A Franco-Caribbean artist born in 1986, he represents France in the 60th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale with his protean works. A meeting with the poet in a cafe in Montrey, near his studio, which he keeps hidden from view.
Madame Figaro . – The title of your exhibition presented at the French Pavilion is magnificent. I quote : Attila Cataract your spring at the foot of the green peaks will end in a great blue abyss sea, which we drowned in the tidal tears of the moon…
Julien Kruse. – We’re talking about Attila, Cataract, “Your spring at the foot of the green peaks” and more. I believe that a title becomes interesting when it evokes a sense of movement or displacement. A person who reads it should absorb it and be able to teleport. I love this term: teleportation. Maybe Attila will be my friend. It resonates in my imagination, it will resonate in the imagination of the French and the Italians… perhaps as a way of thinking about oneself in relation to the other.
The title is long. Let’s summarize, I guess. How important is poetry in your work? ?
Let others decide… We didn’t put a comma on purpose. Poetry is the language that resists the most. He says the unspeakable. Martinican poet Monchoachi says that poetry is the back of words. The other side of the words is something quite strong as a character. The title should not illustrate the work.
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We are not far from rap. What is the place of music in your work? ?
It allows you to look at it differently because we are talking about exposure. I’ve never understood why we stare at a form in a museum in silence. And in the same way, the silence when you enter the library. The library is a place full of words, sentences and thoughts. There should be almost a cacophony… I have to call for feedback. These reactions affect us in how we look, see and look, which are not the same. We unconsciously begin to think, and this telescope between sound, smells, the invisible becomes interesting. I believe we minimize this notion of the invisible that exhibitions can have.
The exhibition will be immersive in nature There will be a smell…
A total, almost operatic dimension. Like opera, according to Wagner’s definition, which is total. This requires music, sound, performance, sculpture, fashion, and many other things… Invoking all the senses seems to me to be an important experience today. It will be intense. It will be immersive in the sense that our body has to make its own way. There will be a smell, we will see how persistent and delicate the aromas are.
Edouard Glissant’s concept of archipelagoing is important to you…
It is a universal dimension. It helped me fit in a lot physically. This concept of grouping islands can be extended to our physicality as individuals, we can extend it to our relationship with the universe. To feel one’s existence or one’s own space in relation to another, relief at a distance. Everything is connected to the ground, it is the water that keeps us at a distance.
The exhibition will be immersive in the sense that our body has to go its own way
Julien Kruse
There are important words for you, for example, defamation…
The big question is, at what point do words enter the modern and popular language, at what point do we reappropriate them? I was under the impression that Englishness was superior and that the word for the black condition was the word blackness And I wondered why there was a dead end or impossibility in French to use the concept of negritude outside the literary or poetic realm. It shows our historical and societal complexity. After all, this Englishness was an easy way to avoid naming names in our words and our language.
Which poets do you like? ?
Leon-Gontran Damas, who is one of the forgotten people of the Negritude movement. He was born in French Guiana and wrote these magnificent collections called Pigments, neuralgia. And this word “neuralgia” has always been with me since I read this piece. It is a word that refers to the brain with connections and nerve endings. It’s almost about the physicality, the relationship with the cities, the mouths of all these streets, these intersections… It’s interesting how it intertwines with the word ‘pigment’. “Pigment” refers to a set of shades, a whole palette. In some of Dani Laferriere’s most recent books, paragraphs are so short they become poetry. There are also young people whom I particularly like, Estelle Coppolani or Simone Legrand, who accompanied us to the press conference in Martinique.
Why was it so important to do this in Martinique? ?
I think that Martinique is a French territory, and I have a feeling that those territories have turned into colonial history. What is happening in terms of local cultural policy? If we think about a climate issue, like a carbon tax, what do we do with these French departments 18,000 kilometers away? If we don’t go to these areas anymore, what will happen? Are we not emphasizing this contempt or this humiliation that has always been there? These are important questions for me.
Venice Art Biennale, April 20 to November 24, Venice. labiennale.org:
Ahead of the Biennale, Julien Kruse is exhibiting Oh phone, black oracle (…), until May 26 at Magasin-CNAC in Grenoble. store-cnac.org:
Source: Le Figaro
