percussions » ou encore le mot bantou jaja « danser, faire de la musique »), tantôt dans une descendance française (jaser, « causer, babiller ») ou encore anglaise (to jazz : « copuler »). Qu’il soit lié à une fleur, à un jeu de carte ou au sport, le mot est pris dans un flou sémantique et une aporie quand il s’agit de le traduire. Pour autant, dans toutes les acceptions qu’on lui donne, se glisse le sentiment d’une énergie particulière qui le renvoie à une force, quitte à ce que celle-ci soit obscène.
Ce souffle de jazz, proprement pluriel et indicible, se diffuse dans l’installation Mind Channels de Sarah Konté. Il l’innerve, peut-être l’énerve. C’est ce que signalent les premiers mots de la bande sonore, « All that jazz », comme une alarme inquiétante et suave qui sonne en boucle, dans un flux et un flot qui chercheraient à dégager, dans l’expression, un sens indétecté. Puis, se décline une phrase « I’d like to see » sur une même modalité, inlassablement répétée qui résonne, dans la matière sonore, comme une ironie ou un vœu de synesthésie mais qui pour le public indique une forme de voyeurisme. Pour autant, plus les échos s'enchaînent, plus les mots semblent se vider de leur signifié et flotter dans une atmosphère où l’on perd tout repère sémantique. Peu à peu se tissent une intimité et une étroite proximité entre les écouteur.euses et les voix qui s’y croisent : on entend des petits mots entendus à l’écart des conversations, des rires éclatés, des bruits de fond de discussion dans des langues qui se frôlent et se mélangent. Des sons tubulaires jouxtent quelques rares silences et des voix stridentes. « All that jazz, all these lights », « Isn’t that strange ? », « It’s not a dream, it’s not a dream » : un ronronnement latent, presque patent et irréel conduit l’ensemble et interroge ce qu’on entend. Le tout grésille, se raye, se brouille, se dilue, dans la fragile connexion d’une partition spatiale qui ressemble étrangement à la mémoire d’un esprit dont les pensées se choquent sans logique apparente. Mind Channels.
Et à une femme de dire « on a des souvenirs identiques mais leur interprétation est différente ». La déclaration se détache et éclaire ce qu’on voit aux murs, trois vidéos-poèmes comme un orchestre de portraits qui discutent. Dans chaque vidéo, on voit un.e ami.e de l’artiste : JaMila, Samar et Bayo. Soit que le poème motive la vidéo (OH THE BLISS), soit que la vidéo motive le poème (MY NAME IS) ou que la vidéo et le poème s’appellent (AMONG BITTEN DOGS), l’œuvre mélange des voix et des figures qui se ternissent, presque s’évanouissent dans le crépitement et le grain de vidéos, par endroits brouillées et amputées, comme des souvenirs digérés. Les titres, tirés des derniers vers de chaque poème composés par les ami.e.s de l’artiste, formulent ensemble un nouveau poème, le sien, presque un haïku : « OH THE BLISS MY NAME IS AMONG BITTEN DOGS ».
De la vidéo sont également extraites quatre photographies, des tirages qui marquent dans un registre résolument abstrait une attention microscopique, anatomique et cellulaire à des formes organiques qui s'étiolent. Réalisées à partir de films et grâce à la technique de la rayographie, elles montrent toute la fabrique d’une image piégée dans l’immobilité et vivante pour autant, animée d’une poésie fragmentaire. Un même morcellement se retrouve dans cette chaise faite de miroirs brisés qui, seule, tourne et danse sur elle-même, sur un promontoir noir. Dans l’héritage de la plateforme de Felix-Gonzalès Torres, elle paraît comme une présence qui s’efface sur un socle qui vibre silencieusement et dans le brouhaha de l’esprit. All that jazz… All that jazz.
by Lou-Justin Tailhades
english version :
Few words are as controversial as jazz. Its nebulous origins place it sometimes in an African heritage (jasi meaning "to live at full speed, under pressure" or jaizza "distant sound of percussion" or the Bantu word jaja "to dance, make music"), sometimes in a French descent (jaser, "to chat, babble") or even English (to jazz: "to copulate"). Whether linked to a flower, a card game or sport, the word is caught in a semantic limbo and aporia when it comes to translation. And yet, in all its meanings, the word is imbued with a particular energy that refers to a force, even if this force is obscene.
