Laurent Derobert is a French conceptual and performing artist splitting his time between Avignon and Paris. One of Derobert’s recent initiatives is based on Odysseus’ journey and the vegetal world. In collaboration with Laurent Dubreuil who authored in parallel a book on botany in Homer’s epos (Botaniser l’Odyssée; Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2024), Derobert collected on site, in the Mediterranean, the seeds of each plant mentioned in the poem, and he designed a series of performance “rituals” and “restitutions.”
Taking advantage of the symbolic naming of East Coast locales in relation to the classical world, Derobert and Dubreuil, together with skipper and visual artist Gaïa Bergelin, conducted in October 2024 another re-enactment of the Mediterranean journey, leading this time again from Troy to Ithaca, but in the United States. Owing to the American mythology of the road trip, this odyssey was mostly done with a car, also relying on other modes of transportation. Instead of collecting seeds, we gleaned pictures and sounds (as well as a few tree leaves), the focus being on the germination of the symbolic and the metaphorical exploration of the land. Most of the time was spent in rural areas, especially in New York State, Pennsylvania, and, to a lesser extent, Ontario. Several performances were conducted: a nekuia in the countryside; more than 30 readings of the Greek original text by Dubreuil and collaborators; and two public lectures-performances, one at the University of Chicago, the other at Cornell University.
Three different multimedia exhibitions give an account of the project: one is virtual and is available here; two different shows will be on display in 2025, one at Hus Art Gallery in Paris, the other at the Soil Factory in Ithaca, NY. This Humanities Lab art project was made possible by a grant from the Rural Humanities initiative funded by the Mellon Foundation and the financial support of the Cornell French Studies Program. We also thank the Hus Art Gallery in Paris, the Department of Classics and Pauline Goul at the University of Chicago, Johannes Lehman and the Soil Factory in Ithaca, NY.
