黑暗中的溶胶 Sol in the Dark

Sol in the Dark is a cinematographic and multimedia collage project by Mawena Yehouessi, whose ambition is to generate new contexts of co-creation as synonyms of alternative modes of coexistence. From script writing to filming, post-production and distribution, the film is an invitation to over fifty artists, researchers, students, and amateurs to retrace altogether—in a poetic and speculative way—the Myth of “Lascar.”

The term Lascar is said to come from Persian, meaning “army.” It was notably used during the 19th century to designate South East Asian native soldiers enrolled by the European colonial forces at sea. In the 1990s in France, Lascar has become a contemptuous qualifier, referring to 2nd and 3rd generation French BIPOC kids from the suburbs—from their daily struggles to their knowledge-making. As such, Lascar appears as both the epicene symbol and symptom of ghosted heredities as much as a fictitious role-model to youth standing on the edges of artistic, academic, media-related, and state-related institutional spaces. The film triggers fugitive modes of narration, representation, and co(n)generation in a post-internet world, and incites some of the viewers to reclaim its collage methodology and tell their own (Afrofuturist) stories—both in content and in form.