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DÉCALÉ
Décalé is a discursive artist’s platform and event that showcases experiments in sound, art, performance, and moving image. Décalé works to amplify marginalised and unrepresented artistic voices. Our programme holds space for accessibility, inclusivity and worldbuilding.
Décalé was co-founded in 2018 by cultural producers and artists Anne Duffau and me, inspired by our shared interests in speculative futures, anticolonial thinking, and intersectional feminism. We started with club nights devoted to otherness, atonality, and queerness with the support from DIY Space for London, where we put on our first events. Then we went on to run a clubnight at Ormside Project (in collaboartion with Jupiter Woods) and we were awarded the Nightlife residency at The Yard Theatre. We were also invited to ignite the subterranean space of Somerset House Studios, for their AGM 2019; we were also invited to Poekhali! Festival at Bergen Kunsthall, in Norway, where we contributed to a panel discussion and with DJ sets.
Since 2023, Décalé is run by me, Leïla Arenou, and Kadeem Oak. As in the early days, we seek to present visual and sonic practices within a mutually nurturing interdisciplinary framework, offering a thorough and reinvigorated live artistic programme. In French, ‘décalé’ means ‘out of phase with space and time’. We aim to support marginalised artists using interdisciplinary approaches to address urgent themes, providing artists the space to experiment and further their practice within the mediums of performance, visual arts, moving image, poetry, and music.
We have a desire to show work in spaces that offer new connections with our audiences, guided by our conversations with artists who share those values. With this spirit, we aim to expand Décalé’s visual arts and music programme by commissioning new moving image and installation works. As part of this initiative, we continue to curate night-time events that speak to a nocturnal audience, allowing us to extend our reach and experiment with alternative modes of engagement…
As a nomadic platform situated between the visual arts and musical practices, Décalé is committed to exploring how artistic practices can critically intervene and stretch beyond the traditional parameters of the gallery or museum environment.
Inspired from both of their interests in sci-fi, rebellion and nonconformity, A- - -Z and Chooc Ly wrote this text which adorns each invitations to party:
When dusk arises, agitated spirits awake
A night on planet earth, Décalé
A platform for nocturnal creatures, loud existential insurgents;
disobedient children will come together & rise from the dark
to encounter experimental collapsing & flawless sounds / visuals / people
to declare together the unspoken & embrace the hybrid and reactive nature
of our collective experience.
Together we will re-write reality for an alternate tomorrow.”
Alpha & Chooc Ly
When dusk arises, agitated spirits awake
A night on planet earth, Décalé
A platform for nocturnal creatures, loud existential insurgents;
disobedient children will come together & rise from the dark
to encounter experimental collapsing & flawless sounds / visuals / people
to declare together the unspoken & embrace the hybrid and reactive nature
of our collective experience.
Together we will re-write reality for an alternate tomorrow.”
Alpha & Chooc Ly
see below for details about each edition of Décalé
