La rue St Michel from Rennes (nicknamed Rue de La soif or Thirst street) has a long history of spilled alcohol, good music and a few fights (even a few suicides), but no-one will deny the amazing attraction that all its bars & paving stones generate.
Besides its Saturday food market (one of the biggest in France) it’s advanced music festival “Transmusicales”, those galette-saucisses, the fanfares, and all the culture & history this city oozes, Rennes has always been a night-life seeker city.
The local newspaper Le Mensuel has elaborated this magnificent interactive Webdoc that despite being in French it perfectly captures the essence not only of the busiest Rennes street but the amazingly positive spirit (well… mostly) of its young passersby.
In this our first interview for aqnb we’ll be talking with Mélany Dioré, a talented artist we discovered a few months ago in Brittany (northern France) who belongs to the artistic collective “Bodyworks“. She’ll be exhibiting her latest works at the L’Elaboratoire (Rennes) from October 24th to November 2nd.
Born in 1979 this “Rennais” works and takes much of her energy from the Atlantic Ocean which surrounds the Celtic lands where she lives….
aqnb: Thank you for being with us Mélany, how about if you start telling us where you come from, a bit of your background…
MD: I come from far away! I’ve always had this “foreigner” feeling which it started being an adolescent: I always had a crystal bubble around me…it was like a frontier but a passage at the same time between people and me.
I decided then to try and find out what “being oneself” meant, regardless of being at home or with others: without the blare, the fake identities, masculine or feminine, the deceptions in the speech…
I’ve invested myself a lot in my studies at Rennes University where I had double-period cycles. In the first ones I deepened as much as I could in order to express my personal interior. I started to isolate myself like an anchorite working deeply with my body, dance, scenography, tissues, wood, design, ink, installations… trying to push my limits.
Secondly I confronted myself… addressing myself to the people to “fight for the truth”, finding what was hard and striking, profound and permanent. This time I showed my work looking for links with this exterior world out of my studio.
