A Conversation with Mackenzy Bergile: On the Edges of Holes

As we speak, where are you and how are you doing?

I am in La Rochelle on a residency and researching for my upcoming solo. It is always pleasant to have time for it, especially in such a beautiful place: I am in a former chapel. I am very well, and so is the research process. 

AUTOTHERAPIE : Unbolting Colonial Statues from Our Consciousness takes us on a non-linear journey through colonial history and through the representations it has forged. But you have structured your narrative in a more personal way, drawing on the division into sessions of individual therapy and performing the entire performance alone. Can you explain the connection you make between collective history and individual somatic memory? How does this translate into your artistic choices? 

This non-linear, non-chronological practice doesn't have any aesthetic ambition. It departs from the acknowledgment of what is missing. It manifested through the disparition of a photo album with pictures of me as a child, of my parents when they were young, of school photos. When my parents divorced, it got lost. Growing up I realised how it created a hole: until now, I don’t know what I looked like as a kid, or what my parents looked like when they were young. All these memories have exited my mental circuit which has led me to welcome and channel the stories of others. It was a way to compensate for a lack of intimacy. My personal history is already made of holes, so in order to survive I needed what I call “affective prostheses”: stories that are not necessarily mine but allow me to fill the gaps. It departs from a concrete story of the void. Mine, but also the one of my family: Haitian history is also full of holes, and a cultural synthesis of three continents (American, African and European). My name being Mackenzy Bergile, one could say that my last name is already a genealogical interruption because it has been forced upon us when slavery was abrogated. It is the accumulation of holes and gaps that forced me to enter the dynamic of survival by letting stories of others, historical or anonymous ones, annex themselves to my intimacy. The therapy I have made was, in the first place, to accept I was a hole-ridden being. And to not perceive it as a failure but as a driving force for my personnel and artistic life. Survival has been what binded intimacy and collective. Today, this work on memory between collectivity and intimacy has found its conceptual framework and its aesthetic but departs from an actual necessity. 

Images feel omnipresent in your work: first because you incorporate them into your performances (photographs, archive and personal videos, etc.). What is your relationship with images? How do you select them at the different stages of your artistic process?  

It is most likely connected to the absence of images in my own construction. Images allow me to create an entire world. They are a dramatic driving force in general, but also the one behind all my research. They are my starting point, as well as my finishing one. Despite the desire to recount an intimate and political experience, what frames it all is the image, the light, the power and the beauty of what we see, of what we look at. It allows us to tell a story without words, without speaking. It has the ability to generate an echo, an emotion for the one gazing, by using a piece of clothing, an object, which then leads to a story. For a work that is as demanding intimately and politically as AUTOTHERAPIE, I believe that images can be an entry point for some people, such as tales or dance can be for others. Being able to open many doors throughout my work so different kinds of people can access it through different paths is crucial to me. But images are the very first door to unlock my work.

I work mostly with visual references. First, in my studio/laboratory, I display a various range of images with which I work daily: historical ones, from movies, personal photographs or coming from public archives. I am also very interested in images from animated films as they have often built our founding myths as children. Be the ones from the 1940s, the cartoons, the anime, they have contributed to our collective imagination through images. Then, I create a library with all these references that are my tools to make them coexist with my own intimate stories. The intertwining of all these references is what allows me to create a complex self-portrait that lets stories run through one body. Being alone on stage comes from the fact that I feel it is more interesting for me that one body can contain a lot of different stories and transform itself by channeling them.

From the audience’s perspective, each scene of the performance resembles a picture, as everything appears meticulously composed. Can you tell us about how you approach dramaturgy? What consideration do you give to set design and costumes? 

I work mostly scene by scene, and usually, without necessarily having a clear idea of where I’m heading. I move forward fragment by fragment. This allows me to be very precise with each of them and not to overlook anything. The narrative within each fragment has to stand on its own, even if its duration is short. This is something that interests me deeply, because the concept of time — when using a linear narrative structure — implies a progression from introduction to development to conclusion. I don’t work that way, because it doesn’t align with who I am or my creative journey; instead, things come to me in a highly fragmented manner. So, I create one image after another, each with its own centre of gravity. Assembling them comes at the end of the process; once I have built up my collection of pictorial units, I am stitching them together.

