Ghost Party (2)

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CAM presents the experimental film Ghost Party (2) by choreographer and dancer Latifa Laâbissi and visual artist Manon de Boer, a project that summons a singular collection of 'ghosts' that brings other voices to the exhibition Stories of a Collection.

Bringing together dance and cinema, the film Ghost Party (2) intertwines the shared genealogies of the two artists. Manon de Boer and Latifa Laâbissi’s works explore the theme of ‘de-identification’ or the possibility of transforming ourselves through the incorporation of multiple influences that shape our thinking and our way of being in the world, emphasising the fundamental theme of transmutation and creation.

The Ghost Party project unfolds in two parts. The performance Ghost Party (1) will be presented on 24 September.

Latifa Laâbissi mixes genres and redefines formats, bringing to the stage multiple off-beat elements that channel different figures and voices. Since 2011, she has been artistic director of the Extension Sauvage programme and festival. In 2016, a monograph on her work was published by Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers and Les presses du réel. Until 2019, she was Associate Artist at CCN2 and at Le Triangle – Cité de la danse à Rennes. She's currently Associate Artist at Théâtre National de Bretagne in Rennes.

Manon de Boer studied at the Akademie Van Beeldende Kunsten (Rotterdam) and the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (Amsterdam). The artist explores the relationship between language, time and truth to produce several films in which the medium of film itself is continually questioned. Her work has been shown at the Venice (2007), Berlin (2008), São Paulo (2010), Taipei (2016) and Documenta (2012) biennials, as well as at several international film festivals and monographic exhibitions.

Ghost Party (2)
HD video, color, 4:3, BE/FR, 2022, 58’
In French with Portuguese subtitles

In Ghost Party (2) Latifa Laâbissi and Manon de Boer give voice to the ‘voices’ of their field of reference, including Frantz Fanon, Marguerite Duras, Serge Daney, Casey and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, among others, creating short fictions out of vessels, stones and other materials, subtly questioning the politics of language and identity.

The film opens with the image of a dark space where a body lights up, moving as if in a trance in an almost animalistic way.  This prelude is followed by an image of two women in conversation in an open, light modernist space. The tone of the conversation and their body language at first seem mundane, but slowly a somewhat alienating feeling arises that these bodies harbor other voices.

Scattered in the room are objects, masks and vases.  The camera observes the women in a (partly) circular movement, as if trying to encompass the source of the voices – the bodies.  This circular movement is interrupted several times, shifting to objects in the space or nature outside.  The montage of close up images and sounds of the objects, architecture and nature breaks up the routine appearance of the two conversing women and opens a surreal space of memories and sensorial contrasts.

Interweaving documentary realism and associative images that open up an unconscious or obscure space, the heterogeneity of the form transforms and deconstructs voices, bodies and objects, thus underscoring the fundamental theme of de-identification.


Credits

Cinematography 

Charlotte Marchal

Supplementary cinematography 

Léo Lefèvre

Vessels (by order of appearance)

Lygia Clark, Donald Winnicott, Valeska Gert, Oskar Schlemmer, Oum Kalthoum, Beyoncé, Martha/Dan Graham, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Hélio Oiticica, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Hijikata Tatsumi, Mina, Frantz Fanon, Jack Smith, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Delphine Seyrig, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Latifa Laâbissi, Manon de Boer, Lina Bo Bardi, Maya Deren, Alain Cavalier, Marguerite Duras, Anne Carson, Angela Davis, Octavia Butler, Chantal Akerman & Casey

Editing 

Manon de Boer

Sound recording and editing 

Laszlo Umbreit

Sound mixing 

Laszlo Umbreit & Rémi Gérard at Empire Digital

Colour correction

Paul Millot at Cobalt

Production

Auguste Orts & Figure Project

Support 

Flanders Audiovisual Fund, Vlaamse Gemeenschap, WIELS, FRAC Bretagne, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, kunstencentrum BUDA, Kunstmuseum St.Gallen, Jan Mot, On & For Production and Distribution, Friends of Auguste Orts Fund, KASK & Conservatorium

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