Compagnie Antiquarks
Diving into the heart of interterrestrial music
Share the fiery imagination of the Antiquarks company, directed by Richard Monségu
Committed artists
Passionate company
The Antiquarks musical company
Antiquarks occupies an atypical place in the French cultural and artistic landscape.
Under the direction of singer-drummer Richard Monségu, Antiquarks’ creations focus on artistic and cultural hybridization processes on stage and in the public space. Lhe multidisciplinary company responds to the question of artistic action through the mediation of participatory creations, workshops and public conversations that engage local residents and partners from associations and institutions.
Surrounded by a musical and multi-disciplinary team, the associate artists engage in demanding projects where philosophical and poetic meaning meets humor and virtuosity.
Richard Monségu, nomadic designer
Richard Monségu is driven by a strong desire to cooperate, convinced that art emancipates. A transformative singer and generous musician, this singular creator embodies the vigorous telluric spirituality of African, Arab and Caribbean drum music and dance, which he knows well. He puts his knowledge of the human sciences and his artistic know-how at the service of friendly, emotional and intellectual relationships. The solicitude he shows, the sympathetic ear he listens to and the attentive observation of cultural divides nourish his artistic commitment and guide his aesthetic inspiration.
Antiquarks has put on over 1,000 performances and artistic events in France and around the world (Mexico, Bolivia, Austria, Portugal, Italy, Hungary, Turkmenistan, Switzerland…).
The company received the ” Prix de L’Audace artistique et culturelle “, awarded jointly by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication and the French Ministry of Education. This prize rewards exemplary projects promoting access to the arts and culture for young people.
IN FIGURES
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concerts in France and around the world
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minutes of composed music
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international creations
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audiovisual productions
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events created from scratch
RICHARD MONSEGU
An artist, author and composer, singer, drummer, percussionist and artistic director of Cie Antiquarks, Richard has conducted anthropological research on musicians and the musical practices of exile. He has played and sung in cabarets, cafés, parties and weddings with Algerian, Moroccan, Guinean, Ivorian, Afghan, Gypsy and West Indian groups in France and abroad. These multiple fields of investigation lead him to engage in an understanding of the world at the service of dominated popular musical cultures.
With a D.E.A. in Social Sciences, he left the academic world to put to the test a creation in action, united and autonomous, playful and critical, stimulated by the unsubdued gaze of Pierre Bourdieu (socio-analysis, science of works), Gaston Bachelard (psychoanalysis of knowledge) and Rabelais (gaiety of spirit and laughing body).
Work areas
Richard Monségu composes fictional music, a conceptual approach to history’s missed appointments. A playful way of imagining what French music would sound like if it had encountered, studied and incorporated the musical cultures of its former colonial empire.
Antiquarks groups its artistic research under the term “interterrestrial”.
The creative process
It focuses on the rhythms, vocal phonemes and instrumental timbres of popular and learned music from the oral traditions of Black music (Africa, the West Indies, the Caribbean), the Americas (Amerindian & Afro-American music) and the Mediterranean.
Musical work
It’s close to the bold sonic explorations of rock, jazz and contemporary music: a taste for concept albums, epic or intimate music, improvisation, not forgetting the influences of extra-European traditional music and percussion in particular.
Each creation is an object of aesthetic research and an artistic challenge in the form of concerts, albums, participative creations or citizen events.
Multidisciplinary projects
The company exists thanks to the quality of its artistic, technical and administrative teams, sensitive to aesthetic cross-fertilization. Six days a month are devoted to musical experimentation, excluding specific production/creation time.