Real violence is not a show... (english version)

ENGLISH /// Intended performance : hypperealism or stunt…

I’m actually working for the first time on a frontal piece. After making « moving pieces » (ambulatory pieces) and continuing to practise installations and perfoming art, i wanted to “say something directly», « having an adress »... but What? could be a problem, except my specific relation with violences. In my mind, firstly, the fact of representation is an act of violence (like television, cinema, screens…), face to face. Other violences then are easy to find: auto-violence, violence of living together, mediatic violences, power and authority of violence…

If I make theater, danse or performance is not the problem... The problem is new for me and i’m beginning to work on it from one year. I have looked for, in the history of living art, if others have work on the same forms, I didn’t find but I’m sure it could exist:… so why I call that now hyperrealism?

Something coming from hyperrealism (and in an other way coming from stunt) is my new way of research: I try to write parts of real with dancers or performers. Which real could be the normal question. Here, in the case of the show I try to make produced, this is most of the time: moments of violences, (ex: couple fight in fury) trying to make an exact choreography of the reality. Without effects, without narration, making a reproduction of what could be reality extracted here, on a stage, in front of people, with instinct reflexes, clumsiness and insanity of human bodies. Will they see if this is writing?... maybe not but public could feel a subliminal understanding. I don’t know neither if I’m completely interest of the futures sensations of the public but I know I want to work about one new perception and ask what could be a perfect reproduction of selected realities. Making that with dancers, choosing specific moments like in photography or hyperrealism paintings. Opening a breach in certitude of what we see.

The video we can see on this blog is a first residence of ten days we made at La Friche la Belle de Mai in Marseille, after three months working only with one dancer Balkis Moutashar and me, trying to think and write this real sudden fight that could arrived in the beginning of a fake contemporary dance show.
We need more time to find and write each details of these figures. Furthermore we want to duplicate the continuance of the fight by an other couple in the same time, like to reveal the deception.
The self-made video shows quicker other research and experimentations about this notion of reality, like remove very short actions of real and redirect them in unison. In this way we also need a lot of time for position and precision like on tv or in computer game to play with (rwd, fwd). Video had been made for find production, it shows only intentions (light, sounds, costumes, movements are far from what I need) and directions to come in and refine the purpose of “saying something to”.

Scenography and special effects

Arden Anderson and Norma Murphy (1972), sculpture of John de Andrea

With the complexity of an hypperealist choreography, the research of an scenography have to be simple and active like another stage to build. And this is the idea: build another stage with different strats, like first white one to receive video projections from the roof, other matters for each scene and the last full of mirrors for the last scenes.



Very important in the way we work: the show is composed in about ten bits, each one completely autonomous. Soli, duos or group scenes create a secret link in this violence thought.

Nan Goldin self-portrait,Ron Mueck working on a piece, real lesion and horror movie

By the way, special effects and greasepaint need to compete with cinema or television, maybe more. For a cannibal scene and maybe crucifixion one we haven’t experimented we should have test and work very special effects to succeed in affectation and realism. That’s why I decide to collaborate with plastician artists specialised in this practice.

So you will understand this piece is for an informed public but I can say even if I’m ready to shock myself and put the eyes of the people in front of some indelible lesions they have, my experimentation of living art is maintained by continual doubts. Contextual doubts about images and informations world receives that Giorgio Agamben, one italian philosopher cleared up and accused in Profanations. From this book and other art collaborations I have began to explore weapons of politic sights and social manipulations. I’m ready now to use them. I’ve just created the company Louseinmore (or Looseinmore) for production and diffusion of this show.

robin Decourcy