Part Two
Speech and What Archive is A Constructed World, Étienne Bernard, Marie Gautier, Anna Hess, Clémence de Montgolfier, Guillaume Pavageau, Sébastien Pluot, Matthew Rana, Fabrice Reymond, Michele Robecchi, Yann Sérandour and Fabien Vallos SWA acknowledge the generous support of Vision Forum, Linköping University, Sweden With the support of the Fondation nationale des arts graphiques et plastiques Projet réalisé avec le concours de la Direction régionale des affaires culturelles d'Ile-de-France - aide individuelle à la création 2012 Editing and graphic design: SWA Original photographs: SWA and Emma Crayssac Published by A Constructed World Paris, November 2012 Printed in an edition of 300
Thanks to Michele Robecchi, Elsa Philippe, Quentin Lannes, Vivian Rehberg, Katerina Andreou, Camille Beauplan, Alexis Cauville, Emma Crayssac, La Ferme du Buisson; Julie Pellegrin and Emilie Renard, Musée de l'Objet; Alain Goulesque and Stéphanie Boisgibault, Cneai Paris; Sylvie Boulanger, Le Café Pompier and EBABX-École supérieure d'art de Bordeaux, Gregory Lang and Solang Production Paris Brussels
English is the language of use in this publication, for most contributors it is their second or third language.
Speech Brought Back 1 Pornography, the Theory: What Utilitarianism did to Action, Frances Ferguson, University of Chicago Press, 2004, p73. 2 Similar in Maoridom in New Zealand, ‘Because Maori is an oral language, you are expected to listen’...‘that is the role in the conversation. If it's your turn to speak they'll listen to you. If you miss something that they say, that's your problem. Don't interrupt to ask them to repeat themselves.’ Eels, James Prosek, Harper Collins, New York, 2010, p60. 3 ibid, Frances Ferguson, p54. How can we make an account of what we-alreadyknow and what we have-already-said? We look for, as Frances Ferguson says, ‘the aesthetic appreciation of what was never made to be appreciated’1. As we mentioned in the first Speech and What Archive newspaper, Ferguson makes a distinction between affect (the production of further responses and consequences) and effect (the manifestation of the visible consequences of what one has already done). Even though we are in daily occurrences with things, and acts and processes that we name quotidian, when we see them in the context of speech, or perhaps more so, public discourse, we can be shocked or more deeply offended to see what we are already well acquainted with! What is embedded in language ‘speaks us’, yet it can be difficult to say again what was just said one moment before.
to remember what you want-to-say over questioning and clarification. We work in an economy of desire where you-can-say-what-you-want. Jacques Lacan says ‘desire is always desire of the other’, which is duly noted, so we look for something that is more pleasurable or pertinent to say than another. In a fragmented world we look to find a way to share our individuated speech. To table that speech not as singular but as evidence of a co-joined space. ‘A group seems most completely a group when the individuals in it share a maximal number of beliefs…there is less psychologically immediate account of groups that specifically minimise the place of common belief’3. What is the address we are making? From who to who? What to what? Where are the conduits and lines that attach one locution, pattern or feeling or knowledge to another?
So in October 2011 the SWA group met together for one whole day in Paris to write down (together) what we had already thought and said. We gathered not to create something, not even transform, but to bring speech back. How did we do it?
Academic discourses, locutions and critiques usually focus on what is missing, ‘there’s nothing there’, ‘you’re not saying anything’, ‘you’ve left something out’, ‘you forgot to mention…’, ‘do you not know who… is?’ The hardest thing in this economy is to say what you dislike (that which criticism does easily), we keep returning to ‘you can’t say that’, protecting those inside and outside the group. Can we enlarge the discourse to re-view any locution, to find its free utterance amongst other sayings?
We look at what-we-want as a case, there is no demand to make sense, do good, achieve, but more like the analysand on the couch, to say and discover what-we-know. Maybe there is nothing, maybe we don’t know much, don’t know anything. We consider what we want to say withoutknowing. Impulsive speech. We eschew rigor and interrogation in favour of listening. Listening is radical in that we don’t often have time for it, especially informally. There may be more there than what we had imagined or accounted for. ‘I speak then you speak’, ‘You listen to me then I’ll listen to you’2, favours trying
So the text speaks you, the group speaks you, for the philosopher everything consensual is suspicious, yet somehow it’s more fun more immediate being together talking and writing. Thomas Hobbes declared we are all selfish and concerned only with our own self-preservation. Self-interest rules his state of nature, security is impossible for anyone and fear permeates every aspect of life.
