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 Hypothesis of the – Insensible – Return of a Hedgehog

or Whitehead By Heart

or Italienne à Montréal

Contextual memorization exercise activated over the course of the event Distributing the Insensible

SenseLab, Montréal

"Donc: le coeur te bat, naissance du rythme, au-delà des oppositions, du dedans et du dehors, de la représentation consciente et de l’archive abandonnée. Un coeur bas, entre les sentiers ou les autostrades, hors de ta présence, humble, près de la terre, tout bas. Réitère en murmurant: ne répète jamais..." * Jacques Derrida1

*I translate: So: your heart beats (you), the birth of rhythm, beyond oppositions, beyond the inside and the outside, the conscious representation and the abandoned archive. A heart down, between paths and autostradas, outside of your presence, humble, close to the earth, low down. Reiterate in a murmur: never repeat ...

During the opening session of the event we close-read together an excerpt of Adventures of Ideas by A.N. Whitehead, the chapter dedicated to "Non-sensuous Perception"2.

My proposal-exercise consisted of:

1. Learning Whitehead's chapter by heart, segment after segment, while isolating myself above the SenseLab studio in the University of Concordia, on the top floor, supported by the big bay windows that frame the skyline of Montreal and the variations of the winter weather.

2. Every day after I would learn a subchapter, I would return towards the event (but maybe there was no extraction from but rather a simple spacing) and ask, at random and in an impromptu way, a participant for his/her help to rehearse the freshly learned Whiteheadian lines through a short moment of assisted memorization.

3. I would take notes on the rehearsal conditions and happenings: who, time, location, and memorization mistakes. I would pay attention to the most often forgotten word, which was «essentially».

4. I would continue the cycle, moving forward with the learning by heart, from the skyline to the event, and from the event to the skyline, and so on, until knowing the full text, by heart.

5. Later on. I would forget it.

With:

Andrew Murphie (14.12 – starting 5:43 pm)

Anna Munster (15.12 – starting 4:15 pm)

Simo Kellokumpu (16.12 – starting 2:38 pm)

Lone Bertelsen (17.12 – starting 4:11 pm)

Marie Topp (18.12 – starting 9:17 pm)

Emily Jeffries (19.12 – starting 6:47 pm)

Joel Mason (20.12 – starting 11:42 am)