Reading in Performance: Papier multiforme, Papier comestible by Emilie Gallier

This exposition gathers documentation of the performance 'Papier multiforme, Papier comestible' which is a chapter in Emilie Gallier's PhD dissertation entitled 'Reading in Performance, Lire en Spectacle' where she investigates shifts in spectatorship when the audience reads (scores, programs, books) in the real time of performance. Documentation of 'Papier multiforme, Papier comestible' emerges on the one hand from Gallier's iterative practice of making choreographic scores. On the other hand, documentation emerges from spontaneous responses to the performance by invited artists. Augusto Corrieri recorded 'Imagining an audience imagining one's self', Margarida Guia mixed sounds she gleaned from the piece, and Agnese Cornelio articulated a film with an attention given to gestures 'There is another side'.

This exposition gathers documentation of the performance Papier multiforme, Papier comestible which is a chapter in Emilie Gallier's PhD dissertation entitled Reading in Performance, Lire en Spectacle where she investigates shifts in spectatorship when the audience reads (scores, programs, books) in the real time of performance. Documentation of Papier multiforme, Papier comestible emerges on the one hand from Gallier's iterative practice of making choreographic scores. On the other hand, documentation emerges from spontaneous responses to the performance by invited artists. Augusto Corrieri recorded Imagining an audience imagining one's self, Margarida Guia mixed sounds she gleaned from the piece, and Agnese Cornelio articulated a film with an attention given to gestures There is another side.

'Papier multiforme, Papier comestible is a choreography and an installation, a failed magic trick and a picture book which you can enter into.Like in a dream, everything has to do with everything' (Fransien van der Putt in De Theaterkrant 2018).

Papier multiforme, Papier comestible gathers magic and reading in a choreography of hands and eyes. The audience is invited to step inside a giant book, to research impertinent absence and to exercise ubiquity: being elsewhere, where they are not. In a vast and dark installation, dream-like scenes appear and disappear giving to see magic, dance, contrasted and fragmented images. In this obscure landscape that stretches and bends, the audience contemplates, reads, eats books, levitates, wanders, folds, and imagines.

Papier multiforme, Papier comestible draws, among other references, on the magic object 'Trouble Wit' used by 19th century magician Felicien Trewey, and on Hand Movie by Yvonne Rainer. In a Kafkian atmosphere, black and white, with the absurdity, poetry and humour of Edward Gorey's chidren stories, Papier multiforme, papier comestible gives attention to attention.

Overall research Reading in Performance, Lire en Spectacle undertaken by Emilie Gallier

Performance Papier multiforme, Papier comestible created with Tilman Andris and Jamillah Sungkar from 2014 to 2017, and continued with Camille Gerbeau, Nina Boas and Katinka Marac since 2018.

Concept and choreography: Emilie Gallier

Composition of the magic performance: Tilman Andris and Emilie Gallier

Magic and paper object illusions: Tilman Andris

Book design and drawings by: Jamillah Sungkar

Dramaturgy: Nicola Unger

Performed by: Camille Gerbeau and Nina Boas

Light and technical support: Katinka Marac

Production: PØST Cie Emilie Gallier

Co-production: Centre for Dance Research Coventry University, DAS Research Amsterdam (THIRD), Festival Regards dansants

With the support of: Perdu (Amsterdam), Weisslich (London), Performance and Philosophy (Ljubjana edition), CLOUD (The Hague)