#monpremierharcelement is an intimate yet universal story
A year before the #metoo revolution, Clémence Vazard started collecting testimonies from French women who answered her only question:
"What is your first memory of harassment?".
By offering them a unique opportunity to tell their story, to be heard, believed and supported, the artist placed herself as an "enlightened witness" (a stance developed by psychoanalyst Alice Miller in her writings on the healing process of childhood traumas) to operate the power of narrative in the healing process of the trauma.
The goal of the artist was to bring out the narrative of this memory that remains engraved in us, despite (and because of) our ability to bury it deeply, in order to create a multimedia plastic language that would allow her to reveal this collective reality through "affective" visual and sound materials. Their portraits, photographed at the end of the interviews, are fragmented by Clémence Vazard's collage technique according to unique patterns. Each portrait presents a visual fragmentation pattern that echoes the narration of the recorded testimony. The visual choreography, chaotic and unstable, created by all the portraits, responds to the mechanisms of "traumatic memory". The voices of these women, gathered in a sound device, respond and intertwine to create a unity, a common word, a powerful manifesto.
#monpremierharcelement received a grant from the City of Paris and has been exhibited at the FGO Barbara Cultural Centre in Paris (March 2018), at the Avignon City Hall (November 2018), at Make Space Euston Town in London (March 2019) and at the City Hall of the 7th arrondissement of Paris (November 2019).
"What is your first memory of harassment?".
By offering them a unique opportunity to tell their story, to be heard, believed and supported, the artist placed herself as an "enlightened witness" (a stance developed by psychoanalyst Alice Miller in her writings on the healing process of childhood traumas) to operate the power of narrative in the healing process of the trauma.
The goal of the artist was to bring out the narrative of this memory that remains engraved in us, despite (and because of) our ability to bury it deeply, in order to create a multimedia plastic language that would allow her to reveal this collective reality through "affective" visual and sound materials. Their portraits, photographed at the end of the interviews, are fragmented by Clémence Vazard's collage technique according to unique patterns. Each portrait presents a visual fragmentation pattern that echoes the narration of the recorded testimony. The visual choreography, chaotic and unstable, created by all the portraits, responds to the mechanisms of "traumatic memory". The voices of these women, gathered in a sound device, respond and intertwine to create a unity, a common word, a powerful manifesto.
#monpremierharcelement received a grant from the City of Paris and has been exhibited at the FGO Barbara Cultural Centre in Paris (March 2018), at the Avignon City Hall (November 2018), at Make Space Euston Town in London (March 2019) and at the City Hall of the 7th arrondissement of Paris (November 2019).