This breath of jazz, properly plural and indescribable, is diffused in Sarah Konté's Mind Channels installation. It permeates it, perhaps even irritates it. This is signaled by the first words of the soundtrack, "All that jazz", like a disquieting, suave alarm that rings out in a loop, in a flow and flux that seeks to release, in the expression, an undetected meaning. Then comes the phrase "I'd like to see" in the same modality, endlessly repeated, resonating in the sound material like irony or a wish for synesthesia, but for the audience indicating a form of voyeurism. And yet, the more the echoes follow one another, the more the words seem to lose their meaning and float in an atmosphere where we lose all semantic reference points. Little by little, an intimacy and close proximity develops between the listeners and the intersecting voices: we hear little words overheard on the sidelines of conversations, bursts of laughter, background noises of discussion in languages that brush against and mix with each other. Tubular sounds play alongside rare silences and strident voices. "All that jazz, all these lights", "Isn't that strange?", "It's not a dream, it's not a dream": a latent, almost patent, unreal hum drives the whole and questions what we hear. The whole thing sizzles, scratches, blurs and dilutes, in the fragile connection of a spatial score that strangely resembles the memory of a mind whose thoughts collide without apparent logic. Mind Channels.
And a woman says, "We have identical memories, but their interpretation is different. The statement stands out and illuminates what we see on the walls, three video-poems like an orchestra of talking portraits. Each video features one of the artist's friends: JaMila, Samar and Bayo. Whether the poem motivates the video (OH THE BLISS), the video motivates the poem (MY NAME IS) or the video and poem call each other (AMONG BITTEN DOGS), the work blends voices and figures that fade, almost vanish, in the crackle and grain of the videos, in places blurred and amputated, like digested memories. The titles, taken from the last lines of each poem composed by the artist's friends, together form a new poem, her own, almost a haiku: "OH THE BLISS MY NAME IS AMONG BITTEN DOGS".
Four photographs are also extracted from the video, prints that, in a resolutely abstract register, mark a microscopic, anatomical and cellular attention to withering organic forms. Produced from film using the rayography technique, they show the entire fabrication of an image trapped in immobility, yet alive with fragmentary poetry. The same fragmentation can be seen in this chair made of broken mirrors, which turns and dances on its own on a black promontory. In the legacy of Felix-Gonzalès Torres's platform, it appears as a fading presence on a base that vibrates silently in the hubbub of the mind. All that jazz... All that jazz.
by Lou-Justin Tailhades
https://www.monnaiedeparis.fr/fr/exposition-bonsoir-memoire-villa-dufraine
french version :
All that jazz
Il est peu de mots qui pose autant de désaccords que celui de jazz. Son origine, nébuleuse, le place tantôt dans un héritage africain (jasi qui signifie « vivre à toute allure, sous pression » ou jaizza « son lointain des percussions » ou encore le mot bantou jaja « danser, faire de la musique »), tantôt dans une descendance française (jaser, « causer, babiller ») ou encore anglaise (to jazz : « copuler »). Qu’il soit lié à une fleur, à un jeu de carte ou au sport, le mot est pris dans un flou sémantique et une aporie quand il s’agit de le traduire. Pour autant, dans toutes les acceptions qu’on lui donne, se glisse le sentiment d’une énergie particulière qui le renvoie à une force, quitte à ce que celle-ci soit obscène.
Ce souffle de jazz, proprement pluriel et indicible, se diffuse dans l’installation Mind Channels de Sarah Konté. Il l’innerve, peut-être l’énerve. C’est ce que signalent les premiers mots de la bande sonore, « All that jazz », comme une alarme inquiétante et suave qui sonne en boucle, dans un flux et un flot qui chercheraient à dégager, dans l’expression, un sens indétecté. Puis, se décline une phrase « I’d like to see » sur une même modalité, inlassablement répétée qui résonne, dans la matière sonore, comme une ironie ou un vœu de synesthésie mais qui pour le public indique une forme de voyeurisme. Pour autant, plus les échos s'enchaînent, plus les mots semblent se vider de leur signifié et flotter dans une atmosphère où l’on perd tout repère sémantique. Peu à peu se tissent une intimité et une étroite proximité entre les écouteur.euses et les voix qui s’y croisent : on entend des petits mots entendus à l’écart des conversations, des rires éclatés, des bruits de fond de discussion dans des langues qui se frôlent et se mélangent. Des sons tubulaires jouxtent quelques rares silences et des voix stridentes. « All that jazz, all these lights », « Isn’t that strange ? », « It’s not a dream, it’s not a dream » : un ronronnement latent, presque patent et irréel conduit l’ensemble et interroge ce qu’on entend. Le tout grésille, se raye, se brouille, se dilue, dans la fragile connexion d’une partition spatiale qui ressemble étrangement à la mémoire d’un esprit dont les pensées se choquent sans logique apparente. Mind Channels.
