Olive Martin & Patrick Bernier MANMUSWAK

Man must walk, it is certainly necessary that man live, or rather man-must-live, according to the French translation of Sozaboy, the novel by the Nigerian author Ken Saro Wiwa from which the title of this film is taken. In fact, our man does walk : from an outlying neighbourhood, a city enclave where he shares a room in shifts, through a wasteland ; on the streets of the city centre, in the aisles of a shopping mall ; along the paths of the botanical garden, on an avenue, at night. The town is thus surveyed ; he takes measure of it, squares it off, lives it according to the movements that his replacements require.

Because it is necessary for man to live and, in order to do so, he accepts jobs that have nothing to do with his training or level of qualifications. People from the Ivory Coast have a term that describes the work of these migrants : djossi, which means “to sweep” and which dates from the time when Africans in France were principally employed in road maintenance. Watchmen, guards, bouncers and other security related jobs nowadays seem to be djossi jobs. Paradoxically perhaps, it is precisely those persons, whose legal presence in the country falls under the suspicion of the authorities, who are systematically employed to guard private frontiers.

However, the principle of the relay (between people that he occasionally replaces in their guard posts) practised by the character K, gives him the opportunity to establish “unusual links on a much greater geographical scale that are also socially differentiated”, according to the places he guards and the relationships that he maintains with the population who frequent them, and which “ turn him into a weaver of social networks, a craftsman of the multitude, who opens new perspectives: the links of the great socio-economic network do not only pass through white collar workers and businessmen.”

In this sense, he is reminiscent of “Homo Corona, Homme Ring”, the central figure of the first episode of “Quelques K de mémoire vive”, the story of Patrick Bernier’s life recounted at the gallery by Carlos Ouédrago in July and November 2003 (the present exhibition will be an opportunity to hear the second episode of this story centred on his participation in the curatorial experiment “ I Am A Curator”, directed by Per Hüttner at the Chisenhale Gallery in London in November 2003).

Because of the way K moves around and the exchanges of identity to which he must comply, Manmuswak is also reminiscent of previous research undertaken by Olive Martin such as the film “Loop”, in which different actors and actresses took on the role for one-shot of the same couple going round a block in Chicago, or the photographic series “Patrick(s) Bernier(s)” that is composed of portraits of homonyms. The film is made up of ambiguous sequences - as were the images of the psychological test set up by Olive Martin in the series “Après le TAT” - which let the spectator form his own interpretation. Consequently, we did not want it to appear as a fiction, nor as a documentary but rather as the concentration of semi-lived and projected stories, in other words, as a fiction about the life lived by these people and a documentary about our way of perceiving them.

The film “MANMUSWAK” was produced by the Groupe de Recherche et d’Essai Cinematographique (GREC), with the participation of the Délégation aux Arts Plastiques (Fonds Images / Mouvement), the Fonds d’Action et de Soutient pour l’Intégration et de Lutte contre les Discriminations (FASILD), Région Pays de la Loire, Association Tissé Métisse – Nantes, Du Fresnoy – Studio National des Arts Contemporain, and the Maisonneuve Gallery.

Patrick Bernier was born in Paris in 1971. After studying Art and Philosophy at the Sorbonne, in 1996 he entered the Ecole des Beaux-arts de Paris, spent six months in 1998 studying at the Institut National d’Art in Abidjan, Ivory Coast and in 2000 participated at the first session of the “Collège Invisible”, a postgraduate diploma at the Marseille School of Fine Art. For the last five years he has been developing a project that concerns the notion of accommodation in relation to invitations from exhibitions in France and abroad (“lascaux 2”, Villa Arson, Nice,1999, “TranzTech”, Toronto, 2001, “ I Am A Curator”, Chisenhale Gallery, London, 2003). The documentation of this immaterial work provides the opportunity for a collaboration with the storyteller from Burkina Faso, Carlos Ouédraogo whose veritable alter-ego narrates these experiences at public presentations (Maisonneuve Gallery, Paris, 2003 ; Ménagerie de Verre, Paris, 2003 ; Ecole des Beaux–arts de Grenoble, 2005). Since 2001, he has been actively engaged in an association dedicated to solidarity with immigrant workers in Nantes to which he brings judicial and financial help to fight for equality of rights between Europeans and foreigners, notably in terms of freedom of movement and installation.

Olive Martin was born in Liège, Belgium in 1972. Following university studies in art history in Toulouse, she entered the Ecole des Beaux-arts de Paris in 1996. There she met Patrick Bernier whom she later joined in Africa (Ivory Coast, Mali, Burkina Faso) in 1998. She was given a six-month study grant in Chicago in 1999 where she attended courses at the Cinema and Photography Department of the Art Institute. In 2001 she participated in a postgraduate course at the Nantes School of Fine Art. Olive Martin employs an approach in her work that questions the notion of identity, its transvestiticisms and detours. She pursues the idea of “any old singularity” in the photographs and installations that she presents during exhibitions : “Voilà” at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 2000 for Bertrand Lavier’s piece “La peinture des Martin” ; “ Blow by Blow” at the Zoo Gallery in Nante in 2001 ; “Nursery World” at the Jennifer Flay Gallery in Paris, “La femme au Portrait” in various locations in Nantes ; “Time Warp” at the Maisonneuve Gallery in Paris and “Ce fût comme une apparition…” at the Pau Museum of Fine Art in 2003. The photographic series “Après le TAT” was acquired by the Artothèque Nantaise in 2004 and in 2005 was the subject of the book “Common Objects”, in collaboration with the American writer April Durham, that was published by Editions Joca Seria in Nantes.

Patrick Bernier and Olive Martin currently live and work in Nantes. They have worked together on numerous projects linked in particular to the channel # atelierenreseau on which they presented weekly programmes from 1998 to 2001 (“Now talking in # atelierenreseau”, sit-com pilot, 1999 ; “ A Nice Showroom”, exhibition, SEche, Paris, 2000 ; “A Nice Chatroom 2”, installation, 2000 ; “Résumés des épisodes précédents”, radiophonic series, 2001 ; “Episodes Précédents”, web site, 2001.)

Olive Martin & Patrick Bernier
MANMUSWAK