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00:07:55 00:08:21

There was always that moment when this panning chest would steer me towards the front and I would put myself in a parallel image, parallel to the audience, looking out.

00:08:22 00:08:35

I look at you, but I don’t see you, I don’t think I know who you are, but somehow I need your gaze upon me. And…

00:08:35 00:09:06

Even if you are not here, you are my representatives, you are what… my representatives for that gaze that renders me object. At least that’s how I used to see it for a long time.

00:09:08 00:09:17

But six months ago I found myself in this position, just slightly too close, with my eyes closed.

00:09:19 00:09:47

I have to say, I don’t want you anymore as those representatives of that world, that collective gaze on to me, but how can I allow you to just look at me? Or rather, how can your gaze penetrate my body or look into me?

00:09:48 00:10:24

But at the same time it feels like more a moment of wanting to be slightly in front of the landscape. And something like wanting to be more than some performative rest or some ephemeral rest and something like saying ‘What can you really see?’ or ‘am I really here?’ and…

00:13:00 00:13:40

Somehow my choreographic years seem to divide into the horizontal and the vertical ones. There was a time when I was only obsessed with the vertical, upright image, the erect, civil body of society in relationship to the built architecture around us. No more horizontal object body, victim object, matter body, but just trying to be a supersubject.

00:13:41 00:14:03

It went as far as that I would never want to be in any kind of parallel affinity to the perpendicularity of the world. But somehow always radically other.

00:14:03 00:14:19

Something about remaining you and me. Something about our being swallowed up by the uprightness of this world.

00:14:19 00:15:02

And in that sense, there was only walking forward for many years. This steering chest projecting forward, drawing line after line, lines to different islands of seemingly meaningful moments. Places piling up, to create a network of meaning.

00:17:06 00:17:37

Until one day I found myself finally in this turning motion. And it was exactly about, this was in 2004, about this sense of reversed spatialisation. It felt like space was suddenly scooped inside of me.

00:17:37 00:18:05

Because when you, when you run around, drawing lines and you, wherever you are, try to be particularly specific - which nowadays is not my strength - but then, however, I often went to other places and felt that this kinespheric action space was just always the same and the baggage that comes with it.

00:18:05 00:18:35

And when I found myself in that twisting spine, that steering chest would finally turn more or less around itself and squash those airfilled lungs and organs. Not only did I have a sense of internal space, but also like… if that action space was suddenly inside of me.

00:18:35 00:18:59

Or the other way around, paradoxically, and maybe a little bit more beautiful, I felt like my eyes could stay on the horizon and the whole world became my kinesphere.

00:22:13 00:22:22

2001 - on all fours.

00:24:27 00:24:36

2010

00:26:14 00:26:26

Continuous motion that tries to arrive at the pause, before the still.

00:26:26 00:26:28

Change.

00:26:34 00:26:50

Sense of preview. Although you need through…

00:26:50 00:26:58

Change. Change. Change.

00:27:24 00:27:49

Trying to break your organic rhythm by holding longer than… Something about gravity, on all fours, allowing you to find those places of rest, which then you…

00:28:20 00:28:45

The gesture, or my gesture. Around 2003, 2004, or even earlier, or somehow ever since, this idea of the gesture has been there.

00:28:45 00:29:18

And I used to differentiate between small hand gestures, uttering, hands crossing, looking away, trying to be, trying to not be a sign or a sense of a mute sign, but rather this uttering gesture, which eventually would always go above shoulder level and…

00:29:18 00:29:27

The gesture, I don’t know, Martin Nachbar said something about it last night, falling between language and movement, I think, if I remember correctly.

00:29:27 00:29:45

For me the gesture doesn’t say anything. It doesn’t mean anything. It only is a way of…

00:29:45 00:29:57

In my understanding, the gesture needs a sense of internal movement. So, the ‘in’ is there as much as the ‘out’.

00:29:57 00:30:25

And maybe more importantly, for me, or most importantly, the gesture, as much as it maybe will always take place within this kinesphere, it touches that kinespheric boundary and for me will always mean that which is beyond.

00:32:21 00:32:47

It’s all a bit like a big story. One day, those singed fingers, those hands that would sit on top of those gestures without any function, would actually, finally reach out and touch that kinespheric boundary and… This is probably one of my favourite movements.

00:32:47 00:33:01

Something about touching that boundary, knowing that where I end and where the world begins and that… you can never get there.

00:33:01 00:33:36

I put myself next to David [Subal] and I raise that straight arm, putting that measuring arm behind, between us and touching his right shoulder. I’m sliding in front of him and the left back hand of… the back of my left hand was sliding across his chest, down his right arm and into his right hand. Then I took it away.

00:33:38 00:33:45

I grabbed his upper arm, turned him around and threw him against the wall, dragged him along.

00:33:54 00:34:06

I think for most of my time, this is my timing, choreography, this has been my interest to see how can I do something about a subject and subject relationship?

00:34:06 00:34:30

How can I go from those gestures into a form of touch, a touch that has something to do about that other person, without necessarily representing a sensorial landscape or, to put it bluntly, sort of, some form of characterful representational characters?

00:34:30 00:34:44

So in 2004, the only possibility for me was to feel that intersubjective problem, that gap, that measuring arm. Where I ended, David began.

00:34:48 00:35:08

For me the strange moment was that when my left hand was actually in his right hand and I took it away, there was this… and then I grabbed him and turned him around, so, rendered him object, yet again, got interactions.

00:35:38 00:35:41

Between the two…

00:36:15 00:36:40

And somehow these lines, these extended arms have not yet left my practice. It’s something about those extended arms, those lines drawn, wanting to hold them up.

00:36:44 00:37:05

Lately, I feel that it’s not so easy for me anymore to differentiate between subjects and object. And I feel much more, like, some form of subjective object.

00:37:05 00:37:17

It’s something about…

00:37:17 00:38:05

Something about those tracks that I’ve walked, or something about those lines being already incorporated. Like I don’t feel anymore I need to run around that much, something about that spatial map always already being represented by those coordinates. It’s for me not so much a still but, rather…

00:38:05 00:38:44

… that body taking place. Even if I would say that I don’t feel so much anymore like I’m just this one body and could say that I feel more, I do feel I am those bodies. I am bodies. Maybe not literally that I feel systemically that generations are passing through me but…

00:38:44 00:39:15

It’s less about some form of transcendence but maybe an idea of real virtuality. Always already taking place. Always already accepting those boundaries touched, being in the landscape.

00:39:15 00:40:08

And then, within there, I like to do that little modernist game. Like if to say, you don’t really think it’s just a circle, you don’t really think I’m just doing a circle. Like if I want that circle to say: you don’t really think it’s just lines. Touching, going from those lines that… going from those lines to nearly shapes, pretense, pure form.

00:40:08 00:40:20

I am that line. I am that shape. And I am those bodies, that situation.

00:40:21 00:40:45

I am an old man, standing on top of the hill. I’m an old man, standing on top of the bridge, looking down at the water. He’s very old.

00:40:45 00:41:09

An old man sitting on the parc bench, watching children play. He’s very old. He’s been through the floods and he’s been through the famine.

00:41:09 00:41:23

He had his first kiss on his cheek and the desire in his stomach. But desire doesn’t mean anything to him anymore. He’s too old for this.

00:41:23 00:41:38

I’m too old for this. Philipp is too old for this and Rémy [Héritier] is too old for this and An [Kaler] is very, very old.

00:43:37 00:43:39

Thank you for listening.