L’
Autre marche
(The Other Walk)
Large Scale Multi-Media
Installation
Trinh T. Minh-ha et Jean-Paul
Bourdier
Musée du Quai
Branly, Paris, France
19 Juin 2006
-2009
A cultural rite of passage and a transformative walk conceived for a 160-meter ramp that precedes the entrance into the new museum of Mankind, the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, France. Images across Asian, African, Oceania and American cultures are selected and structured rhythmically so as to work on the visitor's perception and prepare the latter in his/her journey amidst the museum's visual and material environments of world cultures. The project was completed for the opening of the Musée du Quai Branly on June 19 2006 and continues to be on view for the next two to three years.
As it is often said in Asia, what is miraculous is not to walk on water, but to walk on earth. Walking is an experience of indefiniteness and of infinity. With each step forward, one receives wide open and deep into oneself, the gifts of the universe.
The passage of the other into oneself, the course taken between sounds, images and aphorisms, or between the said and the seen along the ramp is an initiation walk that spans across several cultures of Asia, Africa, Oceania and America. With each step taken, relations between passage, passer-by, and passing time are mutually activated. Questions raised through sensual experience could incite the visitor to reflect on his or her present activities as spectator-researcher-visitor.
Meaning moves with walking and with the coming and going, appearing and disappearing of the lit aphorisms. The strolling along the ramp could turn out to be a "rite of passage" whose fluid movement in three phases, "Transition," "Transformation," and "Overture" is suggested accordingly through sounds and visual rhythms.
To each phase of L’Autre marche (The Other Walk) corresponds a rhythm, as well as a sonorous and musical environment. To each screen corresponds a sequence of images peculiar to a culture (Senegal: Tokolor, Mandingo, Joola and Soninke; Yemen; Vietnam; China; Japan, Indonesia, and USA).
Awareness of a different walking toward the Self, the Other and the World takes place in the space between. At once exterior and interior to the museum, the trajectory in the ramp is also a passage from the human to the animal, vegetal and mineral universe. Access to a world other is characterized by a work that unfolds at the limit of the visual, between the immateriality of light-images projections or of sound resonances and the materiality of the objects exhibited in the museum.
The installation unfolds in 28 autonomous visual sequences, with shifting aphorisms in twelve different languages intermittently appearing and disappearing (via 19 gobo projectors) on the sides and on the floor. In other words, it includes:
- 19 digital video sequences projected on screens (phase 1), on the ground (phases 2 et 3), et on the two side walls of the ramp (phase 3)
- 3 sequences of sounds composed for each of the 3 phases
- 19 aphorisms projected on the ground, on the guard-rails and on the vertical inner surfaces along the ramp. These aphorisms are as follows (originally in French with translations into 12 other languages that are only indicated here for the main three aphorisms):
PHASE I. LE SOI ET L'AUTRE - SELF AND OTHER
Le monde vient vers soi à chaque pas
With
each step, the world comes to us
(translated into Arabic,
Chinese and Swahili)
L’entre-musée
Between-museum
Illusion
d’ un tracé stable dans la rivière
Illusion
of a stable trace in the river
The watching image
(originally in English)
PHASE II. LE MONDE EN SOI - THE WORLD WITHIN THE SELF
A chaque pas, une fleur s’ouvre sous nos pieds
With each step, a flower blooms under our feet
(translated into Korean, Portuguese, Bahasa and Russian)
Vitesses
de l’autre
Autre temps
The other's speed
Other
time
Dans
l’instant, le temps s’ouvre infini
In the
instant, time opens out infinitely
Not
descriptive
Not informative
Not interesting
(originally
in English)
Le
doigt qui montre la lune n’est pas la lune
The finger
pointing to the moon is not the moon
Voir
sans voix
Voix aveugle
Seeing voiceless
Blind voice
PHASE III. L’AUTRE EN SOI - THE OTHER WITHIN THE SELF
Apprendre
à marcher de nouveau
Learning how to walk anew
(translated into Spanish, Farsi et Ancient Egyptian)
cette
image que je suis
this image that I am
entendre
avec l’oreille de l’autre
hear with the other's
ear
savoir
par le non-savoir
know through non-knowing
l’entrée
en soi ouvre sur l’autre
moving into oneself opens
onto the other
Le
monde est comme une goutte de rosée qui s’évapore
aux
premiers rayons du soleil (Proverbe sérère)
The
world is like a drop of dew that
At the first sun rays (Sereer
Proverb)
