Ife Day (HT/FR, 1987)
Residency period: January-March 2023
At La Becque
I was able to veer towards silence, towards fabrics, and sleep. I was able to close my eyes. I dug into different bodily states: from the young, the icy water of the lake, the cold, the two full moons, the two unrequited crushes, the two hour long runs, the landscapes full of beauty, the visits of Françoise, the extraordinarily tender encounters, the crazy singing of the birds at the arrival of spring, the earth masks, the water.
Reflecting on my practice
My performance work follows many axes: poetry, the clinic, cinema, improvisation, installation, sound effects, dance. The structure of the approach is found in the displacement of the narrative, which can be read in many layers. The data, the historical, geographical, artistic, and cultural references make their way with no immediate links at times. The articulation of perceptions and narrative frameworks is dilated. I use fragmented narratives. I glue, glue again, cut, burn, or drown the pieces… Over time. In other words, the operation of transference is part of the wandering, the movement. Developing my project “l’odeur des e a u x” and dividing it into different chapters including “Dépays” and “Les RetournéeX”.
Dépays
This oblique experience deals with time, the survival of memories, the creative vulnerability of beings, the void. Two figures express the worlds and invite us to go down, and down again.
Les RetournéeX
Is an acid and comic fable.
In an almost suspended time called childhood, metamorphic beings, a vampire and a little being find each other and link up in order to empty the real. Les RetournéeX is an experiment that attempts to transcribe the absurdity of language and symbols: to de-think the social inscriptions of bodies. — Ife Day
Ife Day (born in Port-au-Prince) is a performance artist. She unfolds a hybrid and choral universe that mixes text bodies, videos, installations and dance. This protean playground becomes the place where she can materialise the poetic, the deviant, and the textures of detours. Closely linked to the theme of displacement, she questions cartographies, physical-invisible, chemical-prosaic, archaic-modern-temporal, of the dominated and dominant bodies in order to reflect possible possibilities of metamorphosis. From a Creole background, she develops a corporeal and spatial vocabulary that highlights the different modalities of alienation: social, political or family-related.
Video directed and edited by Joel White