A recent CNAP acquisition, the installation The Fire Flies, Baltimore, was shown for the first time in 2012 at MAC/VAL, in Vitry-sur-Seine. It was a part of the collective exhibition Situation(s), before it was put on display at Centre Pompidou and the Julie Meneret Gallery in New York.
The work dates back to a project funded by CNAP: Frédéric Nauczyciel went to Baltimore to find “Omar,” a character from the TV series The Wire. Inspired by a real person, the scriptwriters turned the character of Omar into a politicized figure who refused to be pigeonholed, whether in terms of his identity or his territory; an individual who no longer conformed to the norm by developing a strategy of active dissimulation.
Subverting The Signs
In the course of his research into this character, Frédéric Nauczyciel encountered a voguing community in which he recognized the strategy developed by Omar. Voguing was originally a competitive dance practiced by American gay and transgender inner-city blacks born in the 1960s. It designates a type of dance that subverts the signs of white power by adopting the poses of models from the covers of Vogue. In search of authenticity, the community of Baltimore voguers developed a ballroom culture that resists commodification predominant in New York. Voguers do not perform in front of the public but among themselves, challenging each other in an effort to push the boundaries in order to affirm their own identity.
A work at the juncture of photography and video
More than an installation, The Fire Flies, Baltimore is a work that meticulously reconfigures, for the duration of the exhibition, the boundaries between art and life. One could analyze this work by breaking it down into its constitutive elements which turn it into an environment inhabitable by the gaze and by the body. Inside the exhibition space an inner room was constructed, a box-like enclosure with images projected on the inside and outside walls: photographs from the series Vogue! Baltimore deconstruct vogue dance moves invented fifty years ago, pointing to the status of the “documentary mise-en-scène” of the work. Also projected on the outside wall, a forty-five-minute loop of the film La Traversée takes a seemingly monotonous tour through Baltimore.
An “other” space
Inside, within the crisscrossing beams of video projectors, voguers use the space as a ballroom. It’s their presence that makes this project meaningful. For, the physical place acquires a new concrete and symbolic dimension. Within the walls of an institution, there is an ephemeral space that is both opened and enclosed, both a shelter and a stage: a place where to be seen by others, a place giving each body its own space.
This experience is an invitation to overcome art. By participating in it, one can forget the museum and share an unlikely, magical moment, simple in its evidence even though transgressing a number of rules, including the convention that normally turns ballrooms into events accessible only to initiates. A moment which eludes even the artist and which he has nevertheless made possible. New life-forms are invented here, harmoniously, in recognition of the dynamic society engendered by the diversity of its components.
Pascal Beausse
Head of the photographic collections
This work is registered in the inventory of the National Collection of Contemporary Art, that the CNAP has, as its mission, to enrich, preserve and disseminate.
Thanks to Pascal Beausse, head of the photographic collections, and to the teams of the Centre National des Arts Plastiques who have allowed this project to be carried out.Coordination: Communications and Information at CNAP
Translation: L’Œil de la Photographie.
Each week you can find the presentation of a piece from the photographic collection of CNAP http://www.cnap.fr and L’Oeil de la Photographie. Available in French and in English
