The Bièvre River flows into the Seine in Paris, at the Austerlitz train station, after a 35 km journey through the departments of Yvelines, Essonne, Hauts-de-Seine, Val-de-Marne and Paris, where it used to flow through the 13th and 5th arrondissements. Its sources are in La Minière ponds, near Guyancourt. Once open to the air, it has suffered the fate of many small urban rivers: polluted, channelled and dispersed. It has been completely covered in Paris since 1912 and in the suburbs from Antony to Gentilly since the 1950s, with the exception of short sections recently brought to light. In Arcueil, The Bièvre flows under Pauline Perplexe, a former family house run by artists and converted into an independent place of artistic production and exhibition, and continues underground, indiscernible, near Bétonsalon, in the 13th arrondissement. Taking as a pretext and source of inspiration the path of this underground water that links Pauline Perplexe to Bétonsalon, we will take advantage of this invisible link to correspond, send messages in bottles, pursue artistic research and share it. Through monthly meetings combining visits, walks, workshops, surveys of texts and paths, this project will be an opportunity to share our practices and know-hows. Each session will include an invitation to a researcher, artist or activist, who will bring another approach to the issues addressed.

The artistic committee of the ADAGP / Bétonsalon Grant met on May 23th, 2022 and chose Abdessamad El Montassir as laureate. He is the fifth artist benefiting from this grant after franck leibovici (2017), Liv Schulman (2018), Euridice Zaituna Kala (2019) and Anne Le Troter (2021). The ADAGP / Bétonsalon grant, formerly associated with Villa Vassilieff, amounts to 20,000 euros and aims to accompany an artist in the development of a research, during several months. Bétonsalon – Center for art and research accompanies the artist in their research and production process, the artist receives a 5,000 euros honorarium and 10,000 euros for production. The artistic project: Memory of Ashes Originally from the Sahara South of Morocco (Western Sahara), Abdessamad El Montassir grew up in the town of Boujdour. This is the region where the project Memory of Ashes is located, a project he would like to develop with the research and production grant he received from ADAGP / Bétonsalon. In this research, Abdessamad El Montassir wants to evoke the invisibility of the recent history of the Sahara, the traumas it has experienced and the way they are transmitted. He will attempt to test alternative means of transmission that respect the right to be forgotten, and the way these traumas can be the basis for a new form of historization. What happens to stifled memories, confiscated from collective imagination? What can images show or recount? How do you share “emptiness”, “absence”, “a ghost”? What shape does one give to forgetting? Until 1991, the Sahara South of Morocco was the backdrop to a long conflict that left Saharan civil society deeply wounded. The populations settled in urban areas to escape the conflicts, putting an end to their traditional lifestyle, their freedom of movement, and above all, various ancestral forms of transmission. Today, despite à ceasefire approved by the UN, tensions still exist. Using Sahara South of Morocco as the main study site for new forms of creation and experiments with transmission of memory, this project will be inspired by the book Necessità dei volti and its annexes, preserved at the Kandinsky Library. There are very few copies of this book; not a single one exists in the region. Thus, despite this publication, there are still no local archives. This absence of archive opens with questions that concern the possession and spread of images, particularly when they involve war or colonization situations: Who is speaking? From where? Instead of whom? With this project, Memories of Ashes, Abdessamad El Montassir will envisage future trajectories of individual, collective, human and non-human identities, in response to the absence of a narrative and the amnesia that haunt the Sahara.

Anna Holveck’s project “Les cris” (The Cries) is based on the scream as a sound form. Screaming calls upon overwhelming and creative emotions such as joy and excitement or anger and pain, but can we detach it from its emotional charge to observe its musical qualities? Starting from the ambient hubbub in the classrooms, the artist works with the students on the creative potential of the sound of their voices as well as on listening to their environment. For the students, these workshops are an opportunity to work on orality, the sense of listening to themselves and to others and, through this, to explore the tools of voice and sound recording. In this project, shouting is seen as a way of expressing oneself – literally to squeeze out – of activating one’s vocal cords through acoustic pressure that is imparted to the space. The students work on the positioning of the screaming voice, and its extension to the speaking or singing voice, to learn to scream without hurting themselves or others. From the newborn whose lungs are opening, to the spontaneity of reflex cries as well as the endless number of animal cries, the shouted sound is primary but it can also be elaborated. Once articulated, the cry becomes a syllable and then a word. How do you shout in writing? This allows students to explore what makes them want to shout. In contrast to this form of outburst, these workshops are also an opportunity to listen to the quality of the silence after this explosive sound. The scream has a social, political and artistic history. By going through it, the students will be able to question, for example, how do we teach children to shout? What does the cry of a single person or a group mean? This liberating, permissive and complex gesture is an opportunity to make spaces sound, to produce sound and to listen to it reverberate. This research residency will lead to the production of a restitution with the pupils.

  You will have to ring the bell first. Next to the door stands the keeper of the boundaries. She will ask you why are you going to explore the November gloom? Answer that you will be back by snack time Check out through your perfect reflection what’s happening below that’s where the ants go down to and shorten the enchanted days On the right, there is a path covered with haunted acorns, do not take it Wink at the owl standing at the edge of the hole Go forward a few steps and walk along the river, time for us to make a mistake Pick up the pens, scissors and some untied laces Beyond stands a great oak, alone and weeping It has lost its shadow As its tears ricochet off the twilight, ask when the mountain will topple To its right, you will find a bench covered with moss, where the slow passage of time hides Sensitive to your concerns, the sap will draw the face of the night, the soil and the thorns will have fallen asleep and then the birds will take over Sophie Rogg   là où le temps long se camoufle [where the slow passage of time hides] is a mural that Sophie Rogg created with the children from the children’s activity centre at the École des Grands Moulins featuring contributions from Ahmed, Rawassi, Rimass, Lou, Jeanne, Ayoub, Missi, Alix, Alyssa, Anahké, Fanta and Neyla. It was produced by the artist with the invaluable help of Sarah Touré and Sylvio Méranville, supported and encouraged by Lily, Sirine and Décra.

Can you write about art with mittens? Having your hands full of plaster? Having you nose to the grindstone? What does the color of the exhibition floor, a rumbling stomach, boredom or the bus ride to get here do to our perception of artworks? How to write without passion? How do we write about things we don’t understand? Is there not always a moment when we say too much ? These are questions that we will not answer in this workshop, but perhaps we will only try to answer them, or if not, ask other questions. This workshop is for all those who have insomnia writing about and around art, come and share your words.