Work in Progress: failles (obligation de quitter le territoire)

Welcome to the work-in-progress sharing of failles (Obligation de quitter le territoire), the second chapter of a diptych by Alphonse Eklou Uwantege, taking place on Friday, June 12. As the work is still in its early stages, outside perspectives are truly invaluable.

With failles (obligation de quitter le territoire), Alphonse Eklou Uwantege creates the second chapter of a diptych that began with restes (offrande au million) - a ritual solo dedicated to their uncle Alphonse Kanimba, murdered during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Where restes mourned, failles (OQT) shifts toward resistance and reinvention. Alphonse continues their research through family history: exile, years without legal residency status, the expulsion order received as a child, and how these experiences imprint on bodies and modes of presence. The work is built as a duo with their father, around gestures, lost languages, administrative documents, and ways of resisting erasure.

Failles (OQT) is a choreographic and documentary ritual, a collective space where audience members are invited to inhabit an immaterial territory - a place between departure and return, between father and child, between History and the present. A cry for the children of the in-between, a breath for those erased by institutions, a space to breathe again, together.

Alphonse Eklou Uwantege is a queer Sagittarius, born in Minsk to a Rwandan mother and a Togolese father. They are a Brussels-based stage director, performer and model. Their practice uses the body as a tool, writing as a weapon of resurrection, and performance as a political urgency. Their method is grounded in the desire to subvert representational norms and to shift the audience-performer relationship by disrupting stage spaces.