Une ressource audio authentique : l’interview de Karen Knorr

Karen Knorr est une artiste américaine, basée à Londres, née en Allemagne en 1954. Elle a beaucoup photographié les classes sociales britanniques ainsi que les groupes plus marginaux comme les punks. Son art a pris un tournant quand elle s’est mise à photographier, ou à inclure et intégrer dans des photographies, des animaux dans des espaces mythiques ou mythologiques - sans humains - du Japon à Pompéi, mais aussi en Inde. D’un art très narratif, elle est passée à des images en apparence moins guidées, mais où l’Histoire du Royaume-Uni est toujours présente. Elle fait l’objet d’une rétrospective de ses travaux les plus récents au Centre d’art contemporain de la Matmut – Daniel Havis (jusqu’au 1er juin 2025). Cette exposition est gratuite.

Une visite virtuelle de l’exposition est disponible ici : https://my.octopus3d.com/tour/karen-knorr
Les photos qui illustrent l’article sont utilisables dans le stricte cadre de la classe, avec l’accord de l’artiste.

L’interview étant riche et les propos développés, les parties en gras peuvent être extraites du document et utilisées comme « citations » en fonction du niveau des élèves et des objectifs visés. La ressource a pour vocation à faire l’objet d’une compréhension orale.

[1] Could you tell us about ‘The Lanesborough’ series ?
https://karenknorr.com/photography/the-lanesborough/

The Lanesborough series is in a part of London called Knightsbridge or Belgravia. And in fact, it sort of links to my family because my family, when they moved from the United States, they were travelers, you know, they lived in different places in Europe, they lived in Germany, etc. and my mother had always wanted to live in Belgravia in this part of London. So they managed in 1976 to find a flat with a 25-year lease in a very pretty square called Lowndes Square nearby, right ? And the local hospital was St. George in that Palladian style, English style of architecture. And some of that you have around Regent’s Park as well. So when that hospital became converted into a luxury hotel, it was extraordinary. What had happened was—that work is a product of a commission. I don’t know if you know the magazine called Departures. It’s a travel magazine. So, somehow someone got a hold of me, my name, or saw my work and said, “we’re in the process of restoring this hotel. It’s just been finished by this very famous designer who’s just died. Can you have a look at it and see whether you can do some work ?” So I said, okay, let’s have a look. I was curious, you know, this was a hospital now turned into a luxury hotel. So it has a very symbolic sort of location, if you like. And so I rose to it. And I decided then that the underlying story of that series would be a wedding. And in fact, the short story in the catalog book refers to that, where I come and visit, and these two, a white peacock and a regular colorful peacock, are about to get married, and then all this menagerie of animals - which refer to the different Commonwealth countries - come. So, you know, again, inspired by the heritage of Britain, if you like, and its empire…the one motif I’ve dealt with in Britain with my work is the first work.

[2] You already had a series called ‘Belgravia’...
https://karenknorr.com/photography/belgravia/

That work, ‘Belgravia’, was that very first work in that neighborhood. And it refers to the decline of the British Empire, and this constant melancholia that I found and still find in Britain…they just never got over it. But yeah, culturally, the city, the cuisine, the fashion, is imbued by all these different colors. And that’s why I think London’s a great city to be in, because it’s so hybrid and mixed. It’s got a Muslim mayor. Wow, it’s amazing. So yeah, so that neighborhood is a neighborhood quite close to me, although I never lived there because when my family found that, I was already studying. I didn’t want to live in this place near the royal family. My mom was one of these very lovely American, very cultured, but very in awe of all of that. Of course, being a different generation, I wasn’t interested in that. When I arrived in London, I was photographing punks.
https://karenknorr.com/photography/punks/

[3] Was it natural to move from ‘Belgravia’ to the series ‘Gentlemen’ ?
https://karenknorr.com/photography/gentlemen/

