Mohamed Bourouissa - Christophe Chassol - DA Claire Tancons

What would a contemporary civic ritual look like in France today and of whom would it be constituted? Might it be possible to delineate the contours of this civic renewal in Toulouse, a multicultural city much in the image of contemporary France? Borrowing its title from Serge Gainsbourg’s reggae remix of the French national anthem La Marseillaise, “Aux Armes, et cætera”, etcetera: un rituel civique will differ the call to arms and reorganize instead this “everything else” (the French translation of the Latin locution “etcetera”) into an “everybody else” to create the conditions of emergence of this contemporary civic ritual. etcetera forms a rich ceremonial complex comprised of diverse forms of public address including art and sport as well as sound and food, and culminates in a multi-stop, city-wide, processional performance.

etcetera: un rituel civique is a harmonised meal-performance, the first step of this project. Conceived by visual artist Mohamed Bourouissa and “harmonized” by musician and composer Christophe Chassol under the artistic direction of curator Claire Tancons, this “meal-performance” brings together the wide range of Toulouse’s culinary cultures to draw a new gustative imaginary in order to expand the city’s gastronomic map. Service and menu designed by members of the culinary clubs of the city’s community centers are arranged in a non-hierarchic composition, set to music dish per dish, around conversations moderated table by table by an array of invited guests speakers. From the palate to the mouth, from the mouth to the voice, from the voice to the word, the meal and its hymn open up a space of civility where the notion of civic ritual is put to test.

— Claire Tancons