The co-authors of Rester. Étranger, Nicole Koffi, Barbara Manzetti, Sabrina Pennacchietti and Caroline Sebilleau, are in residence at Bétonsalon with Juliette Pollet, curator at the CNAP, and Daisy Lambert, her assistant, from 20 to 25 August 2021.

Under the title Personnellement je préfère merveilleux, otherwise known in Koulango boundoukou as Mien mi koro zingré tchiré, the authors give up the way of life of the processual and durable work Rester. Étranger, by means of a device that activates family memory.

This residency is one stage in their proposal for “La vie bonne”, supported by AWARE – Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions – and Cnap – Centre national des arts plastiques, a programme for women artists who write performance works. “La vie bonne” echoes the question posed by Judith Butler: “How can we lead a good life in a bad life?”

Both work and author, the Rester. Étranger has been performing its entry into France and the French language for several years now. On this geographical, administrative, legal, literary and poetic threshold, a choral writing style emerges that they call fle, from the acronym FLE, Français Langue Étrangère (French as a Foreign Language). The language, augmented by expressions from the authors’ mother tongues, is performed, printed and handwritten on durable and perishable media such as floors, walls, windows, posters, post-it notes, cards and rolls of paper, or is given hospitality in the form of a book, a film or a radio production.

Bi hè yebor goussèguè lè tou tchilibor, We are the women of the Rester Family. Étranger, it’s June 2020, we’re writing an eight-handed letter in response to the call for projects entitled “La vie bonne”, launched by AWARE (Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions) and Cnap (Centre national des arts plastiques). The women artists were invited to respond to Judith Butler’s question “How can you live a good life in a bad life? in 2020, when she was awarded the Theodor Adorno Prize, taking up and transforming the German thinker’s question. How can we have a good life “in a world in which the good life is structurally or systematically forbidden to the majority? For Judith Butler, the second problem is to determine “the form that this question can take for us today. In other words, how does the historical moment in which we live condition and influence the form of the question itself?”
What good is an artist alone in her work?” replies the Famille Rester. Étranger. I’m the kind of person who wakes up in the work, whispers in the work, lives in the work, with others who have found their place in it. People who don’t have the same rights as me. The same right to live as I do. People who don’t receive the same consideration from others as I do.”

This residency is an opportunity to immerse oneself in the work Rester. Étranger, with the aim of guaranteeing the ethical conditions for the transfer of the work to the Centre National des Arts Plastiques. They will be accompanied by other authors from the family, including Prince Pacôme Nangoh, translator and interpreter into the Agni language (Côte d’Ivoire), Youssouf Hassan, a specialist in survival architecture, Hassan Abdallah and Bartolomeo Terrade, sound artists; Olivier Marbœuf, invited as producer, will work with the family on a film version of the work.

The aim is also to compare the accessibility of the intergenerational work with the different abilities of the audience.

The authors quoted above certify that they are not alone in the work Rester. Étranger, created with Abdelaziz Abdelkarim, Omar Haroune Aboubakar, Mohamed Bamba, Hussein Ishak Abdallah, Pascaline Denimal, Mohamed Hussein, Hélène Iratchet, Motawakil El Douma, Abdellah Ismail, Audrey Gaisan Doncel, EricYvelin, Bouchra Koné, Kassin Koné, Tanguy Nédélec, Masri Omar, Héloïse Pierre- Emmanuel, Chloé Schmidt, Corinne Lamesch, Maia Bosch, Ariane Leblanc, Benoit Briant and the Exposer/Publier family, Barbara Coffy-Yarsel, Barış Yarsel, the children Eva, Mahé, Sorina, Gaston, Iris, Lila, teenagers Gheorghe, Hélio and Lester, Massimiliano Manzetti, Fantôme Francis Terrade, Olivier Nourisson, Hugo Hecker, Simon Marini, Victor Donati and the R22 Tout-Monde family, Marian del Valle, Kamal Hassan, Ismail Afghan, Charlotte Imbault, Gérard Mayen, Aurore Desprès, Mathys Berchery, Kieran Jessel, Esther Poryles, Geneviève Coudre, Virginie Colemyn, Viviana Moin, Claire Harsany, Denis Mariotte, Caroline Cournède, Sandrine Moreau, Mathilde Villeneuve, Alexandra Baudelot, Renaud Golo, the Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers family, Natasa Petresin Bachelez, Marie-Laure Lapeyre, Pauline Bastard, Pauline Hurel, Pierre Simon, Christine Pécheux, Églantine Laval, Élodie Tincq, Line Francillon, Chiara Figone, the Serretta family, the Agostoni family, the Morin family, Julie Nioche and the A.I.M.E. family, Elena Sorokina, Isabelle Ginot, Katarina Lanier, Gwenn Carion, Katerina Kracmanova, Karine Boudier, Garance Brehaudat, the Anacrouse family, Alnour A.Y., Hassan Ali, the “Adam” family and all the members and supporters of the Occupation de l’université Paris 8 Saint-Denis Vincennes 2018, the PourLoger family, the Paris 8 University Library family, Isabelle Launay, Makis Solomos, Julie Perrin, Roberto Barbanti, Laurent Pichaud, Raphaëlle Doyon, Nathalie Coutelet, Barbara Formis, Sabine Macher, Chiara Palermo, Camille Paillet, Toshiba Nisan, Françoise Rognerud, Tecla Raynaud, Kristina Solomoukha, Paolo Codeluppi and the Maison de l’Ours family, The Living And The Dead Ensemble, Collectif La Seine, the Bureau des Dépositions family, the Villa Mais d’Ici family, Biss, the family of Claudia and Gheorghe Le Jeune, the family of Aurel le Maigre, the family of Aurel le Nervuso, the family of Emil, Rodica and the adopted Gheorghe Le Vieux, Mich-Mich, Virginie Bobin and the Qalqalah قلقلة family, the CNAP / AWARE family.