Artists in residence

Valentine Sergo is an Italian author, director and actress. She is the artistic director of the Cie Uranus theater company in Geneva, where she stages her texts. Her plays La divergence des trajectoires (Kazalma, 2013) and Palpitations received the Swiss Society of Authors’ Prize for the support of contemporary theatre writing in 2010 and 2012 respectively.

Recently, her latest play Chaos (Lansman Editeur, 2021), which she directed, was presented at the festival les Francophonies – des écritures à la scène in Limoges, in September 2021. Chaos is the first part of the Cyclone trilogy, which takes place between the West and the Middle East and tells the story of four generations of women. In recent years, her professional career has brought her into close contact with various women who have experienced particularly difficult trajectories, either in connection with migration (since 2009 she has worked regularly with migrants seeking asylum in Switzerland); or with areas in conflict (since 2012 she has regularly gone to Palestinian territories and Israel to run theater and writing workshops).

“Why am I writing this trilogy today? My various experiences working abroad have allowed me to realize that, whatever the culture we come from, what unites us in our differences as human beings is the ability to give meaning to our lives, to put meaning back into an event that no longer has any: the onset of an illness, death, the trauma of war, living under occupation, submission to an established social order etc. The narrative (tales, stories, plays) leads me to question this world in a constructive way. When I say ‘constructive’, it is in the sense of not only criticizing and the observing, but imagining utopian and idealistic answers, and if “answers” is too pretentious… then I would say new, unknown points of view.”

Valentine Sergo’s residency at the Cité internationale des arts, in partnership with Les Francophonies-Des écritures à la scène and the Chartreuse de Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, will allow her to continue writing this trilogy and to lead writing workshops in health establishments for the DRAC and the ARS Île-de-France, within the framework of “Culture et Santé en Île-de-France” label.

MUSIC
VIOLIN

Alejandro Serna is a Franco-Venezuelan violinist and professor who graduated from the Conservatoire (CRR), the Centre for Higher Education (CESMD) and the University of Toulouse. Born into a family of musicians, he began his musical studies in the “Sistema” in Caracas, Venezuela.This experience made him aware of the importance of sharing, of making music (as art) and of using it as a tool for inclusion and social development.

Also passionate about early music, his concerts and teaching as an educator are based on historical research, since his knowledge of the context allows him to propose “historically informed” interpretations in repertoires of all ages in order to find the expression of origin desired by the composer.

He currently pursues a double career as a performer and professor of violin and early music at the Conservatoire de Musique (CRD) in Tarbes.

Ser Serpas was born in 1995 in Los Angeles, United States. She is based between Tbilisi, Georgia, and Paris, France. She works in between sculpture, poetry, painting and sound to create overarching compositions that resist simple categorization in the face of fossilization. Ser Serpas is represented by Gallery Balice Hertling (Paris).
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Ser Serpas will finish the screenplay of a horror movie set at Columbia University in the year 2013. It features a group of friends targeted by a malignant force on campus and within their social sphere.
This story is loosely based on Rosemary’s Baby, and has been brought into the material conditions of campus politics in 2013 including the fomenting of the Black Lives Matter movement and the Red Tape protests on campus against sexual assault.