Emmanouil Zervakis (Gr/Be)

1 November 2019 City Sonic

Acte de Parole (Belgian premiere)

Acte de Parole, visual and sound installation, questions the place of language in plural cultural identity. The artist grew up constantly juggling Greek and French. Interested in plurilingualism in semiology, he retains the idea of the act of speech, as an act of identity, discussed by Penelope Gardner-Chloros and Andrée Tabouret-Keller in their empirical definition (Plurilingualism, Encyclopædia Universalis). This leads him to take an interest in idioms as an experimental material. The idioms have a melody, a musicality that carries in itself a regional identity. Confronted with each other and translated into another language, they become acts of cultural identity.

Bernard Heidsieck’s sound poetry performances, his medio-poetic approach, as well as his research on language, served as a basis for Emmanouil to start his own auditory experimentation, a semiotic mise en abîme.

Partnership ESA Nord-Pas-de-Calais, ARTS², Transcultures, European Pepinieres of creation.
Thanks to Silvain Vanot et Julien Poidevin.

Biography

Diaspora, nostalgia, and language, are among the subjects Emmanouil Zervakis regularly addresses in his practice of video and sound. The sensations and practices of people living far away from their place of origin/birth are the material he uses to produce his installations. Indeed, this young artist of Greek origin spent all his adolescence in Belgium. He draws regularly into his family history and childhood memories, among the details of everyday life, the elements that will feed his plastic and mental research.

In 2014, he decided to study near the Franco-Belgian border at the Nord-Pas de Calais / Dunkerque-Tourcoing School of Art. Student exchanges enabled him to reclaim his childhood culture by spending a year at the Beaux-Arts in Athens, and to the cultural wealth of Mexico during a second move to Colima University. He is currently preparing his DNSEP as well as his Master’s thesis on diasporas and co-presence.

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