02/07/2024
Opening this weekend at : the world premiere for âThe Great Yes, The Great Noâ, a newly commissioned William Kentridge performance
đ 7 - 10 July 2024
đ La Grande Halle, Parc des Ateliers, LUMA
The story behind âThe Great Yes, the Great Noâ begins in June 1941, when a converted cargo ship, the Capitaine Paul Lemerle, sailed from Marseille to Martinique. Among the passengers escaping Vichy France were the surrealist AndrĂ© Breton, the anthropologist Claude LĂ©vi-Strauss, the Cuban artist Wifredo Lam, the communist novelist Victor Serge, and the author Anna Seghers. The captain of the boat is Charon, the ferryman of the dead, who calls other characters onto the deck - AimĂ© CĂ©saire, The Nardal sisters, who together with the CĂ©saires and Senghor had founded the anti-colonial NĂ©gritude movement in Paris, in the 1920s and 1930s. Frantz Fanon joins the group along with Trotsky, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. The boat journey is the 1941 crossing of the Atlantic, but also references earlier crossings from Africa to the Caribbean, as well as contemporary forced sea crossings.