Raphaël Grisey is currently finishing a PhD in artistic research at Kunstakademiet i Trondheim, NTNU. This screening of his feature documentary Xaraasi Xanne (Crossing Voices), co-directed with Bouba Touré, constitutes the public presentation of the artistic doctoral result of the artistic research along with online screenings of the film.

Using rare cinematic, photographic and sound archives, Xaraasi Xanne (Crossing Voices) recounts the exemplary adventure of Somankidi Coura, an agricultural cooperative created in Mali in 1977 by western African immigrant workers living in workers’ residences in France. The story of this improbable, utopic return to the Sahel region follows a winding path that travels through the ecological and decolonial challenges and conflicts of agriculture practices and sensing from the 1970s to the present day. One of the major actors of the movement, Bouba Touré, tells this story by plunging into the heart of his personal archives, which document the fights of farmers in France and in Mali, as well as those of immigrant workers, over a period of decades. The film is also a story about dialogues and transmission, friendships and cinematic geographies. Over the course of the film, different voices, enter the sound-scape to accompany Bouba Touré’s telling; they bring the tale of a forgotten memory toward a possible future sung by a polyphonic griot.

Related Publication

Sowing Somankidi Coura
A Generative Archive

2017

Archive Books