Yet once we let go of our individual status in this group everyone was in fact able to say more and write more promptly. As a group we were in search of what Fabien Vallos calls ‘satisfaction without delay’. No one was killed, overwhelmed even fucked, as far as we know. So Nietzsche’s idea of a work of art without the artist becomes here writing without the writer and leads us to Agamben’s general rule, ‘we must protect the work against the author’. Group therapy is usually seen as a pejorative, a force that simplifies what-wewant-to–say even if it sounds deep. We instinctively avoid archetypes. To borrow from Fabien, ‘making a (workshop) is first an experience of alterity. It makes no sense otherwise’. In our group some people know a lot more than others, some attach themselves to the craft of writing, others see themselves decidedly outside easy expression. Yet throughout the workshop, in desire’s economy, wanting to say something and saying something impulsively ruled over all else. Comment pouvons-nous rendre compte de ce que nous savons déjà et de ce que nous avons déjà dit? Nous sommes à la recherche, comme Frances Ferguson l’a dit auparavant, de « l’appréciation esthétique de ce qui n’a jamais été fait pour être apprécié ». Comme nous l’avons mentionné dans le premier numéro de Speech and What Archive Newspaper, Ferguson différencie l’affect (la production de réponses et de conséquences supplémentaires) et l’effet (la manifestation visible des conséquences de ce que l’on a déjà fait). Bien que nous soyons situés dans un rapport journalier aux choses, aux actes et aux processus que nous nommons « quotidien », quand nous voyons ces actes dans un contexte de speech, c’est-à-dire plus spécialement dans le contexte du discours public, nous pouvons être choqués ou offensés
davantage d’entendre ce qui nous est pourtant déjà familier ! Ce qui est déjà implanté dans le langage «nous parle» et parle de nous, et pourtant il peut être difficile de réitérer ce qui vient d’être dit. En octobre 2011, le groupe SWA s’est rassemblé à Paris pour écrire ensemble ce que nous avons déjà pensé et ce que nous avons déjà dit. Nous ne voulions pas créer quelque chose de nouveau, ni même transformer quelque chose, mais nous voulions faire revenir le discours.
Floating Conversation
Avant-Spectacle, Micro Medicine Show La Ferme du Buisson, Noisiel, 16 juillet 2011
The Floating Conversation was first an attempt to communicate to the audience what we were trying to do and why we were here. It is also meant to receive messages from people involved in the group, as well as from the audience. I think it serves both as a receptacle and as a text which is re-written everytime, to be transmitted and to change again. I think we are more trying to establish a common ground than to transmit a specific knowledge. It is supposed to function as a trace of things that have been said and that can be used again. |
Il n’est peut-être pas très important de définir ce qu’est une Floating Conversation. Ce que c’est est moins important que ce que cela produit. Une présentation presque formelle, plastique, matérielle du contenu des langages. Il est alors possible de dire que cette expérience n’est pas autre que celle de la parole ou de l’énonciation. Ce qui fait image dans le langage est l’intention que quelque chose puisse éventuellement advenir à un sens. Ou à un non-sens. Ou à une non-communication. Une Floating Conversation est l’expérience matérielle des langages et de leur ambiguité. L’expérience de la nausea latine, l’expérience du noise anglosaxon, l’expérience de la rumeur et du bruissement: le bruissement de la langue, l’herméneutique matérielle. L’ivresse d’une odyssée. |
The Floating Conversation is a text/lecture/performance that attempts a spatio-temporal communication. The audience is in fact asked to listen (in that they are being told something) to receive messages (telepathically) and to suspend disbelief. They are taken, in effect, on a long travel of waiting to receive something unknown, listen to long distance calls, and to expect and tolerate an enduring piece. |
The Floating Conversation has something related with the Internet, the idea of an international network. It makes things that are not supposed to meet themselves existing in the same place at the same moment. It makes as valuable considered true knowledge and myths and legends. It makes someone talking on the phone seated on his sofa a performer in another country at another moment of the day. It makes everyone able to talk about anything. |
What strikes me now about the Floating Conversation on telepathy is that while something may or may not exist, regardless of its existence as a phenomenon, the idea had its own agency which was separate from its verifiable reality or the intention behind it. What was being negotiated in the conversation was telepathic effects: on science, on language, on the audience, iPhones, digital networks, satellites etc. In this sense, telepathy is just as reality-producing an idea as an actual phenomenon. It has consequences whether telepathy exits or not. |
I have been listening to the two Floating Conversations in a kind of telepathical state. I was, each time, curious to understand and know what Geoff Lowe and Clémence de Montgolfier were talking about, but I wanted to keep my mind open to any telepathic messages from Sean Peoples and Veronica Kent or the audience. I just remember that I understood this day a lot of things about SWA. | The Floating Conversation is a text, a performance, a conversation that introduces some kind of knowledge, something factual, knowledge that has some kind of research behind it, but also something unknown... such as telepathy. It attempts to bring in things from other places... like the telepathic message... maybe they’re metaphorical spaces. It has its element of lecture, something that’s been studied or read, the Chinese characters, for example, we ask people if they understand what they are. |
Avant-Spectacle, Micro Medicine Show La Ferme du Buisson, Noisiel, 16 juillet 2011
Pharmakon Geoff Lowe parle de ma communication lors de la performance à la Ferme du Buisson. Ce qu’il en relève c’est une double articulation autour d’un concept (le pharmakon en grec) et une non-compréhension due à une trop grande difficulté du langage. Cependant, il semble en ressortir que cette communication, en produisant une trop grande complexité fondée sur une érudition (ou un semblant d’érudition), devienne drôle. Il faut alors penser que la « drôlerie », plus ou moins volontaire de la communication, repose sur une noncompréhension, ou plus exactement sur une saturation du sens et de l’interprétation. Il semblerait que le public ait pu comprendre mais qu’il soit incapable de dire ce qu’il a compris. Il y aurait une «intraduisibilité» de la complexité et de la sursémiotisation. Je crois que ce qui est fondamental est de saisir que la complexité est d’une part, une posture éthique – non-idéologisation du discours et non-symbolisation du sens – et d’autre part, une expérience plastique de la saturation. La saturation est l’expérience de l’inéchangeabilité. |
