The Language of the Night

“The language of the night” The proposition here is just to be able to listen to what needs to be mourned. Ask yourself this question: what is changing? Because in fact, that’s what it is, mourning is being with what is changing. So, what is changing there, now, in my life? What is changing? What am I losing. What will perhaps never be the same again? Is it possible to ask yourself this question? And it could be people who are dying or who have died. It could also be people or things that died a long time ago. And it’s not necessarily people who are dead: it could also be places or things that were possible, and then these possibilities are no longer there, and like that I mourn that too . I met Masha in October 2019, and I have been interested in her work ever since. In a way, it was tears that brought us together, tears and their transformative power, the mystique of tears. Rivers, lakes, torrents, seas, oceans. And then in the swirls of water, in the foam of the waves, in the dark abysses: the world transforming. Things happened like in a fairy tale. Honestly, I didn't believe it. To tell you the truth, I was even terrified. Because yes, fairy tales are not always fairy tales. There are also nightmares. And even worse, waking nightmares. Like now. Like always. When Masha asked me to write a text for this exhibition, I accepted with enthusiasm, knowing that it would not be easy. And for good reason, I felt that all sorts of conscious and unconscious content ran through his latest pieces, and that I was going to have to dialogue with them in order to find the right tone. Where I come from, people who have experienced great suffering are said to hold great powers, in the magical sense of the term. When I hear that, I tell myself that I must be surrounded by magicians. But I wonder: at what point do these magical powers declare themselves in the lives of these people? Is it an immediate process, or on the contrary a progressive path? I don't have the answer, but I believe that it's all linked to tears, that is, to pain becoming liquid. Tears are the first potion, but something else is needed for the initiation to take place. How can we unravel the mystery of a work whose structuring principles remain unformulated? For several years, I have been using a technique that consists of diving into a state of mediumistic trance that allows one to enter into direct dialogue with the works, and therefore indirectly with the artist who produced them. This mediumistic trance has nothing specifically spiritual about it, but is rather rooted in a form of hypersensitivity. As if the heart, put to the raw, became a platform for emotional connection, a place of affective magic. This method is actually of romantic origin. It was inspired by the English poet John Keats, who defined negative capability as the ability to "remain within uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without persisting in seeking the fact & the reason." And so I close my eyes, and I let myself be carried away by the phantom flows. I walked to the river and thought about Virginia Woolf’s suicide. I could almost feel the stones in my pockets, and the call of the running water. I wondered how such a nightmare could coincide with such splendor. I sat on the bank for a while, watching the ballet of birds in the sky. Then the plumage became fur, and I understood that the bats were out. Very quickly, Masha’s exhibition took on an esoteric, not to say paranormal, turn. I closed my eyes and saw the painted, sculpted or drawn figures come to life, and it seemed clear to me that something very specific was trying to express itself between the lit lamps, the playful bats, the skeletons emerging from their graves and the haunted houses. Not to mention, of course, the figure of Freddy Krueger, with his burned face and his hands shaped like blades. In France, Freddy had made his first appearance in 1984 in a film called "Les Griffes de la Nuit", whose original title was A Nightmare on Elm Street. The fact that Masha felt the need to dress up as Freddy immediately caught my attention. What could such a costume possibly allow her to accomplish? The summer months have passed and my questions have remained unanswered. I look around the world for signs that can help me. I don't need help any more than anyone else. I think everyone needs help. But I always find myself a little too dramatic when I look my loved ones in the eye and gently tell them that the world is simultaneously lost and saved, that there is nothing we can do about it, except navigate in troubled waters. Then I finally understood that Masha had always worked in this precise place: where the darkness blurs our perceptions and where the claws of the night begin to sparkle. Where dreams and nightmares intertwine to the point of sometimes becoming indistinguishable. Where the most difficult questions are asked, which are also the most important questions. These are things that are told, stories peddled by completely ordinary creatures. These stories, in a sense, are survival strategies. Like everyone else, I try by all means to soothe my pain and give meaning to my life. And yet I feel that something is escaping me. I close my eyes and my entire existence appears to me in the form of a dream house. I go from room to room, and it is obvious to me that my wandering is both temporal and spatial. More recently, Masha came back to me to tell me about the series of numbers that can be read on one of her paintings. These numbers were passed down to her by her grandmother, as a talisman or a magic shield. I then wondered if the entire exhibition was not based on the opposition between the reality of fear and the need to protect oneself from it, that is to say between the nightmarish surge of reality (loss, mourning, war) and the profoundly magical capacity to resist this reality through dreams and through the forms of love that bind us to those who matter to us, whether they are dead or alive. As Léa Rivière says in the words placed in the epigraph, “to mourn is to be with what changes”. I believe that everything here speaks of mourning, of mourning, in this broader sense. I also believe that being with what changes can be terrifying, especially when the change is made in violence and through violence. The house diffracts, transforms, integrates into its walls all the walls that I have known in my life, the reassuring walls as well as the oppressive walls. All the walls. But also all the doors, all the windows, all the frames hanging on nails, all the furniture, all the objects, all the people who come and go between the rooms, and of whom no one knows what they are doing anymore. By putting on the mask of Freddy Krueger, Masha also appropriates the claws