Nicolas Bourgeois

Product of the Cursus prize, this residency aims to develop the approach I undertook in my final-year bachelor’s thesis project entitled Spectres du souvenir.

As a reflection on the malleability of memory over time, this project explores the question of reinterpreting family and personal archives as written and visual narratives. My creative process seeks to capture the traces of significant memories linked to those that have been lost or erased, as well as to distant anecdotes that have been transformed within the psyche of those to whom they belong. In this way, I wish to explore multiple avenues for materializing these narratives.

The mediums I have employed for this project include drawing, photography, video and sculpture. Divided into two sub-themes – forgotten memories and modulated anecdotes – the project draws on the two-dimensional materiality of the first three mediums to reinterpret family archive images and distort them using a process of ‘data bending’, with the aim of anchoring them in the past, disembodying them and rendering them spectral.

Sculpture, for its part, was used to transform an anecdote into a capsule composed of the meaningful details it contained. Through these two processes, I relied on the audience’s imagination to create their own stories – whether or not rooted in their respective life experiences – transforming the original narrative into a faded spectre, a living-dead trace of a neglected past.

During this residency, I intend to continue my work with these media, whilst exploring new avenues, notably narrative poetry. For me, memory manifests itself and is transmitted in several ways: through the senses – sight, hearing, smell, amongst others – with my work focusing on its visual dimension; through physical artefacts, including photography, videography and three-dimensional objects – that is, materials that bear the mark of what once was; and finally, through the transmitted narrative and the transformative imagination associated with it.

As the imagination is intimately linked to childhood – particularly due to the creative effervescence characteristic of this period of life – it goes without saying that childhood becomes an essential subject when dealing with an individual’s memory.

Until now, my work has focused on creating images and objects capable of telling stories through their subjects and their materiality. I now wish, through poetry, to explore the telling of stories based on anecdotes shaped by the imagination, so as to highlight – as I have done with sculpture – the central details of these narratives. This is intended to leave room for the audience’s imagination, whilst still framing their thoughts within a concrete narrative, both written and spoken.

The ultimate aim of the project is to create a space in which stories intertwine to form a cemetery of memories brought back to life through the musings of the visitor-dreamer.