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Mutations, Representations, Spaces

The Mutations: If the development of the arts throughout the course of the 20th century contributed considerably to their crossbreeding and to the displacement of disciplines that have been rendered permeable for one another, these boundary displacements have also caused shifts in the place, the nature and the function of the spectator. If the theater blamed the Italian auditorium, if the screen came out of the black cube, if the plastic work fell from its chair rail, if sculpture lost its pedestal, this cleared up space defines itself by new forms of questioning: how do the arts leave their original field of discipline? And how does the spectator find his new place? Let us hypothesize that these mutations of contemporary art primarily concern the writing of a space, a new thought, literally of the scenography, considerably outside its theatrical field of origin.

Representations: This new thought of the theater of the future (scenography) is not intended to repair and analyze new places in which present-day creation takes place. This drawing of a thought of scenography in the arts assigns itself the task of thinking about the space, and not necessarily the explicit one, that the spectator occupies. In the present-day practices of space, whether they be theatrical or not, new relationships are established and constructed, in a given place, between he who watches and he who gets watched. These new relationships, which spatialize and reduce singular points of view, produce a scengraphic field that largely exceeds the frames of traditional representation.

Spaces: The space of the theater of the future leans upon very physical questions, questions of locations and neighborhood, of room and of gaps, of armrests, physical distance between bodies, incline, seat, speed, number, volume, ground, material, light, ornament, and determination and indetermination of a physical position. Spaces of the assembled or disjointed community, the time of the (re)presentation, around the object (scenography). It questions the rules of the game and the strategies of spectator placement in the space and time of the (re)presentation. This demand for a new role for the spectator necessarily opens the places from where one watches. What is this common space where we look together? What is this space in which each living body finds itself a common world in the consistency of these neighborhoods? Posing radical questions about the space of representation like bearers of a story, so that it is about spectacular spaces, exhibition space, urban space. How can we work and play with these determinisms? The exit from these spaces and ancient contexts does not lead to a place, but must call up new places, new contexts capable of welcoming these displacements and the experiences that come from them. But in terms of (re)presentation, what are we constructing? Witness, visitors, customers, actors, public, community, tribe, observer. Which places, which images, which experiences should we invent to resist this devouring domination of scenography in theater of the future? Through this experience and development, my passage at DasArts has strongly changed my work in a very positive aspect. Before I arrive at DasArts, I was an visual artist (sculptor) now I am passionately working with the outcome based on my research at DasArts (Metonymie). Using several artistic disciplines in several concept all interconnected. The inter-disciplinary research of combining allegories like: Dance as movement, music, theatre as performance, sculptur as installation, food as taste, smell as odora, foto’s, movie and so on. Show how scenography represent the umbrella homes all artistic disciplines.

J’aime l’art de la mise en scene!