Mawena Yehouessi Sol in the Dark

Looking for the "lascar": somewhere between a rascal and a multi-faced body-fetish-avatar

film
SA 28.01.2023 20:30

Sol in the Dark retraces the myth of the “Lascar,” somewhere between the figure of the rascal and a multi-faced body-fetish-avatar that emerged from 1990s French popular culture. Presumably coming from the Persian word for “army”, in the 19th century, Lascar designated South East Asian native soldiers enrolled by the European colonial forces at sea before being used as a contemptuous way to refer to youth from the suburbs.

Sol in the Dark sets out to encounter this subversive figure, invents its genealogy and examines its reappearances today as a mainstream icon, although it had been an outcast in the shadow of institutions. In a gesture of musical and collective collage assembling times, voices and images; a tribute to the imagination of Rap, Afro-futurism and the aesthetics of the Internet; Sol in the Dark  creates the portrait of an unquenchable chimera, a rumour of flesh, breath and pixels.

in French & English

51 minutes

+ after talk in French with Mawena Yehouessi, Nicolas Pirus and Kyo Kim moderated by Sofia Dati, Beursschouwburg's (audio)visual arts programmer

Mawena Yehouessi (aka M/Y) is a an art curator, a re.searcher and an artist born in 1990 in Cotonou (Benin). Founder of the Black(s) to the Future collective and currently undergoing a PhD @ Villa Arson + Université Côte d´Azur, she lives and works between Paris and Nice (France). Uncaught through alter-futurisms and poïethic realities, she develops an imploratory (rather than exploratory), collaborative and prospective practice of collage. Her (Mawena) and their (M/Y) mediums thus oscillate from visual/digital syncretism and film-making to poetry writing, translation, pedagogy, concept-coining, collective gathering, study, improvised dancing, making-up parties and calling them exhibitions… Trained in literature, philosophy, cultural projects management and contemporary dance, M.Y's part of those ghost generations of un-classifiable-beings, whose wor(l)ds, imaginaries, hustles & jobs are an aggregation of slashes, glitches, undercommonings and displacements.

https://mawenayehouessi.fr/

With the support of the French Embassy in Belgium and the Institut Français in the framework of EXTRA, a support programme for French contemporary creation.

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