"Oh happy audience, it is said that in a world gripped by multiple crises, artists write fictions inspired by the realities in which they live. These fictions are seen as critical tools for emancipation in the face of the many systems of oppression and exploitation that still constitute the matrix through which we act and think. It is said that they try to retell through myths and fables the beliefs and desires that animate us so as to bring forth other worlds and create new futures both individual and collective. If, as a French sage declared in 1966, “the narratives of the world are innumerable”, in the age of state-sponsored lies and alternative facts, of post-truth and storytelling management, it is said that artists attempt to use their own (counter) narratives to actively break with the narratives of domination. Considering history as a construction site, one that is incessantly ransacked and reinvented, artists oppose the powers of fiction to the fictions of power in an explicitly political confrontation. Faced with the omnipotence of rational thought and epistemological systems inherited from Western modernity, they attest to and invent a reality wherein historical facts, myth, political analysis, animism and the marvellous intermingle indistinctly, accommodating different modes of transmission and knowledge creation. “How can a film of social intervention be made when one wishes to film wonderful stories? And how to film timeless fables when you are committed to the present?” These are questions asked by filmmaker Miguel Gomes in the prologue to his contemporary adaptation of The Arabian Nights (2015) that this talk will seek to address."
Yoann Gourmel has been a curator at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, since 2016, where he has organized solo exhibitions by Laura Lamiel (2023), Ulla von Brandenburg (2020), Julien Creuzet (2019), Anita Molinero (2018), Massinissa Selmani (2018), and Taloi Havini (2017). He also curated group exhibitions including Shéhérazade, la nuit (2022), Encore un jour banane pour le poisson-rêve (2018), and Sous le regard de machines pleines d'amour et de grâce (2017). In 2019, he coordinated the curatorial team of the Palais de Tokyo for the 15th Lyon Biennale, Where Water Comes Together with Other Water. Prior to his role at the Palais, he taught art and exhibition history in art schools and curated numerous independent exhibitions in France and internationally. Since 2023, he has served as the Director of Public and Cultural Programming at the Palais de Tokyo.
*The lecture will be held in English.