The adjective vernacular (from Latin vernaculus, "of the country, indigenous, national") is generally used to describe what comes from a given country or region, with specific and localized characteristics, endemic one might say: thus we speak of vernacular languages or names, vernacular architectures, etc. The vernacular is therefore always anchored somewhere. It has to do with the genius loci.
However, the vernacular is not confined to a fixed tradition: vernacular productions, while they feed on the seemingly immutable characteristics of the place where they come to life (geography, climate, but also certain "customs and practices"), are also shaped by the changes that occur there (new uses, passages and migrations, influences of globalization, etc.). In this sense, they are actually powerfully assimilative. Genius loci, then, but of an open place.
The cycle's title reflects this open anchoring – creole and archipelagic to use philosopher and poet Édouard Glissant's terms. The rozell is a Breton kitchen utensil, the marimba a music instrument of African origin but whose use is also widespread in Latin America, Lili is a nickname with multiple consonances.
The cycle Lili, la rozell et le marimba is therefore an opportunity to ask a series of questions about the meeting points between vernacular and contemporary creation, and notably:
-- In what forms does the richness of contributions and influences between so-called contemporary arts and traditional arts (crafts, artisanal, folkloric, popular, outsider, naive, etc.), between modernity and tradition, between local and global, manifest in contemporary creation?
-- In what ways do artists work today from so-called local contexts?
-- How do artists participate in rethinking the connections between folk knowledge and scholarly knowledge, between local and global, between native and foreign?
-- How do personal narratives serve as vehicles for History? Is one legitimate in speaking about a history that isn't one's own? From where does one speak?
-- How does one speak?