After I did ‘Belgravia’, and I was thinking about it as I made that series, and I’d become like, culturally, I guess I’d become a feminist and I was listening to people tell me their stories and the women in Belgravia were always saying the same sort of stuff. Like, ‘I know of a beautiful marriage’, ‘he loves her beauty, she loves his money’, ‘If I had such a marriage, I’d shoot myself’, all these sort of dichotomies and women’s roles and men’s roles, you know, and I became more and more aware. So then I thought, well, how to engage with sort of patriarchal ideas and conservatism during Thatcherite years. It was Maggie Thatcher, but she surrounded herself with men and no women in her cabinet, extraordinary ! And how do you engage with that ? And I found out there were gentlemen’s clubs with no women allowed - and actually, there’s still clubs that don’t allow women. But on the other hand, I think, do we really care ? But what’s interesting about those clubs is that they were created as places of dissent, of where they were discussing politics in the 18th century such as in the gazettes. The revolutionaries belonged to some of those clubs. So it was a little bit what was going on when I was photographing Gentlemen’s Club, which I called ‘Gentlemen’, to highlight patriarchal attitudes. So I was very interested in the language, and since I’m an American, I’ve lived in different places, speak different languages, so I guess I’ve always sort of fit in. So I tried with the captions and the text, to tell a story of a member of a club walking down his clubs, and thinking about how great things had been and how things had gone down the hill.

[4] Did you intend your work to be political ?

I was part of that generation who was reading post-colonial critiques of empire. Within my course, we were reading Stuart Hall’s cultural theory and stuff like that. So that influenced it. So what I wanted to do was, I didn’t want to do this work that was just politically right on, but I wanted to problematize it with humor and sometimes even fantasy. Staged photographs in clubs where I would go in like a filmmaker, check out and then photograph with characters that were both people that were my friends and the actual members of the club. So using a technique from I guess neo-realist Italian cinema that would use ordinary people mixed with actors.

[5] What do you think of Britain’s relation with India where you’ve worked a lot ?
https://karenknorr.com/photography/india-song/

Well, they screwed it up totally. And actually all my Indian friends are very anti-British. Some of the elite, the aristocracy, if you like, the Maharajas, would have gone to the same schools as some of the royals, had a different sort of relationship. But the people I hung out with were sort of more the meritocracy, weren’t those people. So it was like, yeah, this is our country, you know. But of course, it’s more complicated now with Modi and there’s a lot of conflict and division too now, so.

Les liens avec les thématiques culturelles des programmes

Les liens avec les thématiques culturelles des programmes sont les suivants :
● Voyages et migrations (cycle 4)
● Rencontre avec d’autres cultures (cycle 4)
● Représentation de soi et rapport à autrui (2nde)
● La création et le rapport aux arts (2nde)
● Le passé dans le présent (2nde)
● Le village, le quartier, la ville (2nde)
● Identités et échanges (cycle terminal)
● Art et pouvoir (cycle terminal)
● Diversité et inclusion (cycle terminal)
● Fictions et réalités (cycle terminal)
● Territoire et mémoire (cycle terminal)
● Espace privé et espace public (cycle terminal)

Spécialités :
● LLCER - Imaginaire
● LLCER - Arts et débat d’idées
● LLCER - Voyages, territoires, frontières - ancrage et héritage
● LLCER-AMC - Faire société - égalités et inégalités
● LLCER-AMC - Relation au monde - Puissance et influence / Rivalités et interdépendances / héritage commun et diversité

Conclusion

L’article proposé s’inscrit dans une dynamique de projets culturels développée dans l’Académie de Normandie. Les ressources proposées par M. Locoge visent à initier l’exploration de nouveaux thèmes culturels au sein des classes grâce à l’utilisation de nouveaux documents, la variété des thématiques abordées permettant en effet d’enrichir la compétence culturelle des élèves.

Pour aller plus loin :

Site internet de Karen Knorr : https://karenknorr.com/
Site internet du Centre d’art contemporain de la Matmut – Daniel Havis : https://www.matmutpourlesarts.fr/
Projets avec les scolaires du Centre d’art contemporain de la Matmut – Daniel Havis : https://www.matmutpourlesarts.fr/centre-art-contemporain/visites-ateliers#scolaires
Les visites scolaires sont toutes gratuites.

Crédits et remerciements : le logo "Langues et Cultures" a été réalisé par les élèves de DN MADE du lycée Jeanne d’Arc à Rouen, encadrés par leur professeure Mme Stéphanie Bouvet.