Video
Subtitles
00:00:24 00:00:27
22
00:00:30 00:00:46
I was invited to a dinner. It was about ten years ago. It was in Vienna. And I didn’t speak German yet, or just a little bit.
00:00:51 00:01:20
All the people knew each other. And at the beginning, they were translating to me. But after a while, they were just talking German. And I could hardly understand the conversations.
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But the food was good. We were drinking wine. Had fun.
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Suddenly, a guy there starts to tell a joke.
00:01:50 00:02:17
At this moment, I had two possibilities. Either I would ask a person to translate the joke to me. But then I will maybe have the embarassment to have the people witnessing me eventually faking the laugh.
00:02:17 00:02:28
Second, I could pretend I understood. I chose this one.
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So I was watching the guy in front of me and completely copying his face. And started laughing and laughing. Completely disconnected from the situation.
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Witnessing myself laughing, I was thinking that this is representing the performance. Where the physicality starts to take over. And where the situation is completely detached from the social reality.
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28
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I touch Marianne [Baillot].
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I caress her hair. Her face. Her nose. Her neck.
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I caress her skin. Her hand.
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All the parts of the body where the skin is visible.
00:04:51 00:05:20
From outside, this can be seen as a certain intimacy between two people. But by insisting on this gesture, this movement becomes artificial. Information between two bodies.
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Eventually, Alix [Eynaudi] and Agatha [Maskiewicz] are touching themselves also and start touching me.
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My body received the touch I’m giving now.
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The body becomes a landscape, a texture, an image, a close-up.
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Information is circulating inside myself, receiving a touch and giving one.
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In general, I’m interested in blurring the correlation between cause and effect.
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Trying to find situations which are not coming from my personal understanding.
00:07:23 00:08:01
While working on the Sports project, Fouad [Asfour] told me about the concept of ‘agativity’, a linguistic term. For example swimming. Swimming is less a movement of arms and legs, but much more the water which makes you swim.
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I really like this.
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I was thinking it’s a nice way for me to approach movement.
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And then…
00:08:45 00:09:24
I worked on this piece, in which I would repeat sixty times the same phrase. And each time I will change one parameter. I will constantly struggle in between keeping the flow of the phrase and applying a new task, which will change completely the movement.
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I would be interested in how the transition is perceivable. What makes the change recognisable?
00:12:33 00:12:38
A theatre play without words.
00:12:42 00:12:56
Last year, I did this piece where I would perform the whole theatre play but putting the words away.
00:12:56 00:13:16
We will be two on stage, constantly cueing each other. Having the lines, running into… inside our head. Trying to understand what the other is doing.
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Every blink of the eyes, every movement of the shoulder will indicate us… will give us information and will influence our reaction.
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The lines were the score of the play.
00:13:45 00:14:07
I guess for the viewer, the desire was to follow a certain narration. But this was never fulfilled. Even though we had to continue playing the play.
00:14:12 00:14:17
Okay. Act one. Part one.
00:17:11 00:17:17
Shaking is a nice feeling.
00:17:18 00:17:43
It’s so full of possibility of a continuous movement. I will feel the muscles, organs and skin shaking by itself.
00:17:44 00:17:56
Marina Abramovic was using shaking for the performance she did in 1972, Freeing the Body.
00:18:02 00:18:44
She was shaking, getting in trance for about six hours, before collapsing by exhaustion. I was kind of intrigued by what she meant by freeing the body. Then I decided reenact this performance. So I went into the studio, covered my head, got undressed, and started dancing for six hours.
00:18:46 00:19:29
After fifteen minutes, I realized, in order to continue, I have to find a strategy. And then I started to understand that for me, less than thinking freedom as a state, like ‘I’m free’, freedom can be seen as a construction of the body.
00:19:31 00:19:59
So I was in transit, I was changing constantly quality, and managed to keep the six hours. And I realized that each change was more and more bringing a certain connection towards the viewer.
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This is my response to Marina.
00:23:06 00:23:08
Thank you.