CAC Brétigny

Developing a theater practice at the intersection of a number of different domains (between philosophy and political activism; conference, performance, conversational piece and sound installation) over several years now, Camille Louis will talk about her work, and in particular about the collective called kom.post (which she co-created with Laurie Bellanca) and her focus on the viewer-contributor. Taking off from the realization that many so-called “participatory” pieces often tend to assign a “role” identified with specific functions and capacities, Gourbe prefers to follow a line of de-identification and recomposition of subjectivities and common identities by means of distinct practices which, once put together, constitute the “artistic experience.” We call “experience” what is composed at the crossroads of heterogeneous entities (Spinoza, Deleuze), woven across the articulation between seeing, acting while seeing and seeing while acting. Does experimental dramaturgy then consist in establishing spaces at the crossroads between artistic proposal and reception that propose a different perception of what we call action? Etymologically, the word drama ultimately goes back to the Greet verb dran, to do or act while ergon means “work.” Can the drama-turgy created during times of so-called “crisis of action” and “end of politics” find in experimental devices the possibility to revive what continues to enact and inscribe political re-compositions inside and among us, starting from the redistribution of capacities and functions?

Delving into these questions means delving into a conversation and delving into what we mean by conversation. Neither dialogue, dispute or shared discourse, conversations proceed by reversing (meaning of conversare). They overturn the distribution of bodies in order to assign, through the sharing of voices, a “corporeality” (the name of one of the kom.post projects) to what is constructed in the “in-between” space of an exchange and experience. We shall discuss all this, also through the collaboration between the lecturer and the students and audience.

Born in 1984, Camille Louis is an artist-playwright, co-creator of the international collective kom.post (composed of researchers, artists, and activists), and a doctor of philosophy who teaches at the universities of Paris 7 and Paris 8. Her research explores the meeting points between art and politics and takes shape through various dramaturgical pieces that always aim to change the conditions of perception of what we call “action” (drama). This need is expressed through the numerous articles and essays that she published, mostly in France, as well as through the performative conferences she gave in many universities and international festivals, and through the various artistic dispositives presented in several prestigious festivals worldwide. Her works have been presented at the Avignon festival, the TanzImAugust in Berlin, the Moscow Biennale, the MIR festival in Athens, Idance in Istambul, the International festival of Buenos Aires and, in 2017, at the festival Experimenta Sur in Bogotá. For the season 2016-2017, she was the associate playwright of the Maison du spectacle vivant La Bellone in Brussels. She lives and works between Brussels, Athens and Colombia.

Co-creation practice modes: orality (seminar)

Organized by Marie Preston and Céline Poulin with the participation of Stéphanie Airaud, this seminar follows the one held last year at Villa Vassilieff. This semester, in view of the two research days scheduled for 21 January at MAC VAL and 4 February at CAC Brétigny, we shall focus on collaborative or co-creative practices that use the dialogical form either in its performative dimension or toward cooperation and the weaving of intersubjective relations.

The dialogue (whether triggered by an activity or not) is understood as a means to initiate a relationship and to elaborate a carefully designed common itinerary, where vocalized language is initially used for its communicative function. Besides the speaker/recipient relationship, we will also consider how each individual going toward the Other perceives the voices that resonate inside him/her. Cooperative creation gives a perceptible form to a state in which we all must juggle with this inner multiplicity. Language, however, is no guarantee that the communication will be flawless. Artists, collectives and people involved in these processes know that the places where we stop lead us to unprecedented encounters where words and gestures must be invented anew. Finally, on the subject of art as experience, we shall examine how oral narratives continue to offer an alternative to the information provided by the media, in the wake of Walter Benjamin’s essay The Storyteller.