Et à une femme de dire « on a des souvenirs identiques mais leur interprétation est différente ». La déclaration se détache et éclaire ce qu’on voit aux murs, trois vidéos-poèmes comme un orchestre de portraits qui discutent. Dans chaque vidéo, on voit un.e ami.e de l’artiste : JaMila, Samar et Bayo. Soit que le poème motive la vidéo (OH THE BLISS), soit que la vidéo motive le poème (MY NAME IS) ou que la vidéo et le poème s’appellent (AMONG BITTEN DOGS), l’œuvre mélange des voix et des figures qui se ternissent, presque s’évanouissent dans le crépitement et le grain de vidéos, par endroits brouillées et amputées, comme des souvenirs digérés. Les titres, tirés des derniers vers de chaque poème composés par les ami.e.s de l’artiste, formulent ensemble un nouveau poème, le sien, presque un haïku : « OH THE BLISS MY NAME IS AMONG BITTEN DOGS ».
De la vidéo sont également extraites quatre photographies, des tirages qui marquent dans un registre résolument abstrait une attention microscopique, anatomique et cellulaire à des formes organiques qui s'étiolent. Réalisées à partir de films et grâce à la technique de la rayographie, elles montrent toute la fabrique d’une image piégée dans l’immobilité et vivante pour autant, animée d’une poésie fragmentaire. Un même morcellement se retrouve dans cette chaise faite de miroirs brisés qui, seule, tourne et danse sur elle-même, sur un promontoir noir. Dans l’héritage de la plateforme de Felix-Gonzalès Torres, elle paraît comme une présence qui s’efface sur un socle qui vibre silencieusement et dans le brouhaha de l’esprit. All that jazz… All that jazz.
by Lou-Justin Tailhades
english version :
Few words are as controversial as jazz. Its nebulous origins place it sometimes in an African heritage (jasi meaning "to live at full speed, under pressure" or jaizza "distant sound of percussion" or the Bantu word jaja "to dance, make music"), sometimes in a French descent (jaser, "to chat, babble") or even English (to jazz: "to copulate"). Whether linked to a flower, a card game or sport, the word is caught in a semantic limbo and aporia when it comes to translation. And yet, in all its meanings, the word is imbued with a particular energy that refers to a force, even if this force is obscene.
This breath of jazz, properly plural and indescribable, is diffused in Sarah Konté's Mind Channels installation. It permeates it, perhaps even irritates it. This is signaled by the first words of the soundtrack, "All that jazz", like a disquieting, suave alarm that rings out in a loop, in a flow and flux that seeks to release, in the expression, an undetected meaning. Then comes the phrase "I'd like to see" in the same modality, endlessly repeated, resonating in the sound material like irony or a wish for synesthesia, but for the audience indicating a form of voyeurism. And yet, the more the echoes follow one another, the more the words seem to lose their meaning and float in an atmosphere where we lose all semantic reference points. Little by little, an intimacy and close proximity develops between the listeners and the intersecting voices: we hear little words overheard on the sidelines of conversations, bursts of laughter, background noises of discussion in languages that brush against and mix with each other. Tubular sounds play alongside rare silences and strident voices. "All that jazz, all these lights", "Isn't that strange?", "It's not a dream, it's not a dream": a latent, almost patent, unreal hum drives the whole and questions what we hear. The whole thing sizzles, scratches, blurs and dilutes, in the fragile connection of a spatial score that strangely resembles the memory of a mind whose thoughts collide without apparent logic. Mind Channels.
And a woman says, "We have identical memories, but their interpretation is different. The statement stands out and illuminates what we see on the walls, three video-poems like an orchestra of talking portraits. Each video features one of the artist's friends: JaMila, Samar and Bayo. Whether the poem motivates the video (OH THE BLISS), the video motivates the poem (MY NAME IS) or the video and poem call each other (AMONG BITTEN DOGS), the work blends voices and figures that fade, almost vanish, in the crackle and grain of the videos, in places blurred and amputated, like digested memories. The titles, taken from the last lines of each poem composed by the artist's friends, together form a new poem, her own, almost a haiku: "OH THE BLISS MY NAME IS AMONG BITTEN DOGS".
Four photographs are also extracted from the video, prints that, in a resolutely abstract register, mark a microscopic, anatomical and cellular attention to withering organic forms. Produced from film using the rayography technique, they show the entire fabrication of an image trapped in immobility, yet alive with fragmentary poetry. The same fragmentation can be seen in this chair made of broken mirrors, which turns and dances on its own on a black promontory. In the legacy of Felix-Gonzalès Torres's platform, it appears as a fading presence on a base that vibrates silently in the hubbub of the mind. All that jazz... All that jazz.
by Lou-Justin Tailhades
https://www.monnaiedeparis.fr/fr/exposition-bonsoir-memoire-villa-dufraine
Photo by ©Camille LePrince
At the beginning of the 2019 school year, she has been selected to join
the new Filière Artistes et Métiers de l'Exposition at the Beaux-Arts de Paris in partnership with the Palais de
Tokyo, and has realized, as curator, with four other students of the
four other students of the Filière and Jean de Loisy, the exhibitionCabaret du Néant at the Château de Rentilly/Frac Île-de- France
France which opened on March 8, 2020.
