Sirven Margaux
I was looking for a professional and collective training to develop a documentary project, throught when I saw the Artist @ Work call for application I knew it was a perfect occasion to work along with other peoples involved in documentary making and with trainers.
Our documentary project is about a group of people whose ability in multiple aspects of communication is impaired due to aphasia. Aphasia is a neurological condition caused by damage to the language centers of the brain. They struggle to understand and produce language, even though intellects are often unaffected. How can one think without languages? How does the perception of the environment change if you have no language at your disposal ? What does it mean to relearn/reactivate one’s mother tongue ? The members of the GAIF (Aphasia Association based in Paris) participate in several workshops, which occur weekly or monthly in different places. The aim of these artistic or language-focused workshops is to help them improve and practice their language and communication skills, to find other ways to express themselves.
Through their individual and shared course, we want to explore the process of re learning how to express yourself.
With Hanga and Marie-Noëlle we arrived with an other project and finally decided to switch. When we decided to work on aphasia, we first met GAIF administrator and then participated to serveral workshops with GAIF members to better understand and learn to know them.
Then we started filming, writting our project, going to workshop, filming again, rewritting, editind, filming and rewritting again !
Most of GAIF member's are aphasic and participate to GAIF workshop's since several years. They have built a strong relationship between each others. We have choosed this title to insist on this relation; throught the initial link which is the aphasia, they have created kind of a community.
It still a working title !