made it more understandable. Also, having the drink gave to the discourse a materiality. So, in the same way as the rest of the event, you understand or you keep something from what you have seen or heard, but the idea of giving an existence to what you understood is not the point. |
It is difficult to resay what you have understood. | I introduced Fabien Vallos's performance and Quentin Lannes translated. Fabien came to the table and spoke. I was a little distracted with my role of preparing the way for the next part, then I sat down. Fabien sat at a small table on a sea of notes and papers, he looked like he was floating. There was a sense that he wanted to convey something and he was doing this quite directly without delay. At the time I thought it was in fact quite performative, he had one or two books in front of him, that he held up at one point or another. Being drunk puts us in the same place. | Fabien introduces a new layer in knowledge in offering people to drink what he is talking about. These drinks are like skill pills in science fiction, it doesn’t matter anymore if you don’t know or if you don’t understand his complicated discourse because it gives you the feeling of absorbing the knowledge. | It is an intellectual discourse which arrives in the middle of non intellectual actions, where it’s about doing something together without understanding what we are doing. You feel open to receive something even if it is too difficult to explain it after. And the fact that Fabien made references to the precedent actions helped to make links and
Pharmakon means ‘the same as’. Talking about Derrida and Heidegger in a big lazy crowd. He kept returning to low culture references. No one knew what he was saying. Esther Lowe couldn’t hear the audio. No one can tell what Fabien was saying. What we could tell is that it was was erudite and funny, that it was a philosophical talk. It was a masterpiece of not-knowing and not understanding. It was never clear what was communicated, but its form was in fact very precise. |
My understanding of pharmakon comes from the phrase ‘that which cures us makes us ill’ or perhaps, ‘that which makes us ill, cures us.’ I’m not sure exactly where I’ve derived this from... perhaps the Vespetro text in the SWA first newspaper. Nonetheless, this notion of pharmakon appears to be something that is ambivalent and uncertain, something capable of being in contradiction, opposition or tension, not necessarily with itself, but with its effects. As we work together and always speak easily, I started to accept the idea of not-understanding sometimes. It is maybe not important to understand everything. And even listening to a lecture in his own language could be the same. It is maybe not a big deal if you don’t understand everything. | Ce n’est peut-être pas grave de ne comprendre que des bribes, tant que ces bribes font réfléchir. C’est plus se laisser aller en écoutant des idées arriver comme des vagues, et laisser son esprit rebondir sur certaines et en abandonner d’autres. | What I understood of what Fabien was talking about during his lecture was about how being drunk, both physically and metaphorically, makes you more aware of the present time, and the being-together-now. Maybe people didn’t listen to the whole thing but only fragments, because other things were going on in the same time, like offering alcohol. Offering alcohol was both generous and funny, and gave the impression of hosting the audience. He spoke as if he was in a state of emergency and urge to be able to say everything he wanted to say – in the little time that was available. |
No sai en qual hora-m fui natz, No soi alegres ni iratz, No soi estranhs ni soi privatz, Ni no-n puesc au, Qu’enaisi fui de nueitz fadatz Sobr’un pueg au.
I don’t know at which time I was born, I am neither happy nor sad, I am neither a stranger nor a native, nor can I do anything, because I was so bewitched one night on a high hill.
No sai cora-m fui endormitz, Ni cora-m veill, s’om no m’o ditz! Per pauc no m’es lo cor partitz D’un dol corau, E no m’o pretz una fromitz, Per saint Marsau!
I don’t know when I’m asleep, nor when I am awake, unless I am told! I almost had my heart broken by a deep pain, and I don’t care at all, by St. Martial!
Malautz soi e cremi morir, E re no sai mas quan n’aug dir. Metge querrai al mieu albir, E no-m sai cau: Bos metges er si-m pot guerir, Mas non, si-m mau. Amigu’ ai ieu, non sai qui s’es, C’anc no la vi, si m’aiut fes, Ni-m fes que-m plassa ni que-m pes, Ni no m’en cau C’anc non ac Norman ni Franses Dins mon ostau. Anc non la vi et am la fort, Anc no-n aic dreit ni no-m fes tort; Quan no la vei, be m’en deport, No-m prez un jau, Qu’ie-n sai gensor e belazor, E que mai vau.
Nothing
I’ll write a verse about nothing at all, it isn’t about me or about anybody else, it isn’t about love nor about youth, nor about anything else, because, in the first place, it was conceived while sleeping on a horse.
Fait ai lo vers, no sai de cui, Et trametrai lo a celui Que lo-m trameta per autrui, Enves Peitau, Que-m tramezes del sieu estui La contraclau.
In the 16th century in Italy, Castiglione wrote a book about the concept of sprezzatura: the effortlessness of living. In Yann Sérandour’s performance, he is still living but without effort, without the difficulties of making art, being there etc., but simply the elegance of life. The historical understanding of the European avant-garde suggests the merger of art and life by bringing art into life, making an artful life. This somehow takes the art out of life, life simply remains without artifice. | Initially Nothing brings up a question of how to be part of a group without having any obligations, without having to participate or do anything. But the performance is changing, (whereas before he was performing...) now Nothing is indistinguishable from anything else he does, the way he spends his time with his children, Julie, with his friends and with the audience – everyone at the exhibition. | Yann Sérandour’s Nothing piece was each time signified by his physical presence and his costume among the group. He seemed to insert himself in the context, by wearing clothes related to what we were doing, or making links inside the group. How is this action embeded in his own work as an artist? He inserts himself first within the group, and by that also within the exhibition format. How can this piece be perceived by people outside the
I am sick and I’m afraid to die, but I don’t know more than I hear around. I’ll call for a doctor as I feel, but I don’t know which one: he is a good doctor if he can heal me, he isn’t if I get worse.
