Noor-Sharina Grondin

It all starts with a LinkedIn post. Nothing very spectacular, on the face of it. I notice some momentum building around Noor-Sharina Grondin, I read, I understand quickly, and without thinking too hard — which is often how good ideas start, or bad ones — I add her and write to her. A fairly simple message: would you like to do a residency in Martinique?

Put like that, of course, it raises questions. Someone you don’t really know, based far away, offering you a residency out of nowhere… that could look like either a wonderful opportunity or something slightly suspicious. And above all, one important detail: this offer matches exactly what she’s looking for. Coming to Martinique for her PhD research. And sometimes, when reality fits your wishes a little too neatly, you wonder whether you’re really allowed it.

So we take our time. Several video calls, conversations, adjustments. And then, at some point, she says yes.

Some time later, she’s here. In Martinique. The very day Gareth Taylor leaves. Two residents crossing paths at the airport, just long enough for a photo, almost like an improvised relay handover. It’s lovely, but it’s also a bit of a workout. Probably the kind of arrangement you go through once, then look back on with a smile, thinking: “OK, we’ve tried that.”

Very quickly, it becomes clear that this won’t be a conventional residency. No deliverable, no object to produce. Fieldwork. Noor-Sharina is a researcher working on shatta (Martinican dancehall), and me… let’s just say I’m not exactly the most qualified person to hold forth on it for hours. Which makes the situation rather interesting: I’m not there to explain it to her, but to help her meet people. Opening doors, creating the right conditions, walking alongside. And sometimes, simply being there.

We eat together, get around together, go from one meeting to the next, we talk — a lot. And without really noticing, something settles in. A kind of shared everyday life. After she gets home, she writes to tell me that we lived together. And that’s exactly it. Not a residency at arm’s length, not a string of disconnected moments, but a dense, continuous, almost total immersion.

We move through places, people, contexts. Tropiques Atrium to start getting our bearings, the university, conversations with the dean, discussions with her thesis supervisor. And above all, the field: Blicassty, Régi, PSK, Ven’L, General Shizzle, VLG Rocki. Names, but above all voices, presences, realities that give her subject flesh and blood. With each encounter, something comes into focus. And along the way, I discover a part of my own culture that, as it turns out, I knew rather little about. Which goes to show: sometimes you have to guide someone else in order to learn yourself.

At some point, we end up laughing about it. Shared references, manga, video games. And without quite knowing how, I find myself cast as the senpai. Not officially, not by my own claim, but there all the same. A role tied to the territory, to experience, to the age gap perhaps. Something simple, natural. And strangely fitting.

What this residency taught me is fairly clear. I had already understood what this tool could do for us: create, structure, pass things on. But I hadn’t yet grasped what it could do for someone else. In very concrete terms. Supporting a piece of research, smoothing the way into the field, speeding up encounters, making possible what would otherwise have taken months. Not intentions. Conditions.

The word that stays with me is perhaps this one: enlightening.

Since then, Noor-Sharina has carried on along her path. A guest on France Inter, publications, visibility. And in some way, part of that trajectory passed through here, in that slightly suspended moment when everything lined up without being entirely planned.

In the end, this residency produced nothing visible. No object, no form. But it produced something real. Connections, access, shifts. And for me, one very simple idea: sometimes, sending a slightly-too-direct message on LinkedIn is exactly the right thing to do.