Sébastien Robert(FR)
PARTICIPANT 2019

Sébastien Robert (1993, France) is an interdisciplinary artist investigating disappearing Indigenous rituals through his on-going research You’re no Bird of Paradise. Rather than simply documenting them, Sébastien explores in-depth their sonic, visual and contextual characteristics while translating them into long-lasting works of art made of endemic materials.

Based on a site-specific, versatile and collaborative approach, his research spawns singular projects influenced by the field experience, the material gathered and the theoretical research carried out before, during and after his expeditions. Whether in the form of hybrid installations or performances, Sébastien searches for possibilities to create an understanding of the connections between Indigenous knowledge and the planet in a non-extractivist way.

Sébastien’s work has been recently exhibited at FIBER Festival (Amsterdam, NL), MU ArtSpace (Eindhoven, NL) and Global Seed Vault (Svalbard, NO) and he has performed at various international venues such as Magick City (Brooklyn, US), Dommune (Tokyo, JP) and OHM (Berlin, DE). Sébastien graduated from the Interfaculty ArtScience (MA) at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague with honours in 2020.

'Rite Of Passage' is Sébastien Robert's newest installation. Initiated in Chile in 2019, during his stay at Valley of the Possible, this project studies the influence of the Kultrun - a Mapuche drum - on the crystallisation of the Araucaria Araucana’s resin – an ancient tree sacred to the Mapuche and considered as living fossil – and explores the possibilities of preserving its ancestral rhythms in that medium.

With his installation, Sébastien carries the patterns of the Kultrun and documents their influence on the formation of the crystals. This is being done using a technique called sensitive crystallisation that allows the formative forces of any organic material to be revealed pictorially.

Sébastien also collaborated with fellow participant Mark IJzerman on 'As Above, So Below': an audiovisual performance that explores the changing landscape of La Araucanía region in Chile through live visuals and sound.