group? It might be invisible. Yet, to do nothing as an artwork is passive on the level of action, but it is the opposite of being absent. Also, repeating the act of doing nothing, identified as such, gives it a materiality and a use value. | To do nothing is a political action. Something has shifted more recently in the way people represent themselves and what they have done. Now testimonies reflect what one does and what one has to do. | In a sense Yann pretends to do nothing, or, he prepares quite a lot to do nothing. He has grown his hair over the past two years, he has taken the time to find the right clothing to wear while doing nothing. So in a sense he uses costume to be able to do nothing. | Quite clearly there is a certain amount of activity involved in his action to do nothing – his being passive in front of the audience. |
Yann wasn’t doing anything but was acting as though he was doing nothing. He was always doing something in relation to what was happening, the way he dressed; he was actively doing nothing. Counter productivity which is always signified, I have a mistress, and I don’t know who she is, perceivable for us but not for those who don’t because I never saw her, by my troth, know that he is there to do nothing. In Rotterdam nor did she do anything I’d like or dislike, he didn’t do anything, but in Blois he had the skenor do I care since leton costume on, which wasn’t really nothing. I never had either a Norman or a Frenchman It was almost a joke, because he wasn’t aware of in my house. what he was supposed to do. It was a suggestion to do nothing. Jacqui Riva bought Yann a comb I never saw her and I love her much, for his hair... He wears a skeleton costume, a very I never had meed, nor did she ever wrong me; expensive one by a fashion designer. In the Blois when I don’t see her, I do rather well, performance he was speaking to people, so he was I don’t care, just ‘normal'. It’s impossible to do nothing. Yann because I know a kinder and prettier one has made an artifact of the fact that he wanted who is worth more. to do nothing. The problem of choosing not to do something... | I have written the verse, I don’t know about whom, and I’ll convey it to the one Yann was doing the same thing that everyone else who’ll convey it to someone else in the audience was doing, which was living his life, towards Poitiers, it was an elegant solution... The only way it can since I would like, of that etui, become n othing is because it’s already been desto have the second key. cribed as ‘something’. The fact that it becomes something only happens through the exhibition. | Yann’s decision to do nothing creates problems between notions of activity and passivity, and the decision to show what doing nothing is... which is what most people do already. |
Speech Objects, Musée de l’0bjet Blois, 26 mai - 14 novembre 2011
Farai un vers de dreit nien, Non er de mi ni d’autra gen, Non er d’amor ni de joven, Ni de ren au, Qu’enans fo trobatz en durmen Sus un chivau.
Usually I don’t like comedy because it's embarrassing, with people being booed and so on. The comedian may fail and the audience doesn’t know what to do. In Matthew Rana’s performance he includes this risk in the work itself. He fails on purpose. The audience laugh together about the absurdity of the situation itself. It emphasises that the audience wants to know how-to-behave, they laugh the first time then he says, gently, ‘No that’s not the punch line'; he goes on and then they laugh again, never really sure what they are meant to be doing. | There’s not just speech, but also sound and a physical reaction, a surplus of anxiety, embarrassment; you look at the others in the audience and how their bodies react, laughing is a bodily reaction, you can’t control it. It’s something you share with the others, but it’s without language. It’s not just a linguistic translation, but it is also a bodily translation. | Not understanding the joke is also not receiving meaning — this lack of meaning creates awkwardness, a doubt and uncertainty that acts on the bodies from which meaning is withheld. But this also creates a new meaning because even though you can’t understand the joke, you can understand the emotion. |
“A bear walks into a bar and he asks the parrot bird for a ‘scotch... and soda’. The parrot bird says that’s fine, but why the long pause?”
Matthew Rana picked English language jokes that were well known, or jokes that were told to him in the days before the performance. He also told the same jokes over and over again. He wanted to tell the jokes badly, to interrupt the joke’s timing, their humor and the audience’s expectations. The translation aspect added to this creating delays, misunderstandings and the problem of context. Jokes are impossible to translate. |
Il semble que la notion de délai soit l’élément primordial de la performance de Matthew. Le contexte d’apparition de la performance de Matthew suppose un jeu sur la compréhension, la non-compréhension et le problème de la traduction. Nous évoquons deux situations, celle de Jacqui, présente dans la performance et face à Matthew et la mienne, occupé à discuter avec Clémence et ne percevant que les échos de la voix de Matthew, du rire de Geoff et du silence de l’audience. Il est important de préciser que l’enjeux de la pièce était l’énonciation de blagues en anglais, traduites simultanément en français pour un public français. Il s ‘agit donc d’un problème de traduction et de non-compréhension du contexte d’apparition de ces blagues. Ceci produit un délai important. Nous pouvons préciser qu’il s’agit de trois niveaux de délai : le premier est fondé sur une non-compréhension de l’anglais et surtout des subtilités nécessaires à la compréhension de blagues anglaise. Le second est un délai fondé sur la non-compréhension du français : la langue française est compréhensible, mais le sens traduit de la blague est, la plupart du temps non-saisissable. C’est un délai entre la communication et le sens de l’objet communiqué. Le troisième niveau est un délai fondé sur les différences de postures sociales, celle de Matthew avec un nœud papillon, les anglophones riant immédiatement, les français riant selon leur compréhension et leur gêne comme existence d’un « rire de circonstance », et la traductrice dans une posture sérieuse. |
Speech Objects, Musée de l’0bjet Blois, 26 mai - 14 novembre 2011
Stop me if you heard this one before
Nobody spoke about the suit! And nobody talked about the jokes! What were the jokes?
