Through us (comme espaces) passions
A performance for a three-dimensional space, filled with three performers, pieces of 18 Oz vinyl, sound, tarps, foam, pulleys and microphones.
Based on Agnès Varda’s thought, proposed in her documentary film Les Plages d’Agnès, we take up the idea of imagining and seeing a person as a landscape. In the scenic space we create, we define ourselves as spaces: macrocosms of the moment. This concept includes humans and non-humans of all textures.
Through us, corresponds to the conscious movements inviting the spectators, or witnesses, to be part of a macrocosm. This place, the moment we are commissioning, will thus be made up of spaces: a contemporary macrocosm where each entity, or microcosm, will be represented through textures. The space presented will thus be a sensitive figuration of the microcosms constructing the moment. In this work, we are aware of the privilege we have: to be able to share and inhabit this space with the textures and entities already present. It is a conscious and political act.
Passions is the overcoming, when, finally, the I (as an acting entity) dissolves to become part of a whole, the space evolves, oozes and merges. Pleasure is the driving force: it launches the bodies into experimentation. Here, touch is an intersection between textures, between the visible and the invisible. Textures dissolve to become part of a whole. The space vibrates, the bodies/textures are activated.
To open a space in three dimensions, we use links between the ceiling (the grill) and the floor. These links, like Donna J Haraway’s set of strings, attach and connect us. They induce, physically, our relationship to the other, to the object and to the space. The correlation and cohabitation of the microcosms present is through these visible and invisible links: where the weight of the other induces listening, adaptation and transformation.
Visit filmed in October 2021 by Lara Oundjian during a residency at MainLine Theatre organized by Danse-Cité.
With Nien Tzu Weng, Sebastian Kann and Basile Herrmann Philippe
Here is a non-exhaustive list of some of the macrocosms or bubbles that we would like to create and develop during these research times:
Macrocosm Donut. Made of foam and 18 oz. vinyl, the Donut is a space encompassing a void. It is full on the outside. Its edges also create a place external to itself: a horizon around which bodies wish to be and move.
In movement, the vinyl crunches against the ground or against the skin it meets. These sound vibrations bear witness to a new cosm under construction, the audience can close their eyes and let themselves be taken into a new dimension.
The Donut circulates the body and the voice of the performer within it. Its mass takes over and sparingly reveals what remains to be seen and heard.
Macrocosm B. ( Basile performer as space ). Dissociated from the creator, he evolves in the space, links and connects the different cosms. He activates and transforms the space through his movements.
Being a human on stage monopolises the audience’s attention in another way: each pause and silence is inflated with meaning. Let’s leave this narrative of gesture (cf Against interpretation) and let ourselves be carried away by the abstraction of bodies-spaces merging together, like Huguette Caland’s Bribes de corps.
Slowly, time is suspended, breaths are spaced out, the rhythm of the moment differs from the outside, that of the city which swarms beyond the walls of the place.
Stop… Zoom… His abdomen swells, he creates his own space: a place of flesh, air and liquid. The performer’s body is frozen, a freeze frame giving way to fiction.
How can I distinguish my impulses from tendencies? Is there a limit between my needs to create, to meet, to share and my desires? How can the self, lost in solitude, trust itself in the face of this?
Macrocosm N.T. ( Nien Tzu performer as space ), as a macrocosm entering a larger macro-world. I am in balance between the density and intensity of my inner self and the outer materials. I perceive a transparent world made of various materials, forms. They, bouncing with gravity, like waves, echoing each other, negotiating spaces, creating shapes. I train my inner particles to be nothing, and let nothingness move, a constant transformation of energy, transmitting a dialogue to other macrocosms.
Each time another/each entity touches or enters, I let it pass through my seven senses, and my body follows its course to manifest. In doing so, I and the non-thing, travelling through the in-between landscape of discovery, become identical, a presence made of all the others.