From February 7 to 9, Cherish Menzo’s new creation will be presented at Usine C, DARKMATTER. Inspired by Afrofuturism and post-humanism, this Dutch artist with a passion for fiction encourages reflection on the representation of black bodies in our spaces, to go beyond stereotypes and to imagine potential futures.
“ DARKMATTER is the continuation of Jezebel, where I wanted to emphasize the representation of black women, particularly through the hypersexualization of female rappers’ music videos,” recalls Cherish Menzo. It was also quite quickly that the artist found his new title. “Basically, it starts from astrophysics,” she describes. Dark matter, which we cannot see, and which forms the basis of conversation about black bodies, darkness… I wanted to create material on these notions, to play with their meaning, to make the invisible visible.”
Indeed, while continuing to collect representations of black bodies in society, Mme Menzo also leaned towards post-humanism to nourish her research and develop her new creation. “Very quickly, we realize that we remain in a very Western vision, with a body with skills, white, and often male, so I had to delve further to discover black posthumanism, where we invite the black body to become central,” she explains. According to the artist, posthumanism consists of imagining how to decentralize the human being, of thinking about a post-Anthropocene world where “all organisms are connected”.
In addition to posthumanism, Cherish Menzo was also greatly inspired by Afrofuturism to develop DARKMATTER. “It is present in literature, music, films, etc. Some thinkers and artists take into account the past, colonialism, in particular, while others construct their thinking as if it had not existed. This gives really interesting proposals, where spirituality has a more important place, for example,” she continues. It is through all his research that Cherish Menzo developed DARKMATTER, an interdisciplinary piece where “all entities coexist together”. “There is dance, but also video, text, lights, sounds. The elements are not there to support the moving body,” she says.
Distort to build
“I like to provoke ambivalence, to create disturbing spaces,” says Mme Menzo. In addition to posthumanism and Afrofuturism, multiple inspirations have fueled his exploration, for example the musical work of Drexciya, an electronic duo from Detroit, the “chopped and screwed” technique borrowed from hip-hop, opera Troubled Island by William Grant Still or DJ Screw from Houston, Texas. “I really like the distortion of the sound, the slow-down rap lyrics, etc.,” she says. I wondered how to implement all of this in a moving body, or even in the text. »
Distortion then became a central element in DARKMATTER, and not just in music. “There are bodily limits, that’s for sure, but I tried to push them back, to go far, to create a more malleable body, to implement strategies to push its transformation. » Time is also metamorphosed, distended, elongated in the artistic proposal of Mme Menzo. “Slow, non-linear temporality creates something a little untouchable, elusive. I wanted to delve into what “an in-between” means. For us, the performers, DARKMATTER cannot be done on autopilot. This in-between pushes us to hypervigilance, to always be ready. It creates the embodiment and the performative side of the piece, in my opinion. »
For Cherish Menzo, DARKMATTER invites you to travel. “It doesn’t matter what the different backgrounds people in the audience, I would like them to dive into the room. » She calls into question the classic codes of a show, in particular because there is no narrative logic behind it, she thinks. “I think it’s destabilizing, that it can cause unpleasant sensations, but that it allows us to better understand the codes afterwards. »
“It’s political in the nuances it brings,” thinks Cherish Menzo. Indeed, although she did not want to take a political position with DARKMATTER or make a statement, she thinks that art is necessarily a political act. “It can be critical or empathetic, but it always has a connection with the time in which we live, so it’s political,” she concludes. And in my environment, the representation of the body has a very important place. It made me feel uncomfortable, I encountered discrimination, so I simply wanted to question what I experienced, to discuss it, she concludes. I don’t want to tell stories that already exist, but to look at them and see how to create speculative fiction around them. »