The relationship between audience and performer was emphasized, playing off of each other, the problems and gaps that were created. The translation and the delay also resulted in Matthew being both the performer and the audience for the work... He became painfully aware of his own performance, Vivian Rehberg’s and the audience’s. He didn’t know how Vivian was translating the joke, if what she was saying was even faithful to the joke. This changed the way he told the jokes and by the end, they weren’t even recognizable as jokes anymore. | The experience that the audience lived during Matthew’s performance is not really individual because it depends on which group you are in, and
the way you are accepted as an individual person inside this group. The levels of translation are multiple, and there are several different ways to react to the joke: you can understand directly the joke in English (and eventually laugh), you have to wait for the French translation (and because of the delay, a sincere laugh is not possible anymore), but you can also react to the reaction of the group. So in a way, the way people who surround you will react to the joke is the last step of translation. |
Bonjour. Je vais vous présenter des objets. Il y en a trois, je vais prendre le premier. Il y a un peu de poussière dessus. Il ressemble à un agenda, il est bleu. Il y a un petit… J’ai l’impression que c’est un petit 1, comme si c’était le premier d’une liste ou peutêtre que c’est un petit rectangle blanc. Avec le titre, Speech Objects, en plein milieu. Voyons voir l’intérieur… Alors, le papier n’est pas très blanc, il sent l’écologique, le papier recyclé. Il sent le neuf. Tout est bleu à l’intérieur. Il y a des photos, du texte, plein de typo différentes. Voilà… Ah non, y’a pas que du bleu, y’a du rouge, y’a de la couleur aussi ! Finalement ce n’est pas du tout un agenda, on dirait un livre, un livre de théorie. Est-ce qu’il y a quelque chose écrit derrière ? 244. Sur la couverture, il y a des petites boules, ça fait des petits reliefs, moi ça me fait penser à une nappe. Il y a aussi des petites nervures, comme s’il était un peu abîmé. Quoi d’autre… Il y a des remerciements à la fin et une photo du livre aussi, avec une main. À l’intérieur, il y a des photos d’installation, on dirait qu’il y a trois sections de photos en couleur avec une police de caractère rouge alors que tout le reste est bleu, très très bleu. Il y a des images d’expositions, des photos, des extraits de livres, des restes de performance, des résidus, des traces, un dessin, un billet de train, l’intérieur d’un livre, Hobbes and Republican Liberty, et pleins d’artistes. Ça ressemble au journal de bord d’un groupe d’artiste. Voilà… Des gens dans la forêt qui regardent une toile, Robert Filiou… Je suis en train de l’abîmer en le regardant, je vais
le reposer très doucement. Ensuite, il y a un genre de journal, qui est à peu près aussi léger qu’un journal que tu trouves dans le métro, mais j’ai l’impression que ce n’est pas tout à fait le même format, c’est plus carré. Le papier est doux. Il fait un bruit agréable. Dedans il y a des textes dans tous les sens, c’est complètement désordonné. Y’a des flèches, on dirait des brouillons. Il y a du bleu et du noir. Les photos sont bleues. Y’a pas beaucoup de pages. C’est un petit journal. Il y a des gens qui apparaissent souvent, ils sont récurrents, ce sont visiblement un peu les stars du journal. Beaucoup sont déguisés. On dirait les restes d’une fête. Des gens parlent dans des micros, y’a des bouches. Des performances. Il y a aussi des images extraites de vidéos hyper floues, c’est très mal découpé. On dirait du collage. C’est comme un carnet de bord, encore, un journal. Des fois, on arrive pas très bien à lire. Il y a des gens qui chantent, et qui dansent, c’est un peu la fête dans le journal. Y’a des grandes parties sans rien, c’est le grand luxe ! On respire un peu, ça fait plaisir. Au dos, il y a une photo de papier, on dirait… Un sac poubelle déplié avec un trou au milieu. Le titre : Speech and What Archive Part 1, en bleu mais ce n’est pas le même bleu que le livre, il est plus violet. Je le replie. Maintenant je prends une pochette de disque, un vinyle. C’est un format carré, c’est en carton. Ça me semble bien lourd, peut-être qu’il n’y a pas de vinyle dedans, ou peut-être qu’il y a plus qu’un vinyle. Voyons voir à l’intérieur, y’a un papier légèrement biseauté, c’est cool. Dedans il y a un vinyle, avec une bouche au milieu, A Side, B
Speech Objects Launch Cneai ,Paris, 21 janvier 2012
Comme les atomes nous sommes des objets sensibles qui n'existent que par leur vibration constante. À chaque instant on sacrifie son inertie a l'ordre cosmique.
Le virtuel est une réalité. On parle sans arrêt à des gens qui ne sont pas là. Ils nous répondent et parfois même nous apparaissent. À ces moments là on a les mêmes expressions du visage et les mêmes comportements physiques que s'ils étaient en face de nous. Le téléphone est une sorte de jeu vidéo, on simule une action réelle face à une prothèse informatique. On met de plus en plus de conviction et de sérieux à interagir avec ces objets technologiques et inversement on se comporte face aux manifestations réelles du monde avec de plus en plus de froideur et de distance, d'ennui et d'indifférence. La représentation de la vie est devenue beaucoup plus réussie que la vie elle-même. Passionnés par les simulacres on se retrouve dans la vie comme devant un mauvais film.
Les objets qui nous entourent sont nimbés de l'idée qu'on s'en fait.
Les objets sont comme les héros classiques une idéalisation de l'homme. L'Antiquité avait les mythes et légendes comme système de représentation, la modernité a les objets techniques.
