Sisygambis

Exhibitions, Installations, performances, movies, workshops. Everything in Sisygambis’s artistic approach operates in an extension of multimedia art through exploring, new encounters and sharing, creating while developing new boundaries between traditions and technology. Desiring to associate numeric arts with worldwide traditional cultures, Christine Coulange and Nchan Manoyan founded Sisygambis in 1989. Travelling from one country to another, the duo of video directors/musicians collect songs and music, document rituals, but also gather testimonies and the day-to-day practices of the people that cross their paths. Since the passing of Nchan Manoyan in 2009, Christine Coulange remains the artistic director of Sisygambis and the adventure goes on with her collaborators. Along the Spice Route, she develops “De la Méditerranée à l’océan Indien” ( “from the Mediterranean sea to the Indian ocean”) a multi and transmedia project which explores several forms of techniques and interactions (video & music immersive installations, exhibitions, performances, interactive webdocumentaries...)The collaboration with the Paris Institut du monde arabe (Arab World Institute) resulted in the development of the webdocumentary “Les Ports, de la Méditerranée à l’océan Indien” ( “Ports, from the Mediterranean sea to the Indian ocean”), and the showing of 4 short films in the exhibition “Aventuriers des mers”, a coproduction of the Arab World Institute and the MUCEM (Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations) in Marseille . Autumn 2016: Sisygambis begins a 3-year residency in Mayotte, thanks to the support of the french Head of Cultural Affairs of the island, pairing the webdocumentary to a collaborative multilingual platform project that includes the regional overseas languages. The prototype was exhibited in october 2016 at the Humanisme Numérique symposium in Paris and at the European Heritage Days in Mayotte. The documentary short and the workshop “ La couleur des mots ” were also shown at the National Theater La Criée in Marseille for the grand opening of the “Printemps de la Francophonie ”. In 2015, the Vivid Festival in Sidney and Melbourne projected onto big screens in the city center “People from the Indian ocean”, a 6 min concentrate of rare images shot in a span of 15 years along the Silk and Spice routes and the Indian ocean. The same year, the multimedia exhibition “J’irai jusqu’à Zanzibar” (“I will go all the way to Zanzibar”) was presented and integrated into the permanent collection of the Rimbaud Museum in Charleville-Mézières. In 2013, during the MP 2013 Event (Marseille-Provence Cultural Capital of 2013), the first creations born from 7 years of research on the Spice route were seen for the first time at the Villa Méditerranée and at the Friche la Belle de mai, in Marseille. Along the Silk Road Video makers, music composers, Nchan Manoyan and Christine Coulange go on expeditions, always further to the East, through wars and prohibitions, from Marseille to Shanghai. As a testimony, they create, and leave their pieces of arts in several festivals and events : Nemo at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Festival international du film in La Rochelle, 38e rugissants in Grenoble, Les Musiques / GMEM in Marseille. In 2005, Sisygambis won the Mobius France price for multimedia creation for its installation “La route de la Soie” (“The Silk Road”) Christine Coulange works with a worldwide network of artists, and the creations of Sisygambis are to be programmed in numerous festivals and museums, in France and abroad. She knows that this life journey draws it strength from the political and artistic determination that she and Nchan Manoyan lived through and developed altogether, starting before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, during their wild concerts in the cold eastern lands.