Visages & Vérités
Avignon, France, 2017-18
After completing my MA, I embarked on an 8-month adventure in Avignon, my father’s hometown where I had been a Hosting and Sales Team Manager for the Festival d’Avignon many summers in a row. I was eager to design and manage my first project upon the observations I had made in my MA thesis research:
The extent of miscommunication still prevalent in a globalising world where perspectives are in constant friction is turning the world upside down. Children are given gadgets to quiet their indiscriminate curiosity of the unknown while adults run to their gadgets to voice their discriminate rejection of it. The trivial gap between the clear and the confused has become the titanic gulf between the self and the other, and the only tools we conjure for connection seem to often leave both ends unabridged.
Mediating Horizons : Catalyzing Technology Towards True Community
(MA Thesis, Erasmus School of Philosophy)
A. Hiffler-Mani
Read full paper here
Inspired by the early social photography projects of JR, I wanted to use the public space to bridge this gap and to stimulate more social understanding of the “other”. Visages & Vérités was born in November 2017 just after travelling to Palestine to co-animate workshops with cultural and civil society organisations with the Theatre Of Transformation Academy.
Working closely with local cultural associations, the city's youth department and two photographers Gauthier Seferiadis and Christian Milord, we put together testimonies and portrait photographs from "priority" suburb and city-centre youth. 'Priority suburbs' is the official euphemism for marginalised over-populated suburbs inhabited by immigrant and refugee communities, high in crime and extremism, often avoided by city residents and abandoned by authorities. Since 2015, the municipality has been reinvesting in these areas, where it seemed most relevant to conduct the project: Champfleury, La Rocade and Monclar neighbourhoods.
I co-animated expression workshops in social centres around the city. Some were with Muslim mothers in Monclar where we spoke about the future. Another was a rally with 150 children aged 6 to 12, where we animated a words, sign language and photography 'station' for each team of 8. I then searched for funding and a meaningful space to publicly exhibit these beautiful faces and truths. Again: I express my deep gratitude for all those who made our crowdfunding campaign a 125% success ! Working with city authorities and associations, I got involved with a meaningful space to publicly exhibit these beautiful faces and truths for all to witness and re-examine their presumptions. I had the honour of getting the moral support from the deputy mayor to Culture and the attention of the delegate director of the Festival d'Avignon !
The vernissage took place in the TRI Postal d'Avignon during the first week of the Festival d'Avignon - the largest cultural event in Europe. The TRI is a solidary and participatory cultural space that is rising from the ashes of an abandoned industrial complex, now fighting for its right to contribute to the cultural life and social cohesion of the city.
This was a dream come true. grateful with all my heart to those who made it possible, this project enabled me to impact my community in a unique way - by showing the many shades between the socially constructed black and white.
Photo credits : Gauthier Seferiadis and Tri Postal d'Avignon.
