Salomé Mercier
writer and translator
About
Salomé is a London-based writer and translator, currently studying at the Royal College of Art. She mostly writes about contemporary art and language, using hybrid formats (curatorial texts shaped like emails, essays that read like a diary, academic thesis in the form of letters, anything but third-person biographies).Her latest project, 'Our Strange House', is a creative non-fiction research piece about the architecture of art schools and the importance of space theory in education. It is not published yet, but previews are available on demand.She works as a freelance translator (French to English and English to French) for art institutions, publications and anyone who asks, really.
Contact
I spend a concerning amount of time checking my emails and would love to hear from you, so please do get in touch at
[email protected]
+33 7 82 25 70 41 (France)
+44 7516 814387 (United Kingdom)
2024
'There should be new rules next week' - On art education and the spaces we've lost
For Descover, out in Autumn 2024
2023
If there was no word for blue
2021
RESEARCH
Current research projects include:The Common College of Art, a parasitic, student-led, experimental art school that has been taking root inside the walls of the Royal College of Art, in London. The CCA is a project co-directed with artist, researcher and designer Ujwal Mantha, currently taking the shape of a series of workshops in and out of art school, playing with what really makes an art school and experimenting with ways to make it more open, accessible and horizontal.Our Strange House, the travel diary of a journey between three art schools, three countries. Our Strange House is (allegedly) about the architecture of art schools but really is about using art education as a tool for collective survival, and about a longing for spaces that give you a sense of belonging. It is for now taking the form of a 12.000 words manuscript that has yet to find its place (maybe on the digital shelves of the CCA's library).The CCA and Our Strange House have both been built on a tall and somewhat precarious pile of borrowed books, some of them named here:
Boris Charmatz, Je suis une école
Sam Thorne, School: A recent history of self-organised art education
Beatriz Colomina, Radical Pedagogies
bell hooks, Teaching to transgress
Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts
Steven Henry Madoff, Art School: Propositions for the 21st Century