We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Yessine Bardaa a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Yessine thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I have learned a principle from my learning process, that i can’t delve deeply into an artistic discipline without having the minimal basics in another. For me, each field enhances the other.

I started practicing theater when I was 14 years old, and it didn’t take long for me to realize that having minimal knowledge and skills in theater requires the same in other fields like dance, visual arts, literature, philosophy, etc.

Over time, each discipline has taken its own path in my experimentation process.

I don’t claim to be well-educated or versed in any of these disciplines, and I shall remain this way indefinitely, as art is unlimited. Since I’m still in school and haven’t yet begun an academic journey, I rely on my own research, experimentation, and workshops whenever I find the opportunity.”

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I arrived at this point by choosing art as a form of therapy. My primary motivation was to find a way to exist, to connect with my environment, my people, and global issues and cases. In my artistic practice, I avoid restricting my work to any particular style or essence. I don’t even believe in rigid artistic disciplines; to me, disciplines are products of the market and ecosystem. Currently, my focus is on learning as many tools, technologies, and ‘disciplines’ as possible to adapt my work to any environment.

I do not wish to impose a pre-existing style on diverse environments. For me, ‘art’ in its various forms is merely a medium, not a goal. What makes something truly artistic is how the artist employs it within different social contexts.

So the most important skill I am working on is the artistic thinking, alongside experimentation and observation.

I don’t sell theater, nor performances, nor video art, nor photography. Instead, I learn the essential technologies within these fields and try to think what is necessarily to be created and shown right here and right now with the smallest budget.

Since art, for me, is a medium, my goal is to encourage people to think with all their senses—more precisely, to engage their sensations in thinking (whether visual thinking or emotional, etc.). I aim to connect with reality and explore alternative realities, using surreal elements to critique the real world and challenge the notion that this current reality defines realism.

The problem I am committed to solving, both now and in the future, is the inaccessibility of art for everyone. This requires a transformation of art economies and art itself.

At the moment, I am not particularly proud of my achievements. I am only 19 years old and have not accomplished much. Perhaps the thing I am most proud of is my participation in various underground and non-organized art scenes, like ‘El-Cahve,’ a collective of artists and activists in Tunisia. However, my other involvements in stage plays, movies, exhibitions, and festivals I consider as temporary learning experiences, and I do not take pride in them as they are largely confined to capital cities

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Today, the independence of art, in form, thought and distribution is impossible under the current reality. Art, as a field, is divided between two possibilities: either it becomes a private commercial sector, governed by the policies of supply and demand, accumulation and scarcity, or it becomes merely a subordinate to other sectors and external political formations, forcing it to survive within the confines of their funding and debts.
literally, i don’t see a way in which art can exist independently, and I believe it must exist in that way, or else I hesitate to even call it art. Art should not be a product for consumption, a tool for state propaganda, or mere entertainment.

The art I aspire to create is revolutionary—an art that challenges the current state of art and reality itself. If I cannot find the means to create the art I envision, I will cease to be an artist and pursue another path to establish the necessary foundations for such art to exist.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

yes, i watched videos of people starving to death, people suffering from pollution, poverty, diseases, and i saw such terrible things in real life,
and that of course changed my perspective,
i feel selfish if i tell stories out of these contexts

Contact Info:

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100076336981636&mibextid=ZbWKwL
• Other: [email protected]

Image Credits

stage-play photos by Achraf Khlif
personal photo by Bothayna Aloulou