Prendre la parole literally means to take the word or to take the speech. It is a notion I encountered during my studies in Marseille. I have made it the starting point for an auto-theoretical and impulsive research around finding my own ways of speaking: as a woman, as an artist, with my own story, in a world that is on fire. This and the installation are work in process.

Text excerpt from my thesis written on the floor:

When I open my mouth, anger, fear, passion, urge, insecurity, everything comes out. It can be loud or tender or sobbing. I don’t like cold speech, where everything is cool and level-headed. The quiet mumbling of the bourgeois is a privilege. The world is on fire, who can still murmur?

The point is that speaking must involve the body and its history, its imprint.
It’s about writing and speaking, even though I don’t yet know exactly how to do it or what I actually want to say. It’s about speaking at all or speaking anyway.

Just tell me how much you long for something.
Tell me you’re angry, tell me what about. Come on. You don’t even have to learn how to mumble.
Do not negate your body or your experience, do not distance yourself from them. Speak and write them into the world or into history, prove to yourself that you exist. Look at yourself, not narcissistically, but curiously, mournfully, angrily, lovingly, questioningly, sufferingly, defiantly, panicky, rapturously, paralyzed, rebelliously. Raw.