MANON RECORDON
︎ ︎︎ manonrecordon@gmail.com
~ Conference
January 29, 2025
Forget luck, Forget inspiration. Who are you Octavia E. Butler?
A biographical and archival journey through the life and work of Octavia E. Butler
Invited by Stéphane Sautour as part of the seminar : This is tomorrow. Art Sciences and fiction
École Nationale Supérieure d'architecture de Versailles
© Octavia E. Butler papers, The Huntington Library, San Marino.
~ Solo show
Novembre 7 - 29, 2024
Roses snatched from concrete
Esam (école supérieure d'arts et médias de Caen/Cherbourg)
The studio is a terrain of form-building, an intimate den where the creative process moves,
slips, and evolves within the expanded time of research. The exhibition, by contrast, unfolds in counterpoint,
like a snapshot of still images, offered up for viewing and reflection.
Where could the in-between of these two tempos reside? How might they merge, intertwine?
Exhibition conceived with Isabelle Prim
Part of this project was made possible thanks to the support of the Institut français and La Fondation des artistes.
~ Conference
October, 19, 2023
The Archives of Octavia E. Butler
Study Days : Archives, Creation, History, organised by Valérie Vignaux
IMEC (Institute for Contemporary Publishing Archives) & University of Caen, france
Take root among the stars
RADIAN, PhD in artistic research and creation 2022/2025
Thèse : Le rôle du travail invisible et l'espérance comme clef de lecture du processus de création d’Octavia E. Butler
Thesis: The role of invisible work and hope as keys to the reading of Octavia E. Butler's creative process.
Take root among the stars
Creation and research residency, Los angeles/California 2021/2022
INSTITUT FRANCAIS SUR MESURE + & FONDATION DES ARTISTES
Octavia E. Butler was the first African American author to make science fiction her career. Feminist and visionary, she was born in 1947 and died in 2006.
Her archives are held in the Huntington Library (San Marino, Los Angeles)
© Octavia E. Butler papers, The Huntington Library, San Marino.
STATEMENT
(EN)At the intersection of photography, sculpture, video, and installation, my work explores the relationships between self and other. It weaves together myth and fiction with the immediacy of the present and the persistence of memory. I invite viewers to reconsider memory and the recurrence of forms within the crucible of multiple temporalities. The fluid and unpredictable nature of memory gives rise to networks and resonances, both poetic and affective.
To restore polyphony to history (A Grin Without a Cat, Chris Marker, 1978), I employ analog montage as a tool for reconstructing reality—open and plural—unfolding through associative propagation. Rather than adhering to linear storytelling, chronological progression, or geographical continuity, I favor random navigation and the rejection of rigid logic, allowing the viewer to decipher, within the images, a narrative to make their own, drawn from the fabric of histories.
We inhabit a world once lived in by others; we tread upon a ground shaped and structured by the sedimented layers of history. Between this past and our present, the landscape has formed, eroded, and been rebuilt... I am drawn to this point of friction, the moment when a wave carries its foam to the shore, only to be met by another, and another, in an unceasing cycle
(FR) À la croisée de la photographie, de la sculpture, de la vidéo et de l’installation, mes productions interrogent les relations entre soi et l’autre. Elles articulent, au mythe et à la fiction, l’actualité du présent et celle du souvenir. J’invite les spectateur·ices à reconsidérer la mémoire et la récurrence des formes dans le creuset de temporalités multiples. Le caractère versatile et aléatoire de cette dite mémoire est à l’origine de réseaux et de jeux de correspondances sensibles et poétiques. Pour restituer à l’histoire sa polyphonie (Le fond de l’air est rouge, Chris Marker, 1978), j’use du montage analogique comme outil de recréation du réel, ouvert et pluriel, procédant par propagation associative. À la narration linéaire, à la succession chronologique ou géographique, je préfère la navigation aléatoire et le rejet de la logique afin de laisser le·a regardeur·euse déceler, dans les images, une histoire à faire sienne, dans la matière des histoires. Nous habitons un monde que d’autres ont habité auparavant ; nous foulons un sol dessiné, architecturé par les strates d’histoire qui le composent. Entre cette histoire et notre aujourd’hui, le paysage s’est composé, détruit, reconstruit... Je m’intéresse à ce point de friction, ce moment où la vague porte l’écume sur la rive, alors rejointe par une nouvelle, et ainsi de suite.