From film to device

Marianne Costade‘s work is part of a long-term inquiry into forms of archive, devices of transmission and the structures that organise the visibility of images and narratives. At the crossroads of artistic practice and archival investigation, her projects question the image less as a surface than the systems that make it operative: frames of reading, regimes of circulation, economies of value and politics of the gaze. The archive is not conceived there as a simple place of conservation, but as an active field, shaped by choices, hierarchies and power relations. 

As part of L’OEil de Mambety, this research unfolds as an installation conceived as a device for reading Djibril Diop Mambety’s film Hyènes. Far from any illustrative or narrative approach, the installation brings together a map, a scale and its weights, a radio set, a telephone, and a series of images taken from the film. These elements do not aim to represent the film, but to make certain of its structures legible: territorial inscription, the circulation of information, the question of value and the making of collective decisions. 

Interview

How would you define your artistic practice today? I would define it as a research practice interested in forms of archive, devices and systems of transmission. My work starts less from the image as an autonomous object than from the frames that organise its production, circulation and reading. For me, the archive is not a simple reservoir of documents, but an active field shaped by choices, hierarchies and power relations. What matters to me is how these frames produce regimes of visibility and value, and how they condition what becomes legible, thinkable or shareable in a collective space. 

How does this approach translate into the installation presented for L’OEil de Mambety ?

The installation is conceived as a device for reading the film Hyènes. It is neither about illustrating the film nor about proposing a plastic transposition of it, but about shifting some of its stakes into an arrangement of objects and still images. This shift makes it possible to approach the film through its social, spatial and political structures, rather than through its story alone. The device thus organises conditions of perception and interpretation that make tangible mechanisms often implicit in the cinematic experience. 

Why did you choose to work with a map, a scale and its weights, a radio set and a telephone?

Because these objects refer to distinct but complementary registers that run through Hyènes. The map prompts a reflection on the territorial inscription of social transformations. The scale and its weights introduce the question of measure, norm and evaluation, in other words the criteria by which a society establishes what counts. The radio set and the telephone, finally, refer to the regimes of circulation of information and the gradual formation of a collective opinion. Taken together, these objects do not work as isolated symbols, but as elements of a material grammar of social relations. 

What specific role does the map play in this device?

The map is not used as a simple tool of location. It works as a critical operator that lets us think of space as a political and social construction, not as a neutral backdrop. In Mambety’s film, the transformations of the community are inseparable from a territory, its circulations and its hierarchies. The map makes this dimension visible and insists on the fact that space conditions forms of power, movement and decision. 

How do you interpret the presence of the scale and its weights?

The scale and its weights materialise a logic of evaluation and comparison. In Hyènes, the collective decision is built through a form of moral and social calculation, where positions, acts and lives can be weighed against one another. These objects let us question the production of norms and thresholds of acceptability, and make visible the fact that every collective decision rests on operations of measurement, explicit or implicit, that organise an economy of judgment. 

What do the radio set and the telephone represent in the installation?

They refer to the infrastructures of speech and information. The film shows that power is not exercised only through clearly identifiable figures of authority, but also through the gradual spread of discourse, rumour and shared gazes. The radio set and the telephone let us think of communication as a vector of social transformation, that is, as a system that reconfigures individual and collective positions through the circulation of stories and interpretations. 

How do the images taken from the film fit into this whole?

The images are not used as illustrations. They work as landmarks and freeze-frames that structure the route and remind us that Mambety’s cinema is also a cinema of the gaze, attentive to bodies, crowds and gestures. They keep a direct link with the film while avoiding the logic of spectacular quotation, and place the device in a regime of reading rather than commentary. 

Can we speak of an archival approach in this project?

Yes, but in the sense of an active and critical archive. The objects and images are seen as supports for reading and memory, not to preserve or freeze a work, but to activate the questions it still raises in the present. The archive is thought of here as a device of connection, able to bring out structures, tensions and continuities rather than produce a closed narrative. 

How would you define your relationship to the work of Djibril Diop Mambety?

I place myself neither in homage nor in adaptation. I would rather speak of critical continuity. For me, Mambety’s work is a field of questions that remains current, notably on the relations between economy, power, gaze and community. My work consists in extending these questions into another space and with other tools, accepting a displacement rather than a translation, and keeping a distance that allows critical reading. 

What experience is ultimately offered to the public?

I want to place the visitor in a position of observation and reading rather than that of a spectator of a story. The installation does not tell a story; it connects notions such as territory, value, information and decision. The objects act as mediators that invite us to think about how a society organises what is visible, sayable and measurable, and how these regimes condition the making of consensus and the exercise of power. 

Marianne Costade 

Visual artist and independent archivist