La question n'est plus «être ou ne pas être» mais «faire ou ne pas faire». L'homo faber est en pleine crise de conscience.
Comment sortir de l'objet artistique, par sa forme ou par son sens, par le bord ou par le fond ?
Détourner les lois de la pesanteur, de la physique, faire des tables sans pieds, au plafond, dans les murs, sur la tête, un cube. L'art pour l'art, les objets pour eux mêmes.
Toy Story L'invention de la photographie, du téléphone, de l'ordinateur... le premier réflexe est toujours la pornographie. On érotise chaque nouvelle technologie pour se l'approprier, pour l'apprivoiser, pour apprendre sa langue. On espère, à chaque fois, qu'elle sera enfin le langage qui pourra nous traduire, qui rendra notre corps intelligible. Deviendrons-nous, un jour, les sex-toys des robots?
Penser c'est laisser remonter les objets. La philosophie est un tour de magie.
Le monde des objets Table Top Tour
Side. Le trou du vinyle est juste en dessous de la bouche, comme si c’était un piercing, c’est rigolo. Il est bien noir, il a l’air tout neuf, j’ai l’impression qu’il n’a jamais été écouté. Peut-être qu’il y a de la musique, je vois sur la couverture des gens qui parlent, j’ai pas l’impression que ce soit de la musique classique… C’est pas évident à remettre, je fais légèrement trembler… ça ne marche pas… arr… Voilà… C’est hyper dur à remettre. Le carton ne se ferme pas… Je ne sais pas si c’est normal parce que je ne suis pas habituée aux vinyles… Il y a écrit Speech and What Archive, le même groupe qui a fait le journal, même bleu que le journal. Ça s’appelle Medicine Show, c’est peut-être une musique pour se sentir bien, une musique thérapeutique. Les gens ont l’air bien. C’est peut-être en relation avec la nature et la vie, parce que les personnes ont des feuilles autour d’eux et ils ont des costumes où ils sont à poil et puis il y a un squelette. Au milieu il y a un mec qui réfléchit, on ne sait pas ce qu’il fait là mais il était déjà présent dans le journal, avec une espèce de touffe, il est là, il croise les bras, il se passe rien, voilà. Il est un peu récurrent, il ne regarde même pas l’objectif. Il est pas de la même couleur que les autres. Et puis les photos sont mal découpées comme dans le journal, on dirait que c’est mal fait avec le lasso sur Photoshop. Tac tac, hop. Le livre est bien théorique, on se pose, on réfléchit. On peut peut-être le lire en diagonale. Par contre, je pense qu’on peut écouter la musique et lire le journal en même temps, comme ça on est bien. Voilà. Merci.
The costumes are not illusions, they are tools but we don’t know what they are for introduce what is fake, they are shared and they create another place. A second skin, barrier, hierarchy, generates another place, a skeleton is not a skeleton, not yourself and not the character. Yann, by intervening into the history of the costumes in SWA changed their meaning. The use of costumes in SWA is a way of remaining in a space of not-knowing, but it is a space of continuous performance, and for this reason it is not a work of amateur theatre.
In SWA costumes permit an experience of being ridiculous in common and of the performance itself. The identity of the costume is not necessarily interchangeable with the character or the performer who makes an utterance yet it invokes an ongoing alterity. (Si, dans SWA, le costume permet d’assumer le ridicule comme expérience du commun et de la performance, cependant il confère à celui qui le porte, non une stricte interchangeabilité – ne pas figurer comme personne, mais comme énonciateur – mais une permanence de l’altérité.)
The costumes provide an easy familiar frame for both performer and audience to make things strange. The costumes are not illusions, the costume is a commitment to something that’s not yourself and it’s not the character. We’re not doing it theatrically as a character. The outfits are exchanged between performers. The decision to put a costume on is confronting, you make yourself vulnerable. We are all ridiculous in costume, but we are not ridiculous because we are not characters. They are negatively defined by what they are not. Adam and Eve is not a SWA performance because there are rules. They invoke the ridiculous and ridicule establishing a collective in common of amateurism. The carnivalesque, power relationships are inverted or suspended, wearing a costume in a contemporary art context begins a disruption.
From left to right:
Each person wrote a sentence about the use of costumes in Speech and What Archive then read each sentence out around the table form left to right then back the other way. Each linking of sentences effortlessly formed three articulated paragraphs around the subject of costumes.
Costume
From right to left:
The use of costumes in SWA is a way of remaining in a space of not-knowing, but it is a space of continuous performance, and for this reason it is not a work of amateur theatre. The costumes are not illusions, they are tools but we don’t know what, they introduce what is fake, they are shared and they create another place. A second skin, barrier, hierarchy, generates another place, a skeleton is not a skeleton, not yourself and not the character. Yann, by intervening into the history of the costumes in SWA changed their meaning.
Si, dans SWA, le costume permet d’assumer le ridicule comme expérience du commun et de la performance, cependant il confère à celui qui le porte, non une stricte interchangeabilité – ne pas figurer comme personne, mais comme énonciateur – mais une permanence de l’altérité. (In SWA costumes permit an experience of being ridiculous in common and of the performance itself. The identity of the costume is not necessarily interchangeable with the character or the performer who makes an utterance yet it invokes an ongoing alterity.)
