© Olivier Despicht
Artist statement
We consider ourselves first as European artists. In that regard, the process of our current creation BARBARE was to go to each capital city of the European Union to try to understand the possible existence of a common cultural language within this political entity. One could say that an interest for capital cities doesn’t immediately ring as something connected to the concept of peripheries. On the contrary, we want to give here some examples of the way this theme, in the relation with the possibility of voices, has inevitably emerge in our work of the past three years.
Ramin Mazur is a Moldovan artist that we met in the course of an INFRA (Inclusive Network for Refugee Artists) laboratory in Lille as part of our presence in the Festival Latitudes contemporaines 2021. When he exposed the relation to his work and country, we felt a connection with the way he was constantly dealing with identity and borders. in fact, Moldova could be as much called a periphery of the European Union as it is of the Russian former Empire, being stuck between Romania and Ukraine. We told him that we would go a few weeks later to Bucharest. He immediately advised us to go to Dispositiv Books and buy KAJET. A journal of Eastern European encounters. Every issue has its own thematic.
The last one, published in the Fall 2020, was called On Periphery. Here are the words of introduction by Petrica Mogos & Laura Naum : “Setting up the periphery against the centre may be considered just another bipolar structural act of violence, one that enables the consolidation of already well embedded power relations. Our goal however is not to further polarise and, on the contrary, we don’t seek to reinforce these constraints but to allow new meaningful articulations to emanate : not just seeking to decentre the centre, we are in the pursuit of empowering subjectivities, deconstructing, and contextualising our marginality more appropriately, only to dismantle.” That day, we bought 15 books from them. We felt that our own subjectivity as french artists was challenged by the notions that emerged from the work of eastern European creators. We thought that it was time for us to try to give a voice to those living on the border lines of the European Union.
That very same summer, helped by the advices of the philosopher and dramaturge Camille Louis, we decided to step out of our road and go to the island of Lesbos where refugees are being detained (when not pushed back) because they want to seek asylum from the European union. In the city of Mytilène, where Frontex boats stand ready to intervene, we met with Joaquin, the co-fonder of the Mosaic center, who helps refugees to work inside the city so that they can escape the reality of the detention camp, and Rouddy, a local refugee figure, who managed to create a band, a festival and record an album of music with refugees.
On this island, we witnessed the struggling hospitality of the greek people being sabotaged by the incompetence of governments. As we look upon the sea towards the Turkish coast a few miles away, we understood how the reality of the European Union is defined by its relation to the outside, to the peripheral borders. We promise ourselves to give a strong place to what we felt in our upcoming show called BARBARE (odyssées), premiere in le phénix scène nationale de Valenciennes on February 2022. We discovered the Stronger Peripheries call in December a few days before leaving for the island of Cyprus.
The capital city of Lefkosia has the terrible particularity to be the only divided city of the European Union. As you walk down the main shopping street, you suddenly face a greek checkpoint who allows you to pass into a small fraction of the dividing green line monitored by the army forces of the UNO
before entering a second checkpoint that will lead you to the Turkish-speaking side. The difference between the two parts of the city is impossible to describe. We learned about the existence of a Home for Co-operation inside the green line and decided to meet with its communication manager, Hayriye. She explained to us very clearly how people were deported from one side to the other side in 1974 and how their work is to provide a place where both communities can meet, talk and try to prepare a better future. They even organized an art festival inside the green line once a year. Picture it yourself: a no man’s land where you only meet British soldiers where suddenly once a year people who are separated by walls, checkpoints and wires can meet to engage with living art forms.
That teaches a lesson about giving a voice and strength to the peripheries. We learned a lot over the past years on this topic, and improved our creative methods to match with the necessity of our current time; which is the absolute necessity to help new stories, new voices to emerge, to destroy the boundaries that prevent people from having access to the culture.
Since 2016 Simon Capelle and Mélodie Lasselin are both directors, authors, choreographers, and performers of the ZONE -poème- company based in Lille. Oracle is the first piece of the company created in 2018 then revived in 2020 for the festival Le Grand Bain in Roubaix. BARBARE (European Museum of Translation), an ensemble of 28 performances, was presented at le Vivat, at Latitudes Contemporaines Festival, at L’Oiseau-Mouche, as well as in-situ in the Hauts-de-France region. In 2021, they were both finalists of the performance open call of Biennale di Teatro – Venezia. In 2022, BARBARE (odyssées) is created during the festival Cabaret des curiosités at le phénix, scène nationale de Valenciennes, directed by Romaric Daurier and Camille Barnaud. They invited them to be members of the pôle européen de création. Inside their company, they created the Performing Arts Research Center, a box of tools to share, teach and create with non-professionals and communities.