REACCLIMATING THE STAGE (SKENOMORPHOSES)

vincent roumagnac

REACCLIMATING THE STAGE (SKENOMORPHOSES) An Ecotonal Doctoral Piece in 40 Scènes, 15 Parergonal Writings and 5 Double-Postcards. From the perspective of mise-en-scène (staging), and correlatively that of the place and the practice of the metteur-en-scène (theatre director), this artistic research project addresses, examines and experiments on the question of the scenic/scenographic representation of a postnatural world, in climate transition, affected by global warming and moved by abstract data-flows, in a tangled web of storms, information, and algorithms. While lived and conceptual "time", no longer telically given as linear and chronological, is being anthropodecentered and, therefore, diffracted into an open plurality, the Reacclimating the Stage (Skenomorphoses) artistic research project takes the earlier notion of time as a raw material to reexamine, from an eco-scenic and research perspective, in order to transform the theatrical practice of its author and to trigger the latter’s specific contribution to artistic research milieu. By obliquely playing on one hand with memories of theatrical history of scenic internal modi operandi, architecture, and literature, and on the other hand with institutional requirements for doctoral research appearance, the project aims at repositioning the director's practice in a movement of transition of scenic thinking and imaginary through a series of artistic and research experiments, whose enactments and resonant redistribution are poetically at interpretative play in this exposition.

赤潮 Akashio/Marée Rouge/Red Tide

あかあかと aka aka to red, red,

日はつれなくも hi wa tsurenaku mo the heartless sun,

秋の風 aki no kaze yet autumn wind

Matsuo Bashō, 1689

赤潮 Akashio/Marée Rouge/Red Tide is a scenic installation consisting of four works realized in Japan and then assembled and activated together. It invites the spectators into a temporary intra-active zone that assembles different material and temporal elements in order to apprehend scenically micro and macro scales (including the yellow scales of a sea monster). Toxic deterioration of the seas, digital residues of flora and aggregates of computational data are in confluence here, in glitching resonance with tragic, peripheral leftovers of disillusioned humanist theatre on SoundCloud.

Shiori-no-ike

Video (sound/3'/loop)

Shiori-no-ike (潮入の池), literally “incoming tide”, is a tidal pond drawn from Tokyo Bay. The most prominent feature of Hamarikyu Garden, it is the only remaining seawater-fed pond in Tokyo. With the rise and fall of the tide, the sluice gate opens and shuts to regulate the water level. The pond is home to several kinds of aquatic life. The enclosing surroundings of the pond are designed according to the mise-en-scène of a traditional stroll garden, punctuated with artificial hills, trees, shrubs, seasonal flower gardens, stone lanterns, bridges, and teahouses.

Seto Naikai

Backdrops models, Direct prints on cotton 150 x 84 cm, eyelets.

The Seto Inland Sea (瀬戸内海Seto Naikai), also known as Setouchi, often shortened to Inland Sea, is the body of water separating Honshū, Shikoku and Kyū shū, three of the four main islands of Japan. The sea is famous for its periodic and toxic red tides (赤潮, akashio) caused by dense groupings of certain phytoplankton that result in the death of large numbers of fish due to the deterioration of water quality. The same kind of dramatic red tides can be observed in the Ariake Sea and Tokyo and Ise Bays. The two photographs printed on the fabric were shot in the Inland Sea, from Gotanji Beach on Naoshima Island and during a ferry crossing from Naoshima island to Inujima island.

Ochitsubaki/Deferred Landscape No. 8

Forty boxes measuring 8 x 5 cm, with direct print on paper on wooden surface, Ochitsubaki consists of close-up samples of three photographs of fallen camellias (ochitsubaki) shot on three different islands of the Inland Sea; an extraction from a digital camellia tree for sale at the price of 100 Linden ⁽¹⁾, sold online by the avatar Saphyr Roxan and owner of the store “The garden of Gaya” on Second Life marketplace; and a closeup of a satellite remote sensing data image of an intensive study of red tide events in the Ariake Sea, using MODIS Data. The five pixelated extractions are printed on hand-folded paper boxes; in order to address the possibility of a new era of syncretic digital animism, the boxes are assembled in a form that might remind one of shide, a zigzag-shaped paper streamer often attached to the gates of Japanese shrines, thereby demarking it as a sacred space, and which are also used in Shinto offerings or purifying rituals.

Phaedra, Act V, scene 6 (5 tests)

QR code.

Five tests for an ASMR⁽²⁾-like recording of an excerpt of the original French monologue of Theramenes in scene 6 of Act V of the tragedy Phaedra by Jean Racine (1657). In the scene, Theramenes, Hippolytus’s tutor and friend, describes the dreadful scene of Hippolytus’s death after a monster rose from the sea, terrifying his horses and killing him. Click the QR image to enlarge, scan it to access the link.

1. Digital currency in the game Second Life

2. For Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response

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