NSNAMDLM

NSNAMDLM (nous sommes né.e.s au milieu de la mer – we were born in the middle of the sea) is a transdisciplinary research-collage project focusing on body|water experiences. Unfurling complex relationships to the seas and its entities, we propose an immersive performance/installation in the shape of a multimedia live scape. More than a recollection of points of view on the sea, NSNAMDLM proposes an experiential heterotopia. A collective platform for experimentations merging towards new somatic, poetic and political practices.

Whether breathing freely or contained in different artificial packagings (bottles, aquariums, swimming pools, dams, etc), these waters are the source of a multitude of “histoires d’eau entre nous” (stories of water between us). They generate in us a wide range of aesthetic experiences and somatological critiques,
sourcing bonds and connections. Yet they remain indissociable from their economical, ecological, decolonial, technological and symbolic aspects.
In fact, what other element than the sea binds us closer together in its amniotic, hypnotic, even nourishing dimensions?
And at the same time, isn’t the sea the territory of capitalistic/geopolitical issues, in direct relationship with bodies’ and resources’ (im)mobilisation strategies?
We intend to navigate and diffract, on one hand, questions of the imaginary, of encounters, and of exoticism. And on the other hand, of displacement and use of/entitlement over different populations and species.

NSNAMDLM consists of an imploration – more than an exploration. Looking at the relational properties we find in the sea, this research/platform/heterotopia lies at the intersection of aesthetics, ethics, poetics and politics. We move towards other methodologies, other modes of co-existence and mutual aid, but even more towards other modalities for co-creation of alternative mythologies and communities.
NSNAMDLM seizes/sizes an urgency and prompts us to:

1) (re)think/fill/feel/heal the interdependence of our infrastructures, habitus and collective unconsciousness, while facing a territory of profound otherness such as the sea, the waters, and all the corporealities that cross, inhabit and ghost them.
2) to recognise and bring together our latitudes/longitudes/solitudes according to the sea and the waters, as the geographical coordinates that would describe the space-time of a truly common experience. A place where it becomes possible to join, bound, negotiate and give back agency/potency to our desires.

The “sea” of NSNAMDLM is thus the scene from which we associate with/as marginalized corporalities whose history of displacement has an intrinsic relationship to the sea (regardless of their species, histories or identities). Yet, how to engage a conversation with “bodies/entities” that have been historically refused from the status of “(hu)MANkind”, without reproducing the predatory reenactment of the token / display / displacement ? Instead of a fixed answer, NSNAMDLM deploys an array of stories, tools and practices as a memory of past, present and future permeations, collisions and resistances. A materia prima that addresses the deeper commonness in between “us” and the seas.