Banana Dreams

Who are they?

Janosch Dietrich works at the intersection of design, architecture and material research: circular systems, reuse, experimental construction. Schirin Shahed is a transdisciplinary artist and educator with a background in geography: nature journaling, comics, participatory formats. Julianne Becker is a multidisciplinary artist, storyteller and community builder, born in Minneapolis and based in Germany: painting, storytelling, writing. With Janosch, she co-founded Coconat.

They share a common ground in Moviemiento, a Berlin-based non-profit that runs international projects together with local organisations. It turns public space into a place for cultural dialogue and non-formal education, most often through film. This collective practice of creation feeds directly into the residency.

The setting

They are hosted in residency at 150 m d’altitude, a programme run by ANISOTROPIE, a Martinican arts, sciences & technologies association, under the artistic direction of Georges-Emmanuel Arnaud. Their journey is made possible by Culture Moves Europe, the European Union’s cultural mobility fund.

It is a family residency, in two phases: Schirin arrives first, on 23 November; Janosch, Julianne and their two children join her in December.

Their research

Exploring the territory through the banana. Janosch looks at the plant as a resource and a material: what its fibres, leaves and residues can become. Schirin follows it as a cultural, ecological and colonial symbol, through Caribbean foodways and the island’s agricultural history. Julianne approaches it as an everyday object carrying extraordinary histories: small-scale works, primarily watercolour on paper, locally discovered materials, homemade inks, perhaps scent as a carrier of memory. These explorations will contribute to an exhibition with the Kunstverein Hoher Fläming in Germany, and alongside them she will develop a narrative arc for her first novel.

It is research and creation at once, with a transmedia approach: drawing and journaling, painting and writing, material and construction, storytelling, image. The forms are not fixed yet; they will grow out of the encounters.

A milestone

Until now, we had avoided hosting two residencies at the same time. Their stay coincides with that of Léna la Bouchère: we are entering something new. We are opening a new accommodation for this, with an ambition: to bring vacant or little-used homes back to life through this kind of action.

For the residency too, this is an opportunity: to explore a subject that seems obvious in Martinique, that concerns us, and that we had not explored on our own. That is the magic of hosting residents: they raise a subject, and suddenly you care about it.