Territoire is a performance program in public space that takes place in Nancy during the summer.
Territoire is about invited artists who are asked to reflect on and question, through their respective practices, the use of the city and its
spaces.
Territoire is thus the encounter between the unexpected, the unusual, and the everyday; it is an invitation to look at and engage with the
city differently.
Territoire therefore questions the notion of space, both physical and artistic.
It is a matter, through the implementation of a gesture, of interrogating the place in which this gesture unfolds. But here, the questioning focuses on a specific typology of the urban environment: public space.
The qualification of “public” implies the idea of accessibility, of openness to all, because it is linked to an element that concerns all citizens. Public space is defined as all places of passage and gathering that are for everyone’s use. These are managed under the designation of public domain by the State (in the broad sense of its interpretation), which is thereby the owner. From this point, the notion of ownership contradicts the initial idea of public good. It introduces a state of law guaranteeing the prerogatives and freedoms of citizen users of this space, but also many regulations or restrictions governing the open and anonymous status of that same space. The question of the freedom of use then arises.
Each participating artist is thus invited to confront these regulations and codes. In doing so, and through very diverse practices and philosophies, the idea is to question their limits, to play with them in order to deliver a renewed vision of the uses of public space.
This year, Territoire invites 8 artists:
Saskia Edens (CH), Mathis Esnault (FR), Tickson Mbuyi (DRC), Ouissem Moalla (SW/FR), Audrey Pouliquen (FR), Alexandra Sheherazade Salem (CH), Loup Uberto
(FR) & Remi Voche (FR).
Program:
The locations and times of the performances will be announced on our Instagram page the day before each performance:
https://www.instagram.com/opnspace/
Saturday, August 2 at 5 p.m. – Parc du Palais du Gouverneur
Audrey Pouliquen (FR) – Mise en eau
Born in 1992
Lives and works in Mulhouse
https://pouliquendrey.wixsite.com/audrey
Audrey Pouliquen is a visual artist whose practice is mainly oriented around sound. Her work, through the creation of situations and stagings, focuses on our relationship to nature by exploring modes of non-human existences.
For Territoire, she takes over a fountain in one of the city’s parks, an old folie, now in ruins and abandoned, which she has decided to bring back to life, to refill with water. Her aim is to question our relationship to water at a time when climate change increasingly highlights its importance for life on Earth — water being a fundamental element in the appearance and persistence of life on Earth. It is thus an integral part of this “hidden agency of the living that enables the creation of collateral multi-species habitability” (1).
It is this multi-species habitability that Audrey Pouliquen evokes here by invoking the various types of non-human life that inhabit and live in water. Through this gesture, she mingles her own voice with their canticles, attempting to create a political and poetic alliance with them in order to amplify their voices — now neglected, even forgotten — due to the modernist obsession with control and simplification of nature. It is therefore a celebration of multiple life forms interwoven with their habitats that Audrey Pouliquen invites us to witness.
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Folies, or garden follies, are small constructions, often romantic in character, of various and sometimes extravagant forms (pavilion, bridge, waterfall, ruin, grotto, shell house, rotunda, tower) built in a park or garden.
(1) Baptiste Morizot and Suzanne Husky, Rendre l’eau à la terre, Actes Sud, 2024, p. 283.
Saturday, August 9
Rémi Voche (FR)
Born in 1983 in Lagny-sur-Marne
Lives and works between Paris and Auvergne
https://www.instagram.com/remivoche
Graduated in 2012 from Villa Arson, Rémi Voche’s work focuses on the relationship between the body and nature. His work is divided into photography, video, and performance. His images generally show him within nature, drawing nourishment from this environment to create an offbeat, imaginary world that challenges, like a fireball in a snowy forest or a “foot in the grave” in the middle of a cemetery. His performances are instinctive, impetuous, ritualistic — an uncontrollable force inhabits him. He creates a link between the earth and his body, almost in a primal way. A multitude of references populate the artist’s photos and performances; through the work of Jean Rouch or Claude Lévi-Strauss and artists engaged in ecological causes, he creates his own outlet in an attempt to be reborn from the alienation of daily life.
