59th Ann Arbor Film Festival

Sylvanie Tendron: Everyday Obstacles

Expired April 1, 2021 4:00 AM
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In 2018, French videomaker Sylvanie Tendron was the first artist to undertake Vidéographe’s research residency for Deaf artists, curators, and researchers. Vidéographe is an artist-run moving image center based in Montreal. During the course of her residency, the focus of Tendron’s video research and performative actions was the relationship between audism and feminism. Tendron explores behaviors associated with language and communication. Drawing on her own daily experiences, she exposes, with humor and derision, the misunderstandings, obstacles, and absurd situations that can arise through encounters of difference. In her performance videos she tries to overcome almost farcical difficulties that lead to isolation or confinement, and in so doing illustrates numerous examples of situations in which we try to connect with others by adapting to their language. Curated by Julie Tremble.


Julie Tremble is an artist and cultural worker. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at galleries and festivals including Ludwig Museum, Fonderie Darling, Dazibao, VU, Galerie Joyce Yahouda, Mirage, Mapping, Festival du nouveau cinéma, Images Festival, and Le Festival International du Film sur l'Art. In 2013 Tremble was the recipient of the Conseil des arts et des Lettres du Québec (CALQ) award for best work in art and experimentation presented as part of the 31st Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois. Tremble has been involved within various Quebec and Canadian arts organizations. She is co-founder of HB magazine and has been Vidéographe’s director since 2015.



Join us after the program for a prerecorded Q&A with the filmmaker and Leslie Raymond, Festival Director.

Films in program:

Entraves quotidiennes

Location of Production: France 

Year of Completion: 2006

Runtime: 2

This identity portrait shows through these little papers (obstructions): the deficiency of senses. The thing that we do not see in a portrait of a physical identity. To that end, I staged myself, translated, tested, represented the photo booth on videotape. From this, several little montages are born, showing different situations for each, burlesque daily metaphors. I named this ensemble “entraves quotidiennes” (daily obstructions).


Apertura

Location of Production: France

Year of Completion: 2006

Runtime: 3

Apertura in Spanish means “opening.” This is an opening towards a foreign tongue, a corporal door, of words. We receive, we learn, we accumulate, we try, we do, we say, we get it wrong, we gorge, we regurgitate…The mouth is a passage of words, of sentences, of thoughts. But those words are said wrong, vomited by an overfull mouth, they are not my words, but your words that I try to claim as my own.


Il n’y a pas plus de peuple digne que de culture digne

Location of Production: France

Year of Completion: 2012

Runtime: 2

Sticking to the norm is stuffy and makes us lose our identity. The image darkens, the person darkens as well, then finally becomes “ugly” and victim of her artifices. Metaphoric work on norms and diktats that society is imposing on us.


...Répète?!

Location of Production: France

Year of Completion: 2014

Runtime: 3

Referencing the figure of the double, I attempt to demonstrate the misunderstandings in oral language that Deaf people can experience while trying very hard to lip-read when the mouth is obstructed, and wearing a hearing aid; I abandoned mine two years later. The idea of this work is to show just how distorted and misunderstood words can become. Words taken out of context, i.e. spoken on their own, are difficult for someone who cannot hear to guess; when they are spoken in a sentence, this frame of reference makes it easier. There is always some irritation when the word that hasn’t been understood is repeated several times. It’s annoying, and all the more so when it is repeated relentlessly. When a word is not understood, it is because certain syllables have not been perceived. There is no need to shout—other solutions might help: writing or signing, for example. This is reminiscent of the speech therapy sessions that I attended for a large part of my childhood and adolescence—a laborious attempt to adapt to the world of the hearing around me. In a playful exercise at my own expense, I offer the viewer a humorous glimpse into the daily experience of Deaf people in the world of the hearing and the misunderstandings that take place.


Le phonocentrisme, vous dite??

Location of Production: Canada / France

Year of Completion: 2017

Runtime: 3

This work was done during the Deaf artists residency in Est-Nord-Est in Saint-Jean Port-Joli in Quebec set up by the collective SPiLL.Propagation. The theme of this residency was, “deconstruct of phonocentrism,” a concept developed and presented by Jolenta Lapiak, a Canadian Deaf artist. She aims at deconstructing to reconstruct it differently and more accurately as a Deaf person.


vampire domestique

Location of Production: Canada / France

Year of Completion: 2018

Runtime: 8

Welcome to the patriarchal society, where the woman hindered by her male demons lives her daily life without flinching.


DrEAD

Location of Production: France

Year of Completion: 2018

Runtime: 6

I’ve been wearing these dreads for 20 years. They carry the marks of the time passed during these 20 years, of what I lived, some joyful things and some less, like having been under someone’s influence, without me being aware of it at first until I choked and lost my confidence, my dignity. I wasn’t myself anymore like I was depossessed of my own self.


Hommage à V. DESPENTES

Location of Production: France

Year of Completion: 2018

Runtime: 4

The text states everything a woman must be and do according to a patriarchal society, which is quite contradictory. This text is to encourage and/or go towards a certain emancipation of women. It followed the formation of French Sign Language translation, which is a new profession resulting from the recent emancipation of Deaf people in France (after the interdiction of signing for 100 years). I play with the codes of fidelity but not at all with the neutrality required by this job.


Youhouuu..!!

Location of Production: France

Year of Completion: 2019

Runtime: 4

A person arrives facing the camera, therefore facing the viewer. She says hello and tries in vain to talk, converse, communicate with her interlocutor, who mirrors the viewer. Although the viewer is passive, through this video performance, she can challenge herself and eventually relive moments when there was no opportunity to listen or speak to a person facing her. Why can’t this person finish her sentences? Does the difficulty of communication have to do with sex, given that this person is a woman? Is it to do with hierarchy (professional, domestic …)? Is it down to individual character? Individual power? I ask myself these questions as an artist and refer them back to the viewer. On the other hand, to what extent will the character who plays the artist react? What is the artist’s role and what is the viewer’s? The viewer, who looks passively on, would have liked to interact with the artist. We want to hear her finish what she had begun to say, but it is impossible for her to express herself; she is interrupted, she ends up feeling shy about this impasse, flustered by the situation and finds a way to escape this monologue from which she is excluded. The situation that I have tried to convey here is universal. With my camera and this new form of performance video, I try to meet and connect with the other. This video can be watched without sound so that the viewer can focus on facial expressions.


Est-ce que ça te dit … ?

Location of Production: France

Year of Completion: 2020

Runtime: 3

It is not always easy to say no. First, it’s about listening to ourselves, knowing what we want, and then affirming our choice, our position. Even when there is doubt when we don’t say yes, it’s no! Even when the no isn’t articulated. We should not have to negotiate. This performance video is a nuance of “no,” through the body, expressions, looks, emotions, postures. In taking a number of different experiences, positive as well as negative, as a starting point, I put forward the idea that communication happens through language but also through small revealing gestures often made unconsciously. We transmit more than half of our messages through our actions, our expressions, and not our words. But are we listened to? Are we heard? Are we respected? Particularly, when we are a woman in a patriarchal society or a Deaf person in the world of the hearing. The type of communication that takes place first and foremost before the eyes, and through body language in general, can be seen as a weak way of communicating when there is a power dynamic. This brings to mind the abuse of power and consent. The artist looking at the camera, therefore, looks at the viewer and communicates directly with him. The passive viewer can only challenge himself with regards to his relationship with the other, or ignore this observation.

  • Country
    France
  • Filmmaker
    Sylvanie Tendron