In September 2020, she realized a residence at the Abbaye de Royaumont, the Académie Voix nouvelles, as a researcher at the EHESS and as a visual
artist with young composers supervised by Francesco Filidei.
From January 2021 until June 2022, she has integrated an exchange program with CalArts in Los Angeles, in the Film and Video department under the direction of Betzy Bromberg.
She obtained her DNSAP from the Beaux Arts de Paris in June 2022.
In April 2023, she took part in the first edition of the Villa Dufraine residency directed by Jean-Michel Othoniel of the Académie des Beaux-Arts de l’Institut de France. After an eight-month residency, she presented an installation as part of the group exhibition
«BONSOIR MÉMOIRE» conceived by curator Lou-Justin Tailhades at La Monnaie de Paris.
In parallel with her studies, Sarah Konté has travelled extensively to feed her thirst for knowledge, her desire to have her gaze constantly stimulated by what surrounds her, and her interest in different cultures through the prism of dance and music.
Sarah Konté was born in Paris, France, on 08/18/1993 and is a queer multidisciplinary artist. French and Senegalese.
After studying philosophy and linguistics at the EHESS Paris, she joined Les Beaux Arts de Paris in 2018 and then followed an exchange in 2021 with CalArts in Los Angeles, in the Film and Video department.
Since then, she has been developing a thought of the Installation as a Performance through the prism of video, sound recording and photography in Los Angeles and Mexico City. She presents a variation of the griot, a traditional West African storyteller, proposing a story but letting it be composed by the audience.
She is also part of La Marge Collective. La Marge is a cultural and artistic association born in May 2020 at the initiative of young visual artists, architects and curators wishing to meet, to set up activities, projects and to invest locally in their countries and their cities of origin in periphery of Paris.It works to rehabilitate spaces in transition such as disused buildings or wasteland spaces by the temporary occupation of young artists by organizing cultural and artistic events, promoting the autonomy, the professionalization and the development of young creators and to animate places of experimentation whether it be to accompany individual and/or projects in a purely associative in a purely associative spirit.
She works and lives in Los Angeles and Paris.
Laureate Marguerite et Méthode Keskar - Fondation de France Award - 2023
Laureate special mention Sarr Price - 2021
Laureate Hatvany Price with La Marge Collective - 2021
Working with writing, photography and video, and also practicing other means of expression, such as dance and music, I compose with these five mediums in order to reach a certain idea of the installation that I have experimented in Angelica Mesiti's workshops, Abraham Cruzvillegas and Julien Creuzet at the École des Beaux Arts de Paris.
I worked on these mediums in parallel with my research in philosophy at the EHESS (École des Hautes Études en Social Sciences) on the question:
"The quest for the sense: destiny crossed between the word and the image.
An attempt to represent meaning".
An attempt to represent meaning".
This research that I carried out in philosophy feeds my artistic work and allows me to put in situation
this attempt of representation of the sense of which I speak in my thesis.
I’ve decided to try and break down the boundaries between the sometimes too strict distinction between disciplines and mediums.
I’m trying to create interactions between the visual and the sonic, and to see how these two worlds can clash or come together.
Indeed, the idea of the frontier in my work is perhaps somewhat linked to my personal and family history. I come from two different cultures (my mother’s culture, from Provence to Algeria, in Blida, and my father’s culture, his ethnic group, the Peuls, a nomadic people from sub-Saharan Africa).
Even though I was born in Paris, this daily cultural frontier is a frontier without a priori space, but a moving frontier that I carry within me and that shifts with my movements.
So I’m trying to grasp the idea of the border in its shifting, rather than geographically and eternally inscribed, aspect. The border can be a protective wall, a blind wall or a mobile wall.
Inspired by Hito Steyerl, Pipilotti Rist, Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde, Amadou Hampâté Bâ, Camara Laye and Édouard Glissant, I’m keen to be a variation of griotte (West African oral tradition storyteller) of the search for identity and meaning, I seek to establish a discourse on the borders of reality and fiction.
In this way, I approach a visual and sensory presentation of the questions that drive me. Since my exchange at CalArts in Los Angeles, I’ve been presenting performance installations that open with an apparent deconstruction of images and sound, in a fragmented way so that the spectator is the conductor of the story they can compose, having in front of them all the elements that may or may not make sense. Therefore I’m interested in what resists perception, in that inner conflict we have when faced with a work of art, when our free will expresses itself in all its splendor.
The installation thus becomes a stage on which the audience is the main character. In this way, I try to propose a new form of cinematographic writing that takes shape according to the audience’s movement.