This biography, at the articulation of the personal story and the research projects, is a late work of memory without returning to the archives.
*
Links in blue refer to long written topics . I am the author of the photos presented here, except for a few marked ©.

In the ‘non-places’ where I have worked, bodies are constrained and new relationships to space and time emerge. Nothing is set in stone, either in terms of domination or the ability to invent oneself: “The subject is constituted through practices of subjection or, in a more autonomous way, through practices of liberation.” [Michel Foucault].

I wanted to take an insider’s view, based on experience in the field, in order to be in direct resonance with local interpretations and inventions of language. To achieve this, I worked with the currency of time.

“EVERY HONEST MAN IS A MIXED MAN” [Montaigne]

Discrimination is one of the major themes running through my research, particularly when it concerns the Black Continent, which is struggling to shake off its stigma: The continent of slavery, colonisation, forced recruitment, shipwrecked migrants, undocumented immigrants or the continent of international aid… This reflects negatively on Afro-descendants in France, and very often extends to the mere fact of having black skin.

In the face of these clichés, I have endeavoured to highlight characters who break away from the schema of passive Africans who have not been fully involved in their own history and have only entered into the history of others in a negative way; at best as victims, which obscures the view.

The emergence of black actors in Europe is fraught with difficulties. They have little visibility apart from a few exceptions. These actors are not given universal roles and are criticised for not being “bankable”!

A sort of apartheid of good conscience would have it that, in addition, films about black people should be made by black people and, of course, women should film women, Bretons should film Bretons, and why not let giraffes do the wildlife films!

Very few films made by Africans deal with white Europeans, for example. Most of the time Africans deal with African affairs wherever they are on the globe, but always about black skin. Why should it be? Why should African artists only be inspired by people with the same level of melanin? And not by Finns or others in the Amazon or Indians in the Punjab, for example? Above all, why not shatter these cast-iron identities and set off on great journeys that would break down all the barriers?

The concept of “identity” should be confined to the public services responsible for issuing national identity cards, and no longer be a category of understanding. It obliterates everything; it prevents us from seeing movements and hybridisations.

“AN ANTI-CHILD WORLD” [Dona Haraway]

Capitalist modes of domination increase violence and injustice against the weakest human beings – an obvious fact – while at the same time crushing the very principles of life on earth: biodiversity – resources – interdependence. We can no longer analyse human societies solely through the prism of “domination”. Taking a cross-disciplinary view is not a “methodological option”, but an absolute necessity if we are to link the social to the living world from which it springs, lives and dies.

“I don’t think it’s possible to repair all the damage – the loss is irreversible – but there are forms of restitution, partial healing and compensation. Above all, it is possible both to repair and to invent alliances with each other.” [Donna Haraway]

Repair, invention, alliance in the web of life: for me, a point of no return !