Je suis une phrase qui avance

For its first partnership with the Villefranche-sur-Saône remand center, Stimultania invites Fabienne Swiatly, writer, and Benoît de Carpentier, photographer, to create a work with men in detention.

The two artists know each other, they have already worked together, in 2017, at the Lyon-Corbas remand center, realizing J'étais loin de m'attendre with ten men. Stimultania wishes to confront them again with this particular context, on the one hand to see a new work emerge from this fruitful duo, on the other because having a first experience in prison will, perhaps, facilitate the 'approach. Even if we know that the random remains in place and the difficult working conditions. “You don't get used to it,” Fabienne said.

Their project was first built in a whirlwind of exchanges: it was a question of refuge, folds and folds, of beauty, of moulting, of the sacred, of blur, of seeing and not seeing, of movement. .

"To consider the act of Seeing as not obvious. That is to say, proposing to renounce the following perceptual habit: Seeing would only be a matter of optic nerves. The idea would be to explore Seeing without eyes by relying on other channels, other senses. Photograph with closed eyes, take other points of reference to trigger, work on blur, etc.”Benoît de Carpentier

“A workshop where you will have to close your eyes to see better. To seek the light from within. To invent interior landscapes. Behind my eyelids a whole world. Writing with your eyes closed, a way to see further? A workshop to fix on paper with words and images, with writing and photography, with the inside and the outside. With shadows and light. " Fabienne Swiatly

Then, in November 2019, comes the time of creation.
The devices are thought out, the material recorded and authorized to enter the premises. Identity cards, passage through the porticoes, installation in the dedicated room, everything seems to be in order. There, the men make their appearance. At first, it pitched. Some are there without knowing why, others come and go. Always this surprise: so much movement in this place that we seem so much to the rigidity. But, very quickly, a nucleus solidifies and becomes involved as rarely. Men of different ages who will form, with the artists, a compact and accomplice group. Everyone will be embarked on photographic and literary adventures: who will agree to lie on the ground surrounded by a voodoo circle overhung by a giant lion, who will play chess with white stones and anti-UV glasses on their nose, who come up on the table to shout or blow on a feather. Words are made at the same time as images - sentences that move forward, honest, sincere, sometimes fragile.

Time flies. Twice three days, it's not much to create, experiment, make mistakes. But the material is there. It will be reworked by the two artists in the month following the intervention and then transmitted to the Stimultania team who will come to bring their outside perspective and put their graphic grain of salt. The result: a 124-page book that reflects both the experience (Fabienne will write a journal on the intervention) and the final productions: texts written by men, photographs taken as a group. There are also the side effects like this sequence of blurry images showing the backstage of the cyanotype workshop where the whole group (there were a good ten that day) found themselves forced to work all day in a twelve square meter room.

Fabienne Swiatly and Benoît de Carpentier have this wonderful ability to approach people and take them to places they never suspected. In front of them, there were open and involved men who did not hesitate to let themselves be guided and to give.

« This intervention was quite new for me: I have the feeling that I approached it a little differently, in a more sensory way and with a great desire for intensity of sharing in the relationship with the male prisoners. That there is experience and listening as much as possible in the moments of shooting. It asked me to let go of the desire to achieve only beautiful images and to encompass both the moments of “mastery” and those that escape us. In / out of scope. On this point, contact with Fabienne's sensitivity was welcome and productive. " Benoit de Carpentier

Production: book format 18 × 24 cm, 124 pages, edited in 70 copies, distributed to participants, printed at Ott Imprimeur / Printot & Ixo, available for consultation at Stimultania Strasbourg and Givors.

Benoit de Carpentier : Graduated from the École Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (ESAD) in Strasbourg, painting section in 1989, Benoît de Carpentier is a plastic photographer. His works combine reality and dreamlike, sometimes introspective, sometimes turned towards the Other, often philosophical and
pictorial. In 2002 and 2004 he received the creation aid from the DRAC Alsace for projects around the landscape and architecture. He regularly exhibits his work, mainly in Strasbourg and Paris. He teaches photography and runs photographic projects in schools from elementary to high school.

Fabienne Swiatly : She writes poetry, theater, novels. She has always written to stand up in a world that vacillates so often. Get others to write so that they in turn can tell their world. So she comes with her books, her writings, wherever she is invited. Share. Latest publications: "Boire et plus", éd. The bear pit. "They are at the service", ed. Bruno Doucey.