The costumes are not illusions, the costume is a commitment to something that’s not yourself and it’s not the character. We’re not doing it theatrically as a character. The outfits are exchanged between performers. The decision to put a costume on is confronting, you make yourself vulnerable. We are all ridiculous in costume, but we are not ridiculous because we are not characters. They are negatively defined by what they are not. Adam and Eve is not a SWA performance because there are rules. They invoke the ridiculous and ridicule. Establishing a collective in common of amateurism. The carnivalesque, power relationships are inverted or suspended, wearing a costume in a contemporary art context begins a disruption. The costumes provide an easy familiar frame for both performer and audience to make things strange.
Dance
Dance could be understood as something funny or ironic because the dancer doesn’t know how to dance. But also, she experiences it and she really tries; not to dance as a professional dancer, but to use and move in the space with her body, during quite a long time. This work does not try to use a repertoire of dance-gestures that we are familiar with, it does not pretend to copy ‘real’ dance. It offers an attempt to do something else, even if we don’t know what this something else is, it is a material dance. |
That provokes a paradox: people that claim they don’t know how to dance or they don’t understand dance as an art form, they are usually holding a clear image. And they can reproduce it. People who know how to dance in a more official way, have no idea about the image of dance so they have to try to produce one. Katerina Andreou
It’s interesting that we’ve been talking about disrupting the expectation surrounding a situation, such as a performance, or the expectations that come with an art form. Dancers are expected to have graceful and strong bodies, full of energy and spontaneity, yet they are simultaneously in control, in total possession and mastery of their bodies and movements. I’m not so convinced that language and the body can be so separated; or that there is an outside of language that we can access with our bodies. Or for example, that rationality and desire are distinct. Our discussion seems to revolve around notions of vulnerability, and also about how to hold together with various anxieties embarrassments, contradictions and ambiguities. |
People that are not dancers have often a clear image of dance. Usually they can activate this image easily with pleasure, even if they claim that they don’t-know-how-to-dance. The interesting thing is that when they reproduce this image-product installed as an image in them, their dance can be seen as a rough and not elaborated material, even if they reproduce the most sophisticated image of the dance. It is like playing with stone to imitate a well-known sculptor, or drawing to imitate a famous painting they know.
The image of the dance is something that is previously fixed in our minds, it’s the way people perceive and visualize a dance in their heads. And this image is related to the experience they have related to dance. For those who are not dancers, it may be the dance of Lady Gaga in her video clips, classical ballet, modern or even contemporary dance, acrobatics etc. which means a certain quality of movement, movement in accordance to the rhythm or the melody, costumes, even certain postures of the body or facial expressions. The image is the product, the result that has been transmitted to them and depends on their past, their cultural education and relationship (or not) to dance (as an art form).
Image / Process
Dancers are more incapable of defining dance or an image of it. They insist on the importance of dance as a process, as a way to built up something, to serve a concept for example. The aim, is something aside of this. Or, the dance itself is the biggest question they want to research and answer, and they dance in order to find its image. It is the process that gives value to their final product. Research to answer bigger questions or even the ultimate question: what is a dance? And the dance is the tool they have in their hands, through dance they search the materials that they can use to realize the artistic vision they have, to answer questions. The image is not fixed and they try to do a sculpture, and this effort is the process that is more important than the image itself.
Jacqueline Riva is Australian, she speaks English. I’m French, and I speak French. So when Jacqui had to talk to the audience during the performance, she was speaking English and I was translating her words in French. Clémence de Montgolfier is French, she speaks French & English. But she asks me in French to write some words in English. I’m still French, I usually talk in French, but I’ll write some words in English as Clémence asked me in French to do it. I never danced, professionally speaking. I’m not a very good amateur dancer either. When I try to dance, I put my hands in my pockets and I’m quite embarrassed. Whatever, at the Ferme du Buisson, I danced. I spent several days in preparation of the show and a little over an hour on stage, but I have only few specific memories, as if the photographs of the event had replaced my imperfect memory with a series of unalterable images. I can no longer remember what I was asked to do and the initiatives I took. What I remember is that we were all supposed to dance around the fire, but when I finished setting fire to the SPEECH letters, there were only Clémence (the one who asks me in french to write in English) & Michele Robecchi singing "burn the speech" and Anna Hess dancing alone. I’m looking at the photograph of the dance and I wonder where are the other participants of the show. I couldn’t refuse to dance with her, I had to dance with her. I can remember the dance through my eyes, and the picture sends me back the reverse view. I see myself looking. QUENTIN LANNES
Avant-Spectacle, Micro Medicine Show La Ferme du Buisson, Noisiel, 16 juillet 2011
If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution
The reason why it works is that you don’t know what it is. It’s not dance, it’s not yoga, you know that, but what? I like the way she takes it so seriously and so lazily but alternately her body is very flexible and malleable like that of a dancer. | She plays with the idea of fragility, which creates tension. It’s not about language, but it’s about the body. It’s the same misunderstanding as with the jokes, which also creates a kind of poetic space. | The dancing body is an intrusion. The dancing body does not exactly signify the realization of separateness any more, but the display of something from or out of the ordinary. Elsa Philippe's body crawls, stretches, slides. The body is an intrusion and it disturbs. It is not an expression of discomfort, but it is the uncomfortable experience of what we would prefer not to see, because what remains is what is visible, and because it is we who are not crawling. This body dancing is the contradictory experience of what is inevitably exposed as a symbol. It is probably for this reason that is it hard to watch. | I think a lot of people are confused by contemporary dance because it’s not related anymore with dancing skills and a beautiful execution of very complicated and long to learn moves but with something else. The audience feels often embarrassed because as in contemporary theatre, which is very referential, even cynical and you don’t know when you are supposed to laugh, or whether or when you are supposed to be moved. |
A marquee. Sun lounges and cushions. We enter but do not sit. Presentation. Phones, even an I-phone. Who calls? Anna. Telepathy with Australia. Is it going to work ? I think, that it is working this time. Interlude. A skeleton? A tree? Telepathy did not work, I believed in it, I had held my breath a little when the verdict came. Chinese ideograms. What does it mean? I do not remember. A marquee. A ball. Poetic acrobatics. A seal. A physician. A speech. The action of cold on the seminal fluid. It’s funny Where is SPEECH ?
this passage. Interlude on guitar. Let’s dance! A feast in words, let’s wait for it with Vespetro. Under this marquee, we drink, we dance, we salivate, we sing. A pirate. A skeleton. Songs. Only hits! Firefighters. Matches.
