Photographs taken by Bruno, Céline, Delphine, Jean-Louis, Lionel, Mustapha, Mohamed, Nora, René, Sandrine, Youssef, Zaia, Zidane in Givors. Bernard, Camille, Caroline, Cathy, Eloa, Jonathan, Julia, Julien, Laurent, Nacir, Odile, Salia, Sofiene, Sonia, Stéphane, Stéphanie, Taouria, Vincent in Strasbourg
Artistic intention thought and carried out by: Dorian Teti
Creation time led over two weeks, from January 25 to February 5, 2023 in Givors then Strasbourg
With Aziza Fahsi, coordinator of the Mutual Aid Group La Main sur le Coeur in Givors & Maxime Hoffner, coordinator of GEM Aube in Strasbourg
Collective work carried by Stimultania.
Support by the Ministry of Culture as part of the system Between images, a national program of photographic and transmission workshops developed by the Diagonal network and by the town of Givors.
When an artist photographer intervenes to create a collective work with the public, it is because we, Stimultania, have invited him. The artist and the group involved get to know each other, a common creation emerges. In 2022, two exchanges lay the foundations for a new desire to proceed. First with the Villa Pérochon, Center for Contemporary Photographic Art based in Niort, around a residency led in a psychiatric ward by the photographer Frédéric Stucin. He had been chosen by the patients, jury of the call for projects. Then with the Mutual Aid Group La Main sur le Cœur, in Givors, which brings together adults with mental disabilities. The place is atypical, it is not a place of care but of reunion. The members, autonomous, collectively choose the activities from which they will benefit.
From these exchanges germinated the idea of setting up a global project: a collaboration between two GEMs, La Main sur le cœur in Givors and Aube in Strasbourg; involvement of the participants from the choice of the artist. The three finalists of the call for projects launched at the end of summer 2022 thus faced the participants of the two GEMs during a videoconference interview. An epic and decisive moment that will lead to the choice to embark on the adventure proposed by the photographer and visual artist Dorian Teti.
The rest took place in January 2023: Dorian Teti carried out his unlimited exploration of representations of the object, four days in Givors, four in Strasbourg, with around fifteen adults each time. Objects photographed from every angle, lots of laughter and human warmth.
Once the photographic material has been created – consistent, abundant, overflowing – comes the time of production. The book is designed by the artist, presented to the groups during a new collective video.
But nothing beats the real face-to-face: at the end of May 2023, the Givordin participants travel to Strasbourg for the joint restitution. The members of the GEM are present at the descent of the train and brilliantly organized the two days on site. A dense and lively program with a visit to the exhibition at Stimultania, two tours guided by the GEM Aube in Strasbourg, magnificent tartes flambées cooked collectively in the premises of the GEM and of course, the distribution of the book to all with feedback on the project. Touching moments that will be remembered forever.
There will be a sequel to all this: in Givors, the project will be presented in July 2023 on the windows, during the party in the public square as well as in October as part of mental health month in partnership with the service health of the town of Givors. In Strasbourg too, the photos take over the establishment's windows from October, as well as the Place Karl Ferdinand Braun with a monumental format.
And then in 2024, Dorian Teti returns to extend the project with the two groups, who are very demanding. This time for Strasbourg residents to go down to Givors…
Born in 1983, Dorian Teti lives in Vallauris, in the south of France. “Graduated from ENS Louis-Lumière in 2011 and after having worked for nearly ten years in the field of professional photographic retouching, I am now developing an artistic work on the relationship between intimate, individual and collective memory. Through reappropriation games, photographic associations and self-portraits, I first worked on self-representations and on the expression of heritages and a shared history, particularly on the scale of the family. From the start, I envisaged photography as documentation (possibly fictional), ready to be manipulated and diverted by the use of retouching, which is omnipresent in my work. For three years, I have associated this photographic work with a practice of ceramics, after having trained in Vallauris, the city where I live, famous for its ceramic production. These two parts of my work (photographic and in volume) now feed on each other, because I think together about the materiality of the images and the surface of the volumes created. These constant comings and goings between the space of the real and that of the image are of particular interest to me, insofar as they make it possible to shape the links between the authentic and the fake, between the original and the copy, between reality and its double.