TUKULEUR INSTALLATION

A body placed, posed, in front of an urban collage. A flat decor made of prints stapled onto recycled wood panels. The prints are photos taken over the years in Belgium, Senegal and New York, among other places, by Brahim Tall himself. Together, they form a sketch of a diaspora. They set the stage for a crucial task: to bring together the body and the image through movement.

From the still image to the moving image. From photography to film.

Behind Tukuleur’s composed mise-en-scène, we can trace a mass grave of one-dimensional representations. The body on screen expresses a clear necessity to animate these static forms, to animate these corpses of art history, to bring life to representation, or, better yet, to move beyond it. With every pose-switch, the Tukuleur body sings one of its thousand possible articulations.

This polyvocal movement, however, is not necessarily liberating in itself. When the director's voice gives distorted instructions, commanding the body to

poseposeposespspopesppseposepose, it quite literally highlights the painful interaction between a thousand selves and their physical environment. This interaction seems only to allow a single self at a time, yet also demands a constant adaptation to specific external forces. It seems that with every cut or switch of light (and its consequent switch of skin colour), the power dynamic changes. Is this an agent body expressing its polyvocality? Or is this a jester, compelled to perform endless roles to entertain the static frontal gaze of the camera? The sharp editing instils a rhythm that can be cruel to its onscreen body yet also breathes life into its dance. Tukuleur proves that polyvocal movement is not the definitive answer; it is still in conflict, unresolved, confused. However, as opposed to the undead practice of representation, it is the path that allows complex life. 

Text by Mischa Dols for .Tiff magazine published by Fomu Antwerp

In this installation I reworked Tukuleur into a dual screen loop which shifted the nuance of the film quite drastically. The comparative viewing experience splits the focus of the work between on the one hand the black body in relation to gazes & the camera, on the other hand the construction of the image which drives the reading of the viewer and how these two are connected to one-another. Tukuleur installation forces you to constantly compare the same body in different forms and shapes. An undead body transforming itself in an endless flood of personas,  a multitude of poses alternating each other with no beginning or end and directed by an offscreen voice, puppeteering its movement for the camera, robbing it of its agency. The make-up artist, hairdresser, costume designer, first AD and more crew members join the character on screen, constructing the image; a machine of many to hide their own labour and naturalise what’s seen. By comparing the character to itself, showing different camera angles simultaneously, including the director's notes, make-up breaks and set building the installation attempts to address how the images we consume are not self-evident. The careful construction of images and representation within them are a vital part of how we read bodies. This installation reveals its own construction in an attempt to dismantle the "naturalised" into its building blocks.