AR(T) 4 - MAGALIE MOBETIE@INVISIBLE FESTIVALYou have not yet
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ANBA TÈ, ADAN KÒ
Research into epigenetic inheritance seems to condemn a lineage to express the wounds of its forebears.
In other words, the traumas experienced by an ancestor, a population, could still be present today in those who did not live through them, expressing themselves through their genes.
Forgetting and silence seem to have put off a confrontation with certain ghosts of the past in two families from the Caribbean culture. What happens to things left unsaid? How do we free ourselves from them?
Using an augmented reality application, visitors will encounter the bodies of members of two families around a tree, scanned in 3D, all connected and yet so far apart, pale copies of these living beings.
What lies beneath these skins? Under their names?
Accompanied by the person who is the link between all these people, visitors can listen to their exchanges, to help them find their own ghosts.
EXPERIENCES
You can walk around the installation (but not sit inside). A 10-minute loop of ambient sound can be heard. Fragments of the 8 interviews can be heard on the floor "during the day", depicting the theme and existence of an ancient cemetery in bits and pieces. Their voices are interspersed with the scraping of tiban on the floor. The sound rises towards the top of the tree until "night", when the branches crack and new voices rise up, as if from beyond the grave. These are samples from the past, from people who have already left us, taken from video cassettes dating from the early 90s.
A new dimension opens up: ghostly copies of the 8 interviewees sit on the tibans in augmented reality. Visitors can freely approach them to hear their voices clearly.
A woman, standing, will indicate the path to follow in order to listen to the narration, which is in no way compulsory. The story is a series of interviews with commentary by the woman, speaking to Papa Jean, a slave freed in 1848 and the closest in line to one of the families.
The sound in the application is spatialised. To hear more or less of a character, all you have to do is act as you would in real life: move closer or further away.
Some interviews (those that form part of the narrative) can only be triggered by standing next to the woman.
There are also buttons ("skip" and "back") which, as their names indicate, allow you to skip a passage in the story or, on the contrary, to go backwards.
Animations are scattered throughout the experience, supporting certain aspects of the story or even adding to it.
THE ARTIST
Magalie Mobetie (born in 1996, France) is an artist mixing video, sound, 3D, augmented reality and interactivity in her creative process. She is interested in what is not said, not seen and the reasons for silence.
Her transdisciplinary practice was confirmed at Le Fresnoy, studio national des arts contemporains (2020 – 2022), during which time she investigated an old family cemetery (Anba tè, adan kò, 2021). In 2023, Magalie joined the MANIFEST residency project, which aims to re-imagine the European collective memory of the transatlantic slave trade.