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.

The Visit

Videoscenic installation (video loop 80’ / no sound)
Theatre Academy – Helsinki
In collaboration with Hanna Ahti

"For the framework of my doctoral artistic research on scenic thinking and time ecology at the Performing Arts Research Centre (Tutke – Uniarts Helsinki), I developed together with Finnish performer/mover/dancer Hanna Ahti a two-year collaboration on performing (and) time. When Hanna visited me the first time, it was winter. She was more than seven months pregnant. She spent several hours, almost four I guess, in the sports hall of the Theatre Academy, lying on a blue gym-mat, moving extremely slowly, also sleeping (she told me this later). I visited her for a few minutes and photo-documented the situation. Even though being one of the most hired performers of the contemporary dance scene in Finland, Hanna never went through its dance academy. For her second visit, I booked another dance studio in the school, the baby had been born few weeks before and Hanna was very tired, she spent hours again in the studio, recovering, sitting, leaning on the wall, sleeping again (she told me this later). Again I visited her for a few minutes and took a few pictures. No talk. The third time, when I came and visit her in the studio (another different one) she was standing and rocking her newborn daughter in her arms, very slowly, very carefully; it seemed to me that she had been doing this for a long time, so that the baby would fall asleep after being fed. I photographed them and left. Altogether Hanna visited me eight times. Sometimes alone, sometimes with her baby, one time with the baby and the older daughter. Eight visits thus, four times a year for two years, one visit per season. Each time in a different dance studio, each time for four to five hours. At each visit, we hugged and said “Salut” (Hanna speaks French), spoke very little, smiled, and we never said goodbye, until we would meet for the next visit. I asked Hanna to take notes if needed if she would feel like it. I just asked her to take time. I paid attention that every time she came, she had with her the same book, Deleuze’s A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Did she read it during the successive visits? I never asked. I guess she did. Later, I have selected eight images of the whole process. One per visit. I never read Hanna’s notes. For now, I am not going to write more than this about this. Maybe later. Not sure though."
The installation The Visit consists of the projection of the 80' video in a loop, on the light grey Linoleum flooring of one of the dance studios (studio 523/ballet) the performer visited during the project. The video consists of eight chosen images - one per visit - transformed into a volume, appearing and disappearing on a light grey background, one after the other, over ten-minute long fades in and out. The 45° projection produces an intended anamorphic distortion of the film. The projection on the dance mat also reveals multiple traces made by the student dancers of the academy over the years.

The project is supported by the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation

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