A body placed, posed, in front of an urban collage. A flat decor made of prints stapled onto recycled wood panels. The prints are photos taken over the years in Belgium, Senegal and New York, among other places, by Brahim Tall himself. Together, they form a sketch of a diaspora. They set the stage for a crucial task: to bring together the body and the image through movement.
From the still image to the moving image. From photography to film.
Behind Tukuleur’s composed mise-en-scène, we can trace a mass grave of one-dimensional representations. The body on screen expresses a clear necessity to animate these static forms, to animate these corpses of art history, to bring life to representation, or, better yet, to move beyond it. With every pose-switch, the Tukuleur body sings one of its thousand possible articulations.
This polyvocal movement, however, is not necessarily liberating in itself. When the director's voice gives distorted instructions, commanding the body to
poseposeposeposeposeposepose, he quite literally highlights the painful interaction with a thousand selves and the physical environment. His interaction seems only to allow a single self at a time, yet also demands a constant adaptation to specific external forces. It seems that with every cut or switch of light (and its consequent switch of skin colour), the power dynamic changes. Is this an agent body expressing its polyvocality? Or is this a jester, compelled to perform endless roles to entertain the static frontal gaze of the camera? The sharp editing instils a rhythm that can be cruel to its onscreen body yet also breathes life into its dance. Tukuleur proves that polyvocal movement is not the definitive answer; it is still in conflict, unresolved, confused. However, as opposed to the undead practice of representation, it is the path that allows complex life.
