Collectif d’Art-d’Art | Research Trip

March - May 2022 — Performing Arts

The Kinshasa based Collectif d’Art-d’Art will spend a month in Switzerland from 19 March to 3 May 2022 at Kaserne Basel to develop their project Géométrie de vies.

Géométrie de vies tells the story of Michael Disanka’s and Christiana Tabaro’s return to their childhood towns to retrace the curve of their lives. It is a story of crossed paths and glances, a journey through time to summon the past and the future to the present.

In April 2016, Michael Disanka and Christiana Tabaro met in Mbanza Ngungu, the town where Michael grew up, for a research residency. In 2018 and 2019, two further research residencies followed Christiana’s footsteps in Bukavu, her childhood town. Working with Jeannot Kumbonyeki, Kady Vital Mavakala, Ta-luyobisa Luheho in Kinshasa, Michael and Christiana transformed the material gathered during the research trips for the stage.

Géométrie de vies is written and directed by Michael Disanka and Christiana Tabaro. With Jeannot Kumbonyeki, Kady Vital Mavakala and Ta-luyobisa Luheho. Outside view from Faustin Linyekula. The project is produced by Collectif d-Art-d’Art and Studios Kabako with additional support from the Institut Français de Kinshasa and Centre Culturel M’eko.

BIOGRAPHIES

Founded in 2011, Collectif d’Art-d’Art is a collective of artists, trained at the Institut National des Arts de Kinshasa, and based at the Centre Culturel M’eko in the commune of Ngaliema in Kinshasa. Co-directed by Michael Disanka and Christiana Tabaro, Collectif d’Art-d’Art advocates a state of mind open to all forms of artistic expression, with the credo: “Art in us, art for us, art through us.” The collective is a structure that seeks a new theatre with the artists as the crucible; a total and free theatre, resolutely of today, adopting approaches that are at once strange, excessive, simple and singular, with the ambition of raising public awareness of contemporary art. Collectif d’Art-d’Art approach theatre as an exercise in truth seeking based on the library of lived experiences and creating bridges between artists from different disciplines.

Actor, director and writer, Michael Disanka lives and works in Kinshasa. He founded Collectif d’Art-d’Art in 2011, and the following year, he began his collaboration with the KVS and met the Congolese playwright Dieudonné Niangouna, with whom he participated in several festivals including Connexion Kin 2012, Mantsina sur scène 2012 (Brazzaville), Connexion Kin 2013 and Theater for men 2013 (Hanover).Michael has been involved in several productions: Yoka mboda, which he wrote and directed, Illusion by Professor Mumbal’ikie, Le rêve with the students of the Institut des Arts du Spectacle de Kinshasa, Village fou by Koffi Kwahule, Parole de femme by Annie Leclerc, L’herbe qui souffre by Michel Torrekens and Solo Dios Basta written by Père Constantin. For some time now, Michael has been working on his own texts, in particular in the project “Diseurs de textes”, a project of reading shows. With 00243, he explores a performance language that is beyond language. Michael regularly collaborates with artists from different disciplines such as Faustin Linyekula, Laetitia Ajanohun, Christiana Tabaro and Adeline Rosenstein. In 2017, he was awarded a Pro Helvetia grant to participate in a seminar for young professionals in Avignon. Since 2016, he has been developing a trilogy with Christiana Tabaro around personal stories, the condition of artists living and working in the DRC and the contemporary history of the Congo, the first part of which, Sept Mouvements Congo, was presented at the end of 2018 at the KVS in Brussels.

Christiana Tabaro is an actress, writer and director trained at the National Institute of Arts in Kinshasa. She co-founded and co-directs Collectif d’Art-d’Art with Michael Disanka. Together they opt for a research theatre centred on their own experiences, drawing on the library of their own lives. Christiana’s work is autobiographical in nature and delves into past, present and future experiences. She is interested in going deep inside the self in order to portray her experience as an artist. This is where her need to write and make art videos comes from. Between 2012 and 2018, Christiana attended a large number of workshops alongside influential figures in Congolese and international theatre: Aristide Tarnagda, Jennifer Capraru, Faustin Linyekula, Virginie Dupray. She directed the solo Parole de femme, which she co-wrote with two co-authors (Annie Leclerc and Michael Disanka). With Collectif d’Art-d’Art, she has produced several projects presented in the two Congos, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Belgium and France. She was one of 12 international artists invited to the Avignon Festival 2018 for a seminar organised by Pro Helvetia, and was an actor in Michael Disanka’s project Sept Mouvements Congo.