of the night. With these claws, she plays an instrument that the world put in her path after she made a vow to learn music. I close my eyes and I feel with force the drama that is playing out here. I feel that the world is changing and that these changes are affecting me. I feel fear tightening my throat. I feel in my body the ghostly presence of what seems to have disappeared forever, and that nothing and no one will be able to resurrect. I feel the need for transformation rising within me, but I realize that it is scary to transform oneself. The entire exhibition speaks of this fear of transformation. And of the need to transform oneself in spite of everything. On the need to invent all sorts of stratagems to not let fear paralyze us. Tears must continue to flow. The heart must continue to beat. The world is not about to end. I am particularly attentive to the signs of the apocalypse. A friend pointed out to me that this was a pathology identified by psychiatry, something like an apocalyptic hypervigilance, which would manifest itself when a person facing too much pain would feel the psychic need to end the world. This is of course a secret need, because who could admit to wanting to hasten the end of time? All the works presented here must be considered with the greatest attention, and understood for what they really are: an arrangement of forms composing more or less consciously a survival manual answering the question that Samuel Beckett already formulated: how to get out without getting out? (how to get out without getting out). How to find a way out other than death? How to mourn? How to transform oneself? How to live again? I look for a way out. A lamp lit in the most remote room of the house. I look for a mirror too. A lamp and a mirror. And a broken watch. I look for my reflection in this mirror. And for good reason I wonder about my true face. In "Freddy, The Night's Claws", the characters end up understanding that only being awake, not sleeping, protects them. But no one can escape sleep, except by taking the risk of madness. Masha invents a way out: she becomes Freddy, she transforms and reconciles. She is no longer afraid. Like her grandmother before her, she does magic. And when night falls, she twirls in the air with the bats. I need time to answer the questions that assail me. I need light to see my reflection in the mirror. I need shade to bear the atrocious reality in which I find myself immersed. I need to find the smallest room in the house, and to find in this room a small bed to lie down in. Need to open the window to add the darkness of the night to the darkness of the house. Need to let the bats inside. Maybe they will make their way into my head? Maybe their sonar will help me orient myself in all this? This world is too brutal for us, and yet we remain capable of transformation, that is to say, capable of love. This love is stronger than anything. It transcends all boundaries. It does not resurrect the dead, but it abolishes the very opposition between life and death. It allows us to enter into an infinite dialogue with the invisible. I am talking about a world where all sorts of magical acts are constantly changing the texture of reality. I feel that this world expects something from me, without me knowing what it is. They say that growing up is learning to control your fear, but I am not sure I believe it. Maybe in the end I cultivate this fear. Maybe my fear connects me to those I love. Who would I be without my fear? Would I have the same voice, the same eyes, the same gestures? Masha goes back to the sources of fear. To the world of childhood and night. To the world of fear and nightmare. By becoming Freddie, she conjures up what terrifies her. She invents a way out: another destiny for Freddie, and another destiny for herself. She reconciles herself with the worst. I also think of everything that popular culture teaches us about becoming a monster. The monster symbolizes the shadow. However, in life as in stories, we need the shadow. I wear my fear like a mask, like a costume. Every morning I put on this costume because it helps me see the world in its truth. But my fear is like a muscle that I strengthen by exercising. The more I practice fear, the more powerful fear becomes. And yet in the end something happens, like a turnaround. Because fear, having become all-powerful, tells something else. In a text entitled The Child and the Shadow, Ursula Le Guin gives us some valuable lessons on this subject. "The shadow is not simply evil," she writes, "it is inferior, primitive, awkward, bestial, childish, but also powerful, vital, spontaneous. [...] it is dark, shaggy and indecent. But we are nothing without it. What is a body that does not project a shadow. [...] Anyone who denies their deep connection with evil denies their own reality. They cannot do or create; they can only undo, destroy ." I think that this conception of the shadow allows us to understand the immense work, conscious and unconscious, that is at play in Masha's work. For her, it is not a question of mobilizing the motif of the nightmare with a certain critical distance, but rather of becoming, for a moment, like the nightmare. Of letting it settle in oneself, and of observing it attentively. Everything I knew for sure is slipping away before my eyes, and I realize that my mind can go wherever it wants. I understand then that fear is necessarily linked to the unknown. The creature that learns to cherish the unknown is no longer afraid of anything, and the miracles around it abound. I am in the shadow, and even if I am afraid, I am ready. As Le Guin writes, the shadow is a guide, it leads us to the heart of evil, but it also allows us to make the return journey, that is to say to return to the point from which we started, where calm reigns and the sun shines. But the shadow nevertheless remains. The presence of the shadow. The claws of the night. And it is at this precise level, at the place of this reconciliation, that we discover ourselves capable of magic. I am not sure I understand what is happening here. The waters rise, the tears continue to flow. But I feel strange stirrings in my belly, like an inner shiver, or like an inflammation of the membranes that surround my heart. It is a strange and pleasant feeling. And the more I feel it, the more I realize that I, too, am capable of magic. 1 Léa Rivière, PROMOURNING, transcription by Emma Bigé in Mourning through: Trans-species losses and affects, Trou noir n°3, 2024 2 Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Child and the Shadow” in The Language of the Night: Essays on Science Fiction and Fantasy [1973–1977], translated from English (United States) by Francis Guévremont, Paris, Les Éditions Aux Forges de Vulcain, 2016.