Film Screening - *Les Indes Galantes*, directed by Clément Cogitore

*Les Indes Galantes* is an opera-ballet created by Jean-Philippe Rameau in 1735.

For one of the dances, Rameau was inspired by a performance of American Indian tribal dances from Louisiana performed in Paris by chiefs of the Metchigaema in 1723.

Clément Cogitore adapts in collaboration with the three choreographers Bintou Dembele, Brahim Rachiki and Igor Carouge a short part of the ballet by mobilizing a group of Krump dan- cers, a dance form born in Los Angeles' black ghetto in the 1990s. Its birth occurred in the aftermath of the beating up of Rodney King and the riots, as well as the brutal police repression it triggered. Amidst this coercive atmosphere, young dancers started to embody the violent tensions of the physical, social and political body.

Both the tribal dance performed in Paris in 1723, and the rebelious Krump dancers of the 1990s shape a reenactment of Rameau’s original libretto, staging young people dancing on the verge of a volcano.

«The body is hardly ever non-political in Clément Cogitore's works, as among the dancers he stages in his film 'Les Indes Galantes'. Cogitore delivers a new vision, its contemporary reinvention. (...) Grimaces, intimidations, the gesture functions as a powerful catharsis and releases socio-political tensions in its trance. As baroque music envelopes the body of the dancers, the contained violence disappears by waves and grace appears, powerful, victorious, obvious.»

Les Indes Galantes

2017, Video, HD 16:9, color, 5 min 26 s

Production: 3° Scène – Paris National Opera – Les Films Pelléas Choreographers: Bintou Dembele, Brahim Rachiki, Igor Carouge Cinematography: Sylvain Verdet  

Clément Cogitore

Born in Colmar in 1983, lives and works between Paris and Berlin. After studying at Le Fresnoy, the French National Studio of Contemporary Art, Clément Cogitore developed his artistic practice at the crossroads of contemporary art and cinema. Combining film, video, installations and photographs, Cogitore questions the modalities of cohabitation between humankind and its own images and representations. Rituality, collective memory, figuration of the sacred, as well as a particular idea of the permeability of worlds are leading trends in his practice. Cogitore’s work has notably been screened and exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo, MADRE (Naples), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Institute of Contemporary Arts ICA (London), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), MACRO (Rome), MoMA (New-York), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), MNBA (Québec), SeMA Bunker (Seoul), Red Brick Art Museum (Beijing), Kunsthaus Baselland (Basel), and biennials such as the Lyon Biennial (France), the Berlin Biennial (Germany) and the Yokohama Triennial (Japan).

n 2011 Cogitore was awarded the Grand Prize of Salon de Montrouge for contemporary art and the following year he became resident of the Villa Medici, French Academy in Rome. His cinematographic works have been selected and awarded prizes in numerous international festivals (Cannes, Locarno, Telluride, Los Angeles, San Sebastian). In 2015, his first feature film «Neither Heaven Nor Earth» was selected at the Cannes International Film Festival – Critic’s week, awarded by the Gan Foundation, acclaimed by critics and nominated for the best first film at the César award ceremony. That same year he won the BAL Prize for contemporary art. In 2016, he won the SciencesPo Prize for contemporary art and the 18th Fondation d’entreprise Ricard Prize for contemporary art. In 2018, Clément Cogitore was awarded the prestigious Marcel Duchamp Prize for Contemporary Art. Since 2018, he has been teaching at the Ecole des Beaux Arts de Paris, where he directs a film director's workshop.

Clément Cogitore's Website