ANABELLE LACROIX___ CURATOR AND WRITER
Anabelle Lacroix, a French Australian curator and writer, engages with the intersections of curating, writing, and public programming, focusing on performance, sound, and speech. Currently pursuing a practice-based PhD at UNSW Art, Design and Architecture, she explores curatorial methods for sleepless bodies and night-time public programming. Anabelle is an editor of Flaneur Magazine Issue 09, a lecturer at The New School Paris, and her background includes roles at ACCA and Liquid Architecture. John Saint Michel spoke with Lacroix for Fluoro.
Fluoro (F): Anabelle describe your practice?
Anabelle Lacroix (AL): My practice is centred on the politics of night-time and how to navigate this space culturally, to create not just ‘space’ but time for communities.
At the moment my work as a curator is research-driven, meaning that the exhibitions or public programs I present contribute to a broader discourse on art and curatorial practice, in my own PhD or as part of institutions. For example, I was recently a research curator for the nomadic Brain Space Laboratory at the Institut d’art contemporain de Villeurbanne (France), and collaborated on public programs that brought together artists, scientists, cultural theorists, educators and the public at the Palais de Tokyo and the Centre Pompidou.
F: In your eyes what is the role of the museum?
AL: The role of the museum is to engage the public with questions relating to the past and the future and that’s why I feel like the question of time in the museum is important. We are faced with objects with historical significance, yet they must exist in the context of the present moment. The role of the museum is also beyond objects, it’s about living in time and that connects with many practices and discourses.
F: Tell us about your most recent projects?
AL: I just launched Radio Insomnia, an ephemeral radio project as part of an exhibition titled InSomnolence at the Agora in Montréal. It’s a collaboration with artist Nicolas Montgermont. The idea is to use radio to connect with non-sleepers, those who are awake by constraint or by choice (insomniacs, night-workers, carers) to challenge the idea that we are all equal in sleep.
Recently I also worked on a project as part of a FRAME biennale entitled Sleep Activism: A Choreographic Practice Laboratory which was created by Amaara Raheem. I worked on this alongside Amaara and Caitlin Dear, to reflect ideas around sleep activism in relation to movement and performance.
F: What is sleep activism?
AL: Sleep activism is about advocating for chronodiversity, finding new methods of living together… for me it’s also about finding new rhythms that can affect the body on a personal as well as political level. I think we need to contemplate the rhythms that are imposed in our day, including things like heteronormative values that exist in our society.
Scientists still don’t know why we sleep! What we know is, sleep is a form of restoration for the body. We do know about its essential function for the brain and its implication in memory. The 8 hours sleep cycle is partly a cultural construct, as before the industrial revolution we slept in two or more phases with a common period of wake during the night. If we see sleep as reparation against an expanse of energy, this period could take place at different times.
F: What attracted you exploring the idea of sleep as a subject?
AL: It started when I lost all my sleep and have big periods of insomnia. I started to do some research just for my own sake and realised how many preconceptions they are regarding sleep. I felt like the side effects from sleeping pills were much worse than not sleeping.
Sleep as a subject really encompasses some big questions in society today in terms of how we think about our labour in everyday life, also in relation to race and gender, and also how everything is becoming so homogenised.
So, for me I saw the exploration of sleep and the lack of sleep as a way for resisting the creation of this continuum of time. I was just really curious to bring these ideas into a creative space and it only became a project for me when I started talking with artists who had a lot to say surrounding the lack of sleep.
F: And performance?
AL: I’ve always had a soft spot for performance and music for their immaterial nature. It’s tangible in a different way. It’s a hard question because performance is the main medium I work with nowadays but on the other hand, I absolutely love seeing a painting from the Dutch school too.
F: As a curator what are your most successful shows or the ones that you are most proud of?
AL: My last exhibition ‘Freedom of Sleep’ that I worked on in Paris I felt proud of, because it was the first time that all these ideas around sleeplessness and rhythm were out in public. It touched on something very personal for me, for the artists and the people gave a tour to. It happened during the pandemic and I feel there was a closeness about the experience, perhaps it was the condition of that particular moment! I’m equally fond of ‘Radio Insomnia’ that I just launched, because it was way more risky, collaborative and it will also continue in the long term.
F: What do you think is the key component of learning from sleep?
AL: For me, it’s inhabiting a liminal zone, like the one between sleep and wakefulness. To learn from sleep is to acknowledge one’s one rhythm and be playful with it!
F: What are the key differences in working between Melbourne and Paris?
AL: I would say humour! French and Australian humour is very different. In France things are a lot more structured and rigid because of a vast cultural history that is bound to values and hierarchies. A key difference is scale, and I love the kind of relationships that artists and cultural workers develop together in Melbourne, I miss that. There is also an attention to how we work in Australia that is much more progressive, in terms of care but also in testing different things.
F: Through your eyes what do you think are the key components of a successful artist?
AL: That’s a really hard question… there are many different ways of being successful. But if I really have to answer I would say that to me the most successful artists will be the happy ones. I think it’s about finding one’s own position within a community, and that might speak to a history of the medium that you are using.
F: If you were to use a sentence to describe art, either your own or somebody else, what would it be?
AL: Ceci n’est pas une pipe [This is not a pipe]. René Magritte
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Anabelle Lacroix
Foundation Fiminco
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Conversation with John Saint Michel.
Images supplied by Anabelle Lacroix.
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