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, and thanks to the grant awarded by the Rural Humanities initiative, Derobert and Dubreuil will be conducting 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 will mostly be done with a car. Instead of seed collection, the focus will be on the germination of the symbolic and the metaphorical exploration of the land. Most of the time will be spent in rural areas, especially in New York State, Pennsylvania, and, to a lesser extent, Ontario. Several performances will be conducted, and documented, in the countryside. Deliverables will include at least one lecture-performance in Ithaca, NY at the end of the journey; as well as a photographic exhibition at Hus Art Gallery in Paris, coupled with the screening of a movie; such images and films will later be made freely available on the Cornell Humanities Lab website. Co-sponsors include the French Studies Program and the Humanities Lab (at Cornell), as well as Hus Art Gallery in Paris.
Odyssea—an American germination
