Born in France in 1969, Marianne Dissard moved to Phoenix, Arizona as a teenager in 1985. She graduated from the University of Southern California Film School in Los Angeles. She then lived for for two decade in Tucson, Arizona where she recorded several albums of desert chanson. Singer & performer, author & lyricist, filmmaker & producer, and most recently photographer since the pandemic, Marianne has been living in the UK since 2017, first in Ramsgate, Kent, and now in Coatbridge, Scotland.

➔ MUSIC

From 2006 to 2017, backed by Tucson’s finest musicians, Marianne toured her baroque Sonoran noir art pop worldwide. A charismatic performer, her critically-acclaimed American chanson plays effortlessly with contradictions: ‘tender, yet abrasive; melodramatic, but vulnerable; comical and heartbreaking’, as noted by Minneapolis producer BK-One in his liner notes to her ’Cibola Gold Best Of’ album, who adds, ‘and fearless’.

In 2013, after two decades of collaboration with members of alt-Americana Tucson bands Giant Sand, Calexico, XIXA, and Orkesta Mendoza, Marianne moved back to Europe. Since then, she has collaborated with French guitarist Yan Péchin (Bashung, Miossec), Allyson Ezell, Italian composer Christian Ravaglioli, The Inspector Cluzo, UK broken folk duo Lunatraktors, and lately, English producer Raphael Mann whom she met whilst they were both living in Ramsgate, England. The two recorded new music remotely during the first two years of the pandemic, resulting in an album of covers, ‘Rappel*le’, released in 2023 and the 2024 soundtrack album ’Souvenir of England: Music from the Stage Production’.

➔ WRITING

She has written lyrics in French and English for singers including Howe Gelb, Amor Belhom Duo, Naïm Amor, and herself. Her first book, 2019 memoir 'Not Me', an impish and poetic exploration of trauma and the life of a disordered touring musician, was praised by some of Dissard's favorite authors; Mitch Cullin ('Tideland'), Chris Rush (‘The Light Years’), and Andrew Smith ('Moondust') as well as music producer John Parish. Some twenty years prior to that, she’d published a few poems in American magazines.

➔ STAGE

In 1993, Marianne met American choreographer and performer Ami Garmon in Paris. The two started collaborating, Marianne as a video and mapping artist to Ami’s visual theater works… and haven’t stopped since, from ‘Petit Intérieur, Cinq Pièces’ (1993) for Palais de Tokyo, Paris and Galeries d’Art Contemporain, Marseille, to ‘Close Your Eyes And Add A Touch of Nothing’ (2013) for Tanz Im August Berlin and more recently ‘Patience And Hunger’ (2023) at Dock11 Berlin. Marianne’s own stage productions culminated in 2022-2024 touring work ‘Souvenir of England’ that incorporates her photography, performance and singing, with music by Raphael Mann and stagings by Bastien Forestier and Remo Lotano.

➔ FILMMAKING

Marianne studied at the University of Southern California’s Film School in Los Angeles and worked for directors Gregg Araki, Jon Jost, Alex Cox, the latter possibly an influence when she directed her own rambunctious western in 2010, ‘Lonesome Cowgirls’, a performance-like Warhol remake and companion piece to her second album. She also directed and produced the 1994 Giant Sand/Howe Gelb documentary ‘Drunken Bees’; and for French TV, ‘Celtic Traveler: Dublin’ (1998) and ‘Low Y Cool’ (1997) about Tucson’s lowriding community with famed director Robert Kramer as her DP. She’s also made several music videos and oddities for herself and others.

➔ PHOTOGRAPHY

Returning to Ramsgate in the fall 2020, her touring cancelled by the pandemic, Marianne began compulsively photographing around town. This obsession eventually culminated in a solo site-specific installation in Ramsgate Port and led to solo gallery shows in Paris, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, and a book. The iconic image from that series, ‘Doris Johnson’, was exhibited at Turner Contemporary in Margate in their fall 2021 Open group show. A second street photography project, in Knightsbridge, London this time, was initiated in 2022 to provide visuals for her new theatre production, ‘Souvenir of England’. That series premiered as a street installation in August 2023 at the Ramsgate Festival of Sound. In 2024, Marianne embarked on a third series, ‘No-Road Trip USA’ made whilst traveling the United States on the Amtrak network. 

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