Idir

As a visual artist and performer, Carole Douillard uses her presence or that of performers as a sculpture for minimal interventions in the exhibition space. Standing on the edge of the spectacular while taking care to avoid it, her work calls for a redefinition of the viewer, the performance space, and the relationship that is established between the object being contemplated and the person contemplating it.

Idir pays tribute to Bruce Nauman’s landmark performance Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square (1967), transposing and adapting it to the context of public space in Algiers. The film brings into play a situation linked to the history of the performance, its film archive, and the urban space of Algiers. After focusing on the gestures of the “unproductive” unemployed men–the “hittists” seen leaning against the walls in the streets of Algiers (performance The Waiting Room, 2014)–Douillard directs Idir, a young Algerian who, some 50 years later, reinterprets the loose gait that Nauman performed in the intimate setting of his San Francisco studio in 1967. In Algiers, the performance evokes the trap in which the protagonist finds himself, who, not wanting to do his military service, cannot leave the country because he would be considered a deserter and could not return. The performance was
shot by filmmaker and photographer Babette Mangolte, a legendary figure in New York performance art in the 1970s, just a few months before the 2019 protests leading up to President Bouteflika’s resignation.

The film takes place in three iconic sites in the city: Bab El Oued, Les Sablettes, and Diar Es Saâda. It also shows how, in Algerian public spaces, male and female bodies adopt specific gender codes: women walk through them, while men occupy them and form static groups. Idir’s slow, solitary walk highlights the gaze and attitude of the passersby observing the young man’s action, which departs from the usual codes of his gender.