The Art of Transmission Crystallmess

It comes in the moment. For Collective Amnesia, I felt constrained at first, because I wanted to write an article but couldn’t find the people that would answer my questions. When talking to a friend, we joked that it could be the subject of a play. Then I realized that I could not really write theater, and I think that at the time I did not yet have the necessary tools to launch myself into performance in the strict sense of the term, that is, with gesture, etc… I didn’t want these obstacles to stop me. I told myself that I would take this as an opportunity to make the project multidisciplinary and combine several things that I know how to do, or that I think I know how to do. I could not make a documentary film because I did not have enough resources (documentation, interviews, testimonies). Why not, then, bring the fictional voice forward? The process is full of little things which at first were dead ends that transformed and that paved the way for me to go to other mediums rather than staying with a journalistic approach that limited me, as in the case of Collective Amnesia. I thought that if it was a subject that I was obsessed with, a thesis that was specific to me, perhaps it should be presented in a more fictional way. I chose a path that is specific to me and to my approach rather than making a presentation that would serve to convince people of the relevance of my thesis, even if at first it was not at all a cheerful process.

Nowadays I feel that it’s the subject that leads me to a certain practice. For example, right now I’m working on a project called Murder by Proxy. I would like to make it a type of website, but first it was a sonic narrative with texts and images that speaks of my experience and that of many people in regard to the chlordecone scandal, a pesticide that destroys wildlife, flora, and human beings in Guadeloupe. In fact, my mother is from there. Food lobbies have been poisoning the ground for 700 years. Guadeloupe and Martinique have the highest rates of prostate cancer in the world. These are small islands that are not known outside the francophone world. I knew about prostate cancer first-hand, but before I went there, I didn’t understand how it could really affect people’s day-to-day life. Before my last trip, I hadn’t been back for more than ten years. People were already talking about it, but I was little. I didn’t understand everything and it was something hidden—for many reasons, but especially because this scandal lies at the intersection of ecology and colonialism. The people who run the food lobby in Guadeloupe and Martinique are former slave owners.

Indeed, it skipped a generation. In the sense that our parents did not have access to information even though they were living through the situation. Unless they were in academia or science, people didn’t have access to real resources. At the time there was no real information transmission whereas today there are quite a few people in militant circles who do the work of transmitting scientific and political data and democratizing them via social networks. So I think my generation is much more aware of the chlordecone situation. When I returned, I could also see the consequences on fertility and health (miscarriages, stillborn children). For Murder by Proxy, I wondered if I was going to do a very abstract EP or if I was breaking my head to write a story that reflects what I experienced.

In fact, I have the impression that it is rare to be able to transmit ideas or information that are complex with a single medium. I admire the people who do it, but I’m not sure I can do it, so I need something to hang on to. In the end, we most often are in a multidisciplinary situation. For example, we have the impression that a film director will transmit in a single medium, but in a film, there is also music, among other things.

Multi-disciplinarity intersects with people who are interested in images but also in sound or writing. It allows me to reach more people. But it isn’t intentional on my part. I never do things by imagining the reception. It can happen, but it is never the heart of the matter. Maybe one day I will do an artistic project where it will be the main focus, but in this case, it will be intentional.

I try to do my thing while being someone who hasn’t been to art school and while still making music. It requires work and discipline. It’s a position that is not necessarily easy and that does not fit everybody. There is also the problem of knowing how to describe yourself or how to place yourself. I think my parents, for example, don’t understand what I do. Today’s generation understands what a multidisciplinary artist is, at least in contemporary art. There is, however, something pejorative about being a multidisciplinary artist. The truth is that there are many contemporary artists who use a wide variation of media. Let’s take a basic example: Andy Warhol produced music artists, he made videos, screen printing… In the end, I believe it’s the general format of the contemporary artist.

I think it produced more contemplative music. It’s difficult to be in celebration while we are still living through collective mourning. It’s hard not to see the end of it without the cultural places and the places of life. It changed my practice, it changed my sound. I’m not good at compartmentalizing and acting like nothing happened. With regard to the multidisciplinary nature of art, it is a moment of adjustment. Artists have moved away from the stage and have moved towards more contemplative things or things they had abandoned.

If I ever had the opportunity to sample more, because obviously you have to pay copyright, I think I would. What touches me in sampling is the fact of being able to give a new meaning to what already exists and also the fact of paying tribute. I find that being an artist also means being immortal in a way.

First, it comes from human connections and encounters in general. It’s important for me to be sure that we share the same values but not necessarily the same identity. Sharing the same identity does not guarantee that we have common values. It’s hard to feel like you belong to a scene in 2021 when you haven’t been partying or participating in a major event for over a year now.

I think all of the words mentioned above have a negative connotation from a Judeo-Christian perspective. Especially when you think of the devil or revenge or retaliation. We are told to turn the other cheek, and that hell is under our feet, that we should fear death. I adhered to this perspective myself but making music unconsciously allowed me to face these fears. There are some that I managed to overcome, others not. I think that the theme of death in my work is omnipresent in the sense that it’s inevitable for each of us. It’s impossible for us to experience death if it’s not someone else’s, and that’s where it’s fascinating.

It all depends on the performance and its subject. In Collective Amnesia I ignore all linearity in the story and the time of the performance. From the archive image to DJing, these two processes are somehow ways of operating backwards. Collective Amnesia starts in the present, but we also make a jump to 2002 in the Ivory Coast and to 2009 in the Paris region. Time is fragmented. For this work in particular, the problem of time was at the center since we talk about losing memory, not knowing what happened outside the present moment.

R.I.P Aporia is a performance inspired by a passage from the book Afropessimism by Frank B. Wilderson III, who is an author, critic, and director. Rest In Peace Aporia takes the form of an admission; the admission of superlative fatigue and anguish, that one feels when one encounters aporia.* It is an inextricable and insoluble contradiction. The performance explores the opposition between the hyper-visibility of the Black body in digital and public space, and the dehumanization of the Black being as such. If in recent years, inclusiveness and racial and gender issues have occupied the intellectual debate, what about the vulnerability of Black beings, the feelings that they are going through, the sleep that they have or not in daily life? Rest In Peace Aporia intends to discover in four acts the different stages of the realization of the existence of the following aporia, as taken from Afropessimism: “The deep pit from which neither postcolonial theory, nor Marxism, nor a gender politics of unflinching feminism could rescue me.”

My intention is to use this space as a laboratory: test combinations and blends without the obligation of an immediate result. I have no audience in front of me, no instant gratification, no smile, no wild dancing, no euphoric fever. I see Unleashed as an opportunity to do a kind of a test pressing. Every show is an opportunity to be completely free and a bit selfish. It feeds my reflection to the extent that the construction of the storytelling is not influenced nor punctuated by the reception of the audience.