When I think of scenography, I always consider how the body can be showcased without being overly exposed or, conversely, being overshadowed by the space. As my practice is rooted in the visual arts, I always wonder how a body can be presented in a space without disappearing into it, whilst still embracing its vulnerability. This requires simplicity in the scenography. For AUTOTHERAPIE, I chose to construct a white, immaculate, empty space, into which I then place memories. This cube, this box, evokes therapy, and allows images and the body to unfold within it. It highlights the body’s vulnerability, yet its confined dimensions protect it. It also creates a tight visual frame, referencing portraiture and photography. And every element I add to the space alters the mental image the viewer is starting to form. When I place a bench in this white cube, it brings to mind a certain image: perhaps a church, for example. The statues might evoke an art gallery and adding a dress takes us somewhere else entirely, even though the space itself hasn’t changed.

Clothing, on the other hand, allows me to call upon a choreographic memory. My training in fashion and studying the evolution of clothing over time has been fundamental in my journey. I have been particularly interested in the period from 1880 to 1950, and in the African-American sartorial heritage. By working meticulously on the garments I select and their cut, I accompany the body and the movement. Not only does this allow me to embody a certain thing, but also to immerse myself in a particular era. Clothing also leads me to wonder what kind of dance was performed when it was worn, and how it was set in motion by dances such as the cakewalk or tap dance.

You also put a lot of work into the music: you are using sounds with different status (tunes, archive pieces, personal recordings). How do you work with it? You are also a music composer and a piano player, I believe.

Indeed, I have studied classical and baroque music. I am a pianist as much as a choreographer. Classical music is important in my work as it has, for a long time, been studied in a certain way, only through the practice of instruments. But it also has an historical and sociological depth. In AUTOTHERAPIE there are a lot of references to European music history. The tune that opens and closes the piece is Schubert’s Ave Maria. It summons a collective memory rooted in the European history of music, but also one that is rooted in Haitian culture. In 1825, when Schubert composed it, Charles X, King of France, imposed a debt upon Haiti. A sensible geography appears and conveys an intimate and collective history. This is a process I undertake with other pieces and composers, as I’m interested in drawing connections and exploring the tension between creation in some places and destruction in others.

And then there is the work of archiving and referencing African-American musical history, to which I will pay tribute by featuring certain tracks, such as those by Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, or the voice of James Baldwin, which can be heard at one point. They come from a specific time period, that of racial segregation.

And then, it is my voice that tells the story, even if I sometimes borrow stories from others. As Victor Hugo said: “When I speak as ‘I’, I am speaking of you.”

Some tracks and images are tributes, whilst others are more documentary in nature; but you also choose to confront the audience to a colonial and racist visual and audio culture: a minstrel song plays on a loop for a few minutes, a small blackface is framed and placed on the floor in front of us, etc. Why do you show us these images rather than just referring to them? 

In a self-therapeutic work such as this, I felt it was important to encourage collective reflectivity, so that everyone present could take responsibility for what they see and accept these images, despite their violence. In the same way, in my own process, I had to accept that certain symbols have shaped a historical reality that persists to this day. The image of blackface, which is revealed right at the start of the piece and remains on stage almost until the end, is a way of exposing historic facts and highlighting their persistence. It must therefore be seen, even if emotionally this may lead to a sense of overload for some and acceptance or trivialisation for others. The issue of symbolic violence is present throughout the work, despite the progression of the scenes. It is a matter of taking responsibility for things that have existed and persist. This is also why there is a minstrel mixed in with a kind of jazz cabaret, which references the way European theatre used to mock African Americans. My intention was not to provoke, but to accept the task of retracing what had happened, and, as part of a process of self-therapy, to embody that time period and try to feel it deeply in my body. As I mentioned earlier, clothing plays a significant role in this.

I will now move on to my final question — usually the same one I ask everyone I interview about their use of social media, although you mentioned that you don’t use Instagram very much. We’ve also talked a lot about collecting images and creating image libraries: the internet as well as social media are platforms where images are created and shared. Do you engage with these spaces in your research? 

I sometimes visit academic websites, such as the Paris Archives, where the historical data is verified. I also watch a lot of films and take screenshots from them. To a less significant extent, I look at things on YouTube or Pinterest in search of references. It’s true that I don’t use Instagram much, but I’ve never thought of it as a place for research to date.