Saâdane Afif practices the quote: "I belong to a generation of artists who {...} discuss art as a form of language, with which you play upon, you deform, you transform, without focusing on the object as it was before." Such strategies of re-appropriation insert themselves inside a context of idea circulation, as a form of remixing and remaking. In the work "Pirates Who's Who," tactics of assemblage are recognizable on all levels. The artist makes use of an eccentric shelf by designer Ron Arad, displaying dripping paint on the wall while the shelf itself holds a collection of books on piracy, compiled together by the owner of the work. "Power chords" (2005), perhaps the most ambitious project by the artist to date, is both a work for publication and several exhibitions. The installation depicts automatic electric guitars, playing scores orchestrated by a computer program. The chords are defined by color sequences derived from André Cadere's wooden segments. Yet with Afif's displacement, the artist hints to the color and rhythmic sound dimensions vis-à-vis Cadere, inside a genre of synesthesia. In an age of numerical technology, Cadere's rhythmic system echoes in a particular manner together with the processes of digitization. Afif suggests a principle of encoding the world underlying the real, or rhythmic language before the Tower of Babel.
Saâdane Afif was born in 1970 in Vendome, France. He lives and works in Paris and Berlin.