Sillages
RESEARCH — ongoing since 2018, in collaboration with Joanne Clavel.
This research weaves connections between the grooves and furrows of the body and those of the earth, exploring analogies from which narratives emerge, intertwining anatomical, geographical and poetic imaginaries. These narratives take shape through words, images, sounds and movement.
As the investigation has progressed, informed by ecofeminist readings as well as somatic body practices, these analogies have also transformed into fears, tears, joys, and relations of power. The chemical industry appears as a recurring and threatening dominant force over our human and viticultural elders. This theme opens the third chapter of the research.
Artist’s Statement
It was during a walk in Montpellier, while I was attending the Exerce master’s programme, that I began imagining how to take my physical practices out of the studio and bring them into new horizons.
My initial intuition led me towards two layers of living matter — earth and skin — which I wanted to explore both physically and artistically. I chose to observe them in two different contexts: a nursing home (EHPAD) for skin, and a vineyard for earth.
The connection between earth and skin seems essential to make explicit today, and I want to listen to and understand how the two enter into dialogue, within contexts that appear very different. I want to explore the poetic space between working the land and the work of time on the skin, the traces of past labour inscribed in the present of bodies. I seek to weave connections between labour and furrows, agriculture and memory, and to explore analogies from which narratives can emerge.
To accompany me on these walks, I invited Joanne Clavel. Gradually, we came to collaborate closely on every aspect of this research-creation process: sharing practices, reflections, and moments of presentation and exchange.
We are particularly interested in women. Several ecofeminist readings have supported us in this choice and enabled us to take a critical look at how we relate to our environment, notably through the notion of distancing developed in Starhawk’s book Dreaming the Dark. Indeed, the distance between an actor and their capacity to act upon their environment, the “power over” land and bodies, the inherited separation between systems of production and reproduction, and female menstruation as a basis for the cyclical maintenance of human life are all themes that allow us to reflect on the dynamics and interweaving of relations of power and control — or, conversely, on letting go of control over what surrounds us, beginning with our own skin.
Whether in the nursing home or in the vineyards, observing living matter through the holistic layers of skin and earth has raised essential questions, particularly about the role of chemistry (Preciado 2018, Testo Junkie), which is highly present in both environments: through medication on the one hand, and pesticides and fungicides on the other. These substances transform our relationship to life and death (longevity, illness, care, etc.). It also raises questions about the importance of women in both places: women make up the majority of staff in nursing homes, where they become, often unwillingly, witnesses to the deaths of those around them; while in vineyards, an increasing number of women are choosing this profession and finding a place other than the one traditionally assigned to them — that of the winegrower’s wife.
SILLAGES #1
First research period — 2018
Co-production: L’Atelline, a centre for activating art and public space, as part of a partnership with ICI — CCN Montpellier / Direction Christian Rizzo (Exerce master’s programme, in partnership with the Université Paul-Valéry de Montpellier) and Réseau en Scène
Presentation: 30 November 2018 at CCN Montpellier
https://evechariatte.ch/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/rapportdepormenadeVIEW.pdf
SILLAGES #2
Second research period — 2019
Co-production: ICI-CCN Montpellier – Occitanie, as part of the Life Long Burning project funded by the European Union.
Presentation: 9 October 2019, as part of the Magdalena Festival, Montpellier
Sillages #2 programme © Vera Trachsel — Download
SILLAGES #3
Tird research period — 2020–2021
Atelier Suisse, Brussels