The idea behind this performance is the conceptualisation of violence. I invite the perfomance’s participants to question brutality and violence through a direct personal approach. During a diner, acts of violence take place; first between a man and a woman; then two women fight each other; next two men attack each other.
This is a continuation of my work concerning tension and violent acts carried out among people, different couples in relation to the notion of “GENDER”.
The repetition of acts based on a given rhythm and the scenario I impose, I theatralise the preformance, transforming it into a ritual.
This is a work of concentration on gesture, neither telling stories nor giving psychological explanations of violence.
The first half is structured and the second half is more improvised; each participant replays the sketch at his own pace with the partner of his choice while the sound of a pre-recorded voice-over giving instructions is played at an unalterable pace.
The actions and the voice-over become dissynchronised and unorganised. I decide to stop the action, crying out “stop”. When acted-out violence is overtaken by daily violence.In Micro-Event n° 37, I pay homage to Bruce Nauman’s work “Violent Incident” (1986) in which he theatralises acts of violence during a hetrosexual couple’s dispute.
The original text of Bruce Nauman’s video installation, 1986, as cited in Micro-event n° 37:
« The man holds a chair for the woman as she starts to sit down. The man pulls the chair out from under her and she falls to the floor. The man is amused but woman is angry. The man turns and bends over to retrieve the chair and as she gets up she gooses him. The man stands up and faces her now very angry and calls her a name. The woman reaches back to the table and takes a cocktail and throws it in the man’s face. The man slaps the woman in the face. The woman knees or kicks the man in the groin. The man is hurt and bends over, takes a knife from table, they struggle and she stabs. He is stabbed. »
Bruce Nauman, Violent Incident, Please Pay Attention Please: Bruce Nauman’s Words, Writings and Interviews, Janet Kraynak (ed.), Massachusetts, MIT Press, 2005, p.96.
During the performance, the terms man and woman may be interchanged.
Participants: Olivier Benhamou, Emmanuel Bodin, Bernard Bousquet, Katia Chesnier, Anne Dreyfus, Genseric Maingreaud, Tsuneko Taniuchi, Eliseu Verbecelte
Narrator: Dean Inkster
Sound recording: Jean Jacque Palix