Steeve Bauras

What is the purpose of this artist’s residence?

The French Institute of Senegal is inviting me to an artist’s residence from January 25^th to February 28^th 2013. This residence will result in an exhibition entitled Cyclicités – Cyclical-. The opening will be on Tuesday 26^th 2013 in The Galerie du Manège which is today one of the main sites for contemporary art in West Africa.

            Two other artists will take part in this exhibition, Kapwani Kiwanga www.kapwanikiwanga.org and Omar Victor Diop www.omarviktor.com.

What sort of work do you intend to do there? Can you explain your technique?

 During this residence the line of work is entitled 3K, an installation including a video, a mini skateboard ramp, with skaters appointed to perform during the opening show.

Schock corridor de Sam Fuller

The video pitch will be a remake of a film extract from Shock Corridor by Sam Fuller in 1963: in this extract a young black man is seen praising the Ku Klux Klan.

The skate ramp, painted in black is related to the video, and more particularly to the words heard in the video, which are potentially repetitive and cyclical. The skateboards will be supplied to the skaters.                                                 

 What I am trying to do is to shift the words or the emitter, to cause the infiltration of the words to the point where the emitter takes the place of the radiated subject and causes his loss.

 Why did you choose this extract from Sam Fuller’s film?

Even though the starting point of this work is fiction, it still finds its origins in a latent aspect of real society. Basically, this project was elaborated for Martinique, but starting this in Dakar gives it and gives me at the same time a heavier impact. This film extract by Sam Fuller sets an absurd situation (a black character praising the Ku Klux Klan). My intention through this work is to trigger some reflection about ‘intra community racism’, without crediting this work with moralizing.

 While saying Synchronicity you mention shifting the words or the emitter? Isn’t there some contradiction in this?

 Concerning Synchonicity, that is the title of the exhibition initiated by The On The Roof group. This exhibition has already been seen in Paris in The Galerie Baudoin Lebon, and in London in the Tiwani Contemporary Gallery:

http://www.tiwani.co.uk/past-exhibition/images/14/Synchronicity+II%2C++February+2012/
For each of these exhibitions, I was to present a new project. The two projects presented in Paris and London despite the differences in their contents, were entitled Beyond P.

Then, the project for Dakar, this other project entitled 3K. What I mean by shifting or cause the infiltration of words or the emitter, it’s the willingness to raise questions, in this case about racism, community, society … in another way, until perfection, even through absurdity as I show here.

How does this new installation integrate in your artistic production as a whole?

 This project helps really to complete my art, as I remain like a photographer questioning photography. I mean, trying not to be in the expected places, in front of some reality, a situation, trigger some debate by suggesting a different point of view, some other hypothesis.

 How do you question photography?

In the earlier projects the questions around photography were more obvious, such as the limits of photography, what is a photo, what are the faults…

 In the ZUGZWANG series, which are ’Photographs-Objects’, questioning is more tangible, the suggested situations are just hypotheses.

The 3K Project is, with the use of a video, really completing my practice, but I still remain a photographer as the work of the photographer is still going on.

Steeve Bauras
Sans titre

 What about your projects after this residence?

After this project, I will continue to collaborate with people in Paris, and by the end of this year I may have an offer for a workshop in the School of Arts in Martinique, which will result in an exhibition of the students’ work and a personal exhibition.

 Traduction Suzanne Lampla lampla.suzanne@wanadoo.fr

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