ALEXANDRA SERRANO ET SIMON POCHET
FACTORY #6
HISTOIRE[S] A CREUSER
In partnership with the DRAC Occitanie, the Conseil Départemental de la Haute-Garonne, the Musée de l’Aurignacien, the CNRS Occitanie Ouest and the TRACES laboratory, as well as the associations and schools of Aurignac and Cassagnabère-Tournas, the artist duo Alexandra Serrano (plastic photographer) and Simon Pochet (sound creator and documentary filmmaker) was in residency in Aurignac in the Comminges region from 15 September to 9 October 2020, combining “Photography and Archaeology”. Mathieu Lejay, geoarchaeologist, and Lars Anderson, prehistorian, member and doctor associated with the UMR 5608 TRACES – SMP3C team, have carried out an archaeological excavation campaign in Aurignac on which Alexandra Serrano and Simon Pochet have worked.
Alexandra Serrano and Simon Pochet form a duo that brings together the creation of images and the creation of sound worlds. Their respective artistic approaches deal with questions of memory, territory, identity and the physical and sensory experience of space. They regularly consider creation through the other, by soliciting him or her, by collecting his or her testimony, by gathering objects, stories and traces, like so many elements of proof which then become the raw material of their works.
THE MUSEE DE L’AURIGNACIEN
The musée de l’Aurignacien is located in Auriagnac, Haute-Garonne, close to one of the main French prehistoric sites. The Aurignac cave, classified as a historical monument in 1921, is the eponymous site of the Aurignacian. Housed in a building inaugurated in 2015, with very modern architecture, this museum-forum invites all prehistory enthusiasts, cultural discovery lovers and curious people from all walks pf life to go and meet the Aurignacians, the first anatomically modern humans who lived in Europe around 35,000 years ago.
ALEXANDRA SERRANO
The Alexandra Serrano’s work is poetic and sensitive, it tries to make visible our intimate uses of the world. Through her photographs, she appropriates territories in a plastic way, seeking to sublimate the everyday life of places, to the point of tipping reality into fiction and thus constructing new narratives. His personal work is developed through public commissions, creative residences and educational interventions with various audiences in partnership with ifferent cultural institutions such as the Maison Européenne de la Photographique, the BAL, the Musées Nicphore Niépce, the Ateliers Médicis or the University of Paris 1 Pathéon-Sorbonne. His work has been included in numerous publications and solo and group exhobitions in France and abroad: Circulation(s) Festival in Paris, Fotoleggendo Festival in Rome, International Photography Biennial of Bangladesh, Flash Forward Festival in London, Toronto, Portland and Boston, Rencontres Photographiques de Niort…
SIMON POCHET creates sound pieces, documentaries and musical, phonographic and electroacoustic works, linked to the experience and imagination of places, favouring participative creation approaches and experimenting with various sound diffusion devices, geolocated routes and interactive works. Involved in several artistic and popular education collectives, he is notably associated with the Collectif Mu (Les Voix du rail or Rail Océan, Nuit Blanche 2017 in Paris), and he has also collaborated with France Culture (sound documentary Le 47 rue de la Goutte d’or, with Nina Almberg, ACR 2015). Since 2018, alone or with the photographer Alexandra Serrano, he has been developing his practice within the framework of creation residencies and artistic actions in different territories in France (Paysages sonores in the PNR du Haut-Jura, Création en cours en Meuse with the Ateliers Médicis and the Ministries of Culture and Education, CLEA in the North, with the DRAC Hauts-de-France, Regards du Grand Paris in Ile-de-France with the CNAP and the Ateliers Médicis …).