Un chapiteau. Des chaises longues et des coussins. On entre mais on ne s’assoit pas. Présentation. Un téléphone, un I-phone même. Qui appelle ? Anna. Télépathie avec l’Australie. Est-ce que ça va fonctionner ? Je pense que, cette fois-ci, c’est la bonne. Intermède. Un squelette ? Un arbre ? La télépathie n’a pas marché, j’y croyais, j’avais même un peu retenu ma respiration au moment du verdict. Des idéogrammes chinois. Qu’est-ce que cela signifie ? Je ne me rappelle plus. Un chapiteau. SPEECH a disparu.
Emma CRayssac
Une boule. Acrobatie poétique. Un phoque. Un médecin. Un discours. L’action du froid sur le liquide séminal. Il est drôle ce passage. Intermède à la guitare. Let’s dance ! Un festin par des mots, patientons avec du Vespetro. Sous ce chapiteau, on boit, on danse, on salive, on chante. Un pirate. Un squelette. Des chansons. Que des tubes ! Pompiers. Allumettes.
‘We render objects as nothing.’ ‘This nothing is embedded in us, in the way we speak, in the way we say things. By including nothing in what we say we allow the possibility that we are in some sort of connected space, together. It puts us in a position to speak, given that there is such a thing as speaking.’ « La fin de l’école. Plusieurs d’entre nous se sont installés dans une autre ville ou un autre pays. Nous nous croisons parfois, gardons autant que possible le contact par email ou Facebook. Malgré la distance, peut-on rester aussi proches qu’avant ? Est-ce que Sacha, qui vit à Genève, et moi à Paris, pouvons être connectés par le même désir ? Et si Christelle pouvait inconsciemment me faire partager ses propres sentiments depuis Barcelone ? Si je me réveille de bonne humeur, est-ce parce que Simon, dans sa petite ville d’Autriche, est également heureux ? Et si j’ai soudainement envie d’une glace, est-ce parce qu'Anaïs, dans le chaud été australien, y pense aussi ? » ‘Rather than transforming the immaterial into art, we can consider, as Ben Kinmont prompts, the materiality of our lives. Through technologies and global networks, nothing is rare anymore, it’s always there, ready to be brought back as an object, a material object.’
‘What we aspire to, through Speech Objects, is already available.’
Speech Objects Launch Cneai , Paris, 21 janvier 2012
Floating Conversation
‘Even to listen to your explanations, one needs to be psychologically prepared. And I know how you will proceed, you will brainwash us and you will succeed, but we prefer to remain free. Thank you very much.’ ‘This passion play of ignorance, being unsure and not-knowing is currently being played out against the viewer, who over and over in contemporary art is guided into being the constituted subject: the one supposed to know.’ ‘In canceling the show, Francesco Manacorda, Artissima’s director, noted that it could be ‘potentially very offensive to artists and gallerists who participate in the fair’ and ‘negatively impact government funding of the arts in Italy, and potentially threaten the viability of Artissima.’ ‘Rather than this work making a creative unity of possibilities and actions it points to the fact that the audience may know what the artist does not, has forgotten or chooses to ignore. The audiences’ embarrassment about whether-it-isa-work-of-art-or-not clearly points to and generates the shared origin of the work or object itself. (And it is often noted that those involved in the
learned or official practice of art, find this almost unbearable).’ « F : J’ai une autre question. Si tu poses ce statement de l’illégitimité ou de la légitimité du discours, est-ce qu’on pourrait avoir une question sur l’illégitimité de l’énoncé ? C : L’énoncé par rapport au discours c’est comme utterance ? Et alors quelle différence tu fais avec le discours ? F : Justement c’est bien cela le problème. Je pense à cela car je vois sur le coin de ta table, « Michel Foucault is a fatherfucker », il y a bien toute la question de la différence entre le discours et l’énoncé, et si il y a une illégitimité du discours, est ce qu’on pourrait poser la même chose de l’énoncé ? Et qu’est-ce qui se passe dans le cas contraire ? Moi par exemple je suis persuadé que tu peux poser l’illégitimité du discours, mais cela relève d’une doxa, cela relève d’une construction, autoritaire, doxologique, idéologique etc ; mais l’énoncé lui en revanche tu ne peux pas. Il ne peut pas être illégitime ou légitime. C : Par ce qu’il est en dehors de la doxa ? F : Parce qu’il est en dehors d’une construction discursive. En dehors de la puissance d’une construction discursive. » ‘Although it is a commonplace to claim that it is only today that we have come to experience the self as fragmented, the contemporary Western ideology of selfhood indicates precisely the opposite: that what is new is the idea that there could be a coherent, unified self concealed behind it. Through documenting the loss of this self, it is, in fact, made to exist.’