Sunday, August 10
Saskia Edens (CH)
Born in 1975 in Geneva
Lives and works in Basel
http://www.saskiaedens.com
Born in Geneva, Saskia Edens currently lives in Basel and is a graduate of the École supérieure des beaux-arts de Genève (now HEAD). Her artistic practice is transdisciplinary, skillfully combining video, painting, molten metal, and performance. Through experimental processes and direct interaction with the elements, Edens explores the essence of the living: cycles set the rhythm, heat provokes metamorphoses, breath intensifies energy, intention gives direction. Her practice seeks to establish a symbiosis with the elements, thereby fostering a deep connection with nature — a crucial step towards its preservation.
Saturday, August 16
Ouissem Moalla (SW/FR)
Born in 1990 in Stockholm
Lives and works in Mulhouse (FR)
https://www.ouissemmoalla.com
Graduated from HEAR in Strasbourg, Ouissem Moalla develops visual language concepts that he experiments with through artistic expression. Through mainly performative works, his artistic approach is nourished by theoretical research around the image, as well as historical and anthropological analyses on cultural hybridizations. In recent years, drawing on the writings of British historian Frances A. Yates and notably her book The Art of Memory (1966), Ouissem Moalla has begun an exploration of the perception of space, its functionalities and potentialities with regard to memory.
Sunday, August 17
Loup Uberto (FR)
Born in 1990
Lives and works in Grenoble
https://loupuberto.fr
Loup Uberto conducts vast sound and literary cartographies in which he explores vision and its fictions, the asperities of language, documents exile and wandering, contemporary labor through sound recordings, writings, and photographs.
Saturday, August 23
Tickson Mbuyi (DRC)
Born in 1988 in Kinshasa
Lives and works in Paris
https://ticksonpro.wixsite.com/website
Born in 1988, Tickson MBUYI, originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, is a performer and visual artist. Graduated in sculpture and ceramic techniques from the Academy of Fine Arts of Kinshasa, his career in the cultural and artistic field in France and internationally is rich and varied. The artist has also stood out by combining committed performances with personal sculpture-costumes during festivals, in public space, or through participation in music videos. Constantly experimenting with new assemblage techniques, his works are diverse, and his projects, numerous. Winner of the 2020 “Visa for Creation” at the Cité Internationale des Arts de Paris, winner of the 2021 POROSUS fund, in residence at the École Supérieure d’Art et de Design de Reims as part of the PAUSE program of the Collège de France, as well as at La Fileuse, Friche Artistique de Reims in 2021–2022, he has also been a member of the Atelier des Artistes en Exil in Paris since 2021.
Sunday, August 24
Alexandra Sheherazade Salem (CH)
Born in 1996
Lives and works in Geneva
https://www.instagram.com/shera_ziza/
Her multidisciplinary practice revolves around writing, video, installation, and performance. She uses storytelling as a means of social analysis. Through a family memory inscribed in a collective reality, she explores the mechanisms of transmission and fragmentation, as well as the possibilities of rewriting them. By blending different temporalities, spaces, and voices, she confronts memory with the body. This process gives rise to emotional landscapes that invite us to contemplate our links with what we inherit — what remains, what endures in the folds of forgetting, silence, the body, and history — and how these relationships are embedded in our bodies and shape our connection to the world. Through a poetic approach, Alexandra Sheherazade seeks to highlight manifestations of love and hope in an increasingly chaotic and brutal world, drawing attention to subtle yet meaningful gestures.
Saturday, August 30
Mathis Esnault (FR)
Born in 1999
Lives and works in Strasbourg
https://mathisesnault.com
Mathis Esnault weaves stories from walks and encounters with the living world. Through the paths he takes, he interlaces memories, anecdotes, and fictional stories to make visible fragments of the territory and the living beings that inhabit it. Reality becomes blurred, shapes distort, and fairy creatures gradually become the protagonists of his stories. To evoke the living, he thus calls upon fairies, goblins, and other forest spirits. The forms and objects he creates are inspired as much by spiritualism objects as by role-playing games and the universe of heroic fantasy. Like a magician, he creates magical subterfuges and illusions using simple mechanisms and plays on colors and materials. Through his work, he seeks to make visible unexplained or misunderstood phenomena of the living world through a magical universe.