A conversation by Nicolas Faubert & Adam Linder, an invitation by Mona Varichon

I met Adam Linder in 2015 at ArtCenter in Los Angeles, where he taught in my MFA program. Adam was a really personable, fun and knowledgeable teacher, and one of the first artists I’d ever met who tackled the worlds of contemporary art and contemporary dance in seamless and equally successful ways.

When I met Nicolas Faubert in 2020 at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, where we were both residents, he had recently entered the world of contemporary art through the big doors of the Venice Biennale, where he’d performed for 6 months in the French Pavilion -- a real crash course in navigating this new 'Art' domain. Coming from a dance and hip-hop background, Nicolas was an avid learner and sharer of resources, always down for a heartfelt conversation and always asking deeper questions than what I’d gotten used to in the 'Art' world.

On one of our very first hangouts in my tiny live-work studio overlooking Notre-Dame de Paris, he asked me to tell him about artists he should know about, who had paved the way for the kind of ambitious career he was trying to build. The first one that came to mind was Adam Linder, who had recently won a $100.000 award at the Made in LA Biennial, and whose choreographic work was both being purchased by museums and commissioned by the world’s leading dance companies.

Little did I know that two years later, Adam would be gracing the Cité Internationale des Arts’ Montmartre location with his presence for a six months residency. I took the chance and arranged for Adam and Nico to meet for the first time in Adam’s studio, and got their permission to document this precious moment, which is what you can watch here.

Mona Varichon

Adam: How would you describe your style?

Nicolas: Well, my style is… my sensibility. My experiences, my life, my struggles, my moments of joy, of glory, my interactions with my friends… My history… My origins, my roots… All that... holds me. And all that allows me to get to… a new accomplishment every day.

Adam: Beautiful.

Nicolas: Every passing second, it’s always a culmination, every movement, every thing… Sure, I make use of various techniques, but nobody will ever combine them as I do. Because I am me. And that is my style.

Adam: That’s the best answer to that question!

Adam: It’s been really hard but I’m trying to make a work, a solo work on my own body, about freestyle. And I’m trying to write a text, to theorize and reflect on what freestyle is for me. In terms of like, the philosophy of improvisation, how I feel when I’m freestyling in the moment, what I learned from being around situations like the club, what I learned from dancing high… All that I think that contributes to how I define freestyle. And it’s called “Mothering the tongue.”

Mona: Mother in the tongue?

Adam: Mo-ther-ing

Mona: Oh, mothering!

Adam: Mothering the tongue! Because I understand that my way of moving now is a mother tongue, like what you’re saying, your style is your mother tongue. And so this text is like, how am I mothering the tongue? How is it formed? How is it mothered?

Nico: I hadn’t thought of it that way, but it’s… It really makes me think, you know.

Nico: We’re living now, we’ve met each other, we can just live. We’re being formal right now, camera on, joking around… But actually… Mona introduced us, I know she won’t introduce me to just anybody, she never introduces me to just anybody… So that means I can take you with me on a journey!