Case… Negro case, coulis, petit blanc… Case the color of misery. These old ladies retain under the rustle of their rusty sheet metal skirts a popular history of our islands. Cases once full of life, hope, struggles and victories, today “hollow-tooth cases” in the decayed smile of our cities. Abrasive, sickly and solitary, they still shelter the miserable bed of our humanity. This “bed of boards from which my race rose” 1 wrote Aimée Césaire in memory of her modest origins. Much more than architectural scraps from another time, these dilapidated and decrepit cases sing through their “pricked” perciennes a litany filled with emotions; that of our individual and collective stories, that of our identities. The song of a human reinvention as fast as the nosedive of a “gli-gli”. And we… Artists, creators of emotions, inventors of identities and traditions, … We, sensitive transmitters, recognize in these boxes cultural chronometers. We recognize that these “clock boxes” measure with shock the path taken towards our recomposed humanity. Our wish is to share, the space of a sheet metal beat, the experience of our journeys. From the tradition of Gwo-Ka to contemporary arts, the instant of ten boxes, we will take the time to exchange, to discuss without any other obligation. In these boxes where the story that drips from our artistic practices has fermented, in these boxes, the nursery of the arts, we will watch over and awaken a poetics of becoming.

[1] Aimé Césaire, Notebook of a return to the native land, P.18