THE WAKE / LES VEILLÉES | Window exhibition // Ausstellung im Fenster

Das sagt der/die Veranstalter:in:

THE WAKE / LES VEILLÉES
WINDOW EXHIBITION 20.05.–16.06.2021  Open 24/7
WITH AND BY The Living and the Dead Ensemble

COVID-19 REGULATIONS
This is a window exhibition to be visited only from the outside. Due to the current laws of Covid-19 regulations ("emergency brake"), we have to close our doors again. In case we are allowed to open again, a large installation inside, including the entire play, can be watched.

We invite you to interrupt your way through the city, to pause in front of our windows and to engage with movement. Like so many other plans, our collaboration with THE LIVING AND THE DEAD ENSEMBLE in the framework of this year’s Forum Expanded at the Berlinale had to be cancelled, and postponed to next year. How to still continue? In this year of the pandemic, it has been central to us to keep working, to keep in creative and intellectual exchanges and productions, to remain a space for community and to support artists and cultural workers economically.

So, we invite you to interrupt your way through the city, to pause in front of our windows and to engage with movement and the processes of the artistic collective The Living and the Dead Ensemble and their play “The Wake”.

Night has fallen on a world on fire. Demonstrations, earthquakes, forest fires – fire is everywhere. The fires of struggles and pains, of rebirth and chaos. Men and women speak and despeak to honor the dead and save the living.

“The Wake”, the new creation of The Living and the Dead Ensemble, is a play that pieces together an exploded geography, like the broken mirror of a chaotic world. Personal stories and fables, cries of revolt and songs, demands and delusions – an assembly of people try to understand one another. Is there a possible future that could exist beyond the repetition of all sorts of catastrophes? Is there a common fire to be shared among those who have lost the power of speech or never even possessed it?

During the writing process for this uncertain journey into space and time, the authors of THE LIVING AND THE DEAD ENSEMBLE worked with sequences from the play “Mélovivi ou le piège” by Haitian writer Frankétienne. Through a rereading and an updating of a work that anticipated the earthquake that would ravage Haiti ten years ago, they used the idea of the wake as a visionary space, which in turn foreshadowed the conflagration of the Black Lives Matter movement.

This exhibition in SAVVY’s large windows offers a glimpse into a work in progress caught between the nightmare of the present and dreams of a possible future. Fragments of rehearsals and improvised film scenes that accompanied the development of the play are shown across three screens, revealing the methods of creation that the Ensemble experimented with between theatre and cinema. Filmed in Clichy-sous-bois, France, and Port-au-Prince, Haiti, this material constitutes the landscape for a film to come that imagines solidarity between people pushed to the peripheries of the world, who decide to speak up at the moment of our global crisis.

THE LIVING AND THE DEAD ENSEMBLE are a group of artists, performers and poets from Haiti, France and the United Kingdom. They initially came together in Haiti 2017, to produce the Haitian Creole translation and performance of the play "Monsieur Toussaint "by Édouard Glissant. Initiated from an original idea by Louis Henderson and Olivier Marboeuf, who have been collaborating in a director/producer partnership since 2014, the Ensemble’s first film OUVERTURES premiered at the Berlinale in 2020. Their work explores different possible methods of telling the history and the present from a Caribbean perspective and a transnational imaginary. The Ensemble produce texts, performances, films and installations.

The Ensemble are: Mackenson Bijou, Rossi Jacques Casimir, Dieuvela Cherestal, James Desiris, Louis Henderson, Léonard Jean Baptiste, Cynthia Maignan, Sophonie Maignan, Olivier Marboeuf, Mimétik Nèg.

The window installation features an original piece of music by João Polido.

More information // Weitere Informationen // Plus d'informations:
savvy-contemporary.com/en/events/2021/the-wake-les-veillees

THE WAKE is a coproduction by Spectre Productions, Le théâtre de l’Usine (Genève), Les Ateliers Médicis (Clichy-Montfermeil), Kunstenfestival des Arts (Bruxelles), Z33 (Hasselt), SAVVY Contemporary (Berlin) and Berlinale Forum Expanded.

The INVOCATIONS "Les Veillées" is a project supported by the fund PERSPEKTIVE pour l’art contemporain & l’architecture, an initiative of Bureau des arts plastiques de l’Institut français d’Allemagne. With the support of Ministère de la Culture, Institut français de Paris and Goethe Institut. In collaboration with R22 Tout-Monde.