Carte Blanche to Olivier Marboeuf | A Rester.Étranger Vigil

The exhibition’s curatorial team has given Olivier Marboeuf, author, storyteller, artist, independent exhibition curator, and film producer, carte blanche for an evening event on the theme of hospitality.

“The Rester.Etranger vigil is an exercise in hospitality by a scattered family, with those who are there, those who are absent, hidden, in transit, those who have disappeared, and those who care for others, those who are not listened to and yet talk throughout the night. Those who keep watch.’ – Olivier Marboeuf

Programme

Part I
Ceux qui veillent les images nègres [Those who watch over black images]
A guided tour narrated by Olivier Marboeuf, in dialogue with works by Léonce Noah and Sello Pesa (15′)

Part II
Musical and dance performance by the Rester.Étranger collective and the Anglemort duo (30′)

Part III
Reading by actress and performer Sandy Stessie Sinvilus (15′)

Part IV 
La Nuit juste avant le feu [The Night Just Before the Fire]
Musical reading by Olivier Marboeuf, Léonard Jean-Baptiste, and Grégoire Chéry (30é)

La Nuit juste avant le feu is Olivier Marboeuf’s latest work, published in May 2025. The story begins in the same way as La Nuit juste avant les forêts, Bernard-Marie Koltès’ play, published in 1977. But it quickly becomes something else entirely: a black strike, a revolutionary hallucination, a horizon of alliances. La Nuit juste avant le feu is a monologue consisting of a single sentence that runs for 50 pages.

“La Nuit juste avant le feu is a spoken archive, the programme of a fugitive political movement, a black international, a school, a riot, a carnival. It depends. It’s whatever you want it to be. It’s also a declaration of love to ‘Afro-delirious’ peoples. It’s a flow that speaks in the cold rain of a capital city. Paris is black, it seems. But in truth, we are not talking about the same colour, that much is clear. Not that blue-black that fills the night and sparkles in the light of the fire. It is in the street, outside cafés perfumed with the sexual stories of Europe, that a man of this other colour, who smokes petrol, sees another man whom he vaguely recognises and calls ‘comrade’. As a way of saying that it is here and now that the smallest of struggles begins, that the tiniest of communities sets out on its journey.” – Olivier Marboeuf

This event will end with a discussion and presentation of publications from Maison Rester Étranger, as well as a selection of Caribbean literature from the Calypso bookshop.