Abracadabra !
Avec "Circus", Tale(s) Magazine vous présente sont deuxième numéro de prestidigitateur : plus de 200 pages de Style(s), d'Harmony(s) et de Vision(s) sans un gramme de papier !
En un tour de passe-passe, et quelques clics furtifs, nous vous embarquons pour un voyage dans les pages de notre chapiteau virtuel où voltigent Madame Mode, Monsieur Art et Miss Music, sans oublier les improbables roulades au sol du monstre Architecture.
Mais sous couvert d'espièglerie, si nous avons choisi le thème du cirque, c'est qu'il incarne une forme d'engagement artistique qui nous intéresse, celle d'un mode de vie "Pop Activist" à la fois radical, périlleux et drolatique, proche, libre, festif, mais sans naïveté et politiquement engagé.
Attention, la fanfare débarque : Dominique Richon, Sonia Layer, Twinroom, Markus Lambert, emma Pick…. Julien de Smedt, Patrick Bouchain, Michael Patterson-Carver, Jean-Marc Avrilla, Harald Thys et Jos de Gruyter, Ulla Van Brandenberg, Christoph ChristophRuckhäberle, Warm Grey, Nathalie bles, helga Wretman!!
“And abracadabra!” With Circus,
Tale(s) magazine offers up its second magic trick — more than 200 pages of Style(s), Harmony(s) and Vision(s) without a single ounce of paper!
With a deft sleight of hand and a few furtive clicks, we launch you on a journey through the pages of our virtual big top, where Ms. Fashion, Mr. Art and Miss Music gambol… not to mention a few surprising somersaults from that colossus, Architecture.
Yet, under the guise of mischievousness, we’ve chosen a circus theme because it embodies a form of artistic engagement we find compelling — steeped in a “Pop Activist” lifestyle, at once radical, perilous and comic, familiar, free, festive without being naïve, and politically engaged.
So step right up! A drum roll resounds, heralding the entrance of: Juliette Buttler, Emma Pick, Twinshot One, Dominique Richon, Fred Rambaud & Benjamin Donadieu, Lilly-Marthe Ebener, Felix Lahrer, Julien de Smedt, Patrick Bouchain, Michael Patterson-Carver, Jean-Marc Avrilla, Harald Thys & Jos de Gruyter, Ulla Van Brandenberg, Christoph Ruckhäberle, Warmgrey, Jean-Luc Verna, Helga Wretman, the Electric Circus and the Atelier Ma!
Pangandaran
Java
Indonésie
scooters
Reportage photo
Dominique Richon.
Felix Larher
Iggy Pop
Claudia shiffer
Demolition party
Gilles dufour
Wad
Blue
photos : willy Huvey
Alexandre Romanes
Circus
Fashion is a culture fluid, a profusion of meanings and talents in constant renewal. Just like a circus performance, we’re rolling out beautiful trapeze artists, acrobats of every kind, animals with precious skins and freaks, unfortunately. Tale(s) has chosen to concentrate on just that creative wealth — the death-defying performances of its protagonists, joined together in a confluence of ideas. Our method, full of imagery and imagination, translated into poetry and prose, is a living workshop converging around one, single objective — style.
Gilad Sasporta
Marion Chambrette
Stephane Théret
gilles de Givry
Elite Paris
Circus
Fashion
Style
Video
Photos : Twin-shotone.com
Style : Marcell Naubert (c/o bigoudi.de)
YRU SHA
Maison Laboe
Tsumori Chisato
Vivienne Westwood
metalwings, Jantaminiau
Hair : Markus Lambert c/o Marie-france / Makeup : Eny Whitehead c/o Calliste / Model : Dara c/o IMG / Assistant photo : Christian Borth
Thanks : studio Upper East
directed by : Sebastien le corroller
Video : Myriam Roehri
Style : Lilly marthe ebener
Music : Mr Lobster pour musicaParadiso
Model : THAILAI
SERIE "FREAKS"
Photograph : Emma Pick
Stylist : Annabelle Jouot
Hair stylist : Franck Nemoz
Makeup : Audrey Gautier @ Box Management
assistant styliste: Jennifer Clemson
Thanks to : Red Studio, Success Models, New Madison, Major Paris, Nathalie Agency et Elite.
look 1 -
leggings in cotton, POSTWEILER HAUBER
masked dress, WALTER VON BEIRENDONCK
look 2 -
silk satin shirt and leggings in wool, TSUMORI CHISATO
hat, POPY MORENI
look 3 -
cotton body, VISBOL DE ARCE
lycra body suit, REPETTO
jewellery, model's own
look 4 -
cotton sweatshirt, PETAR PETROV
cotton leggings, POSTWEILER HAUBER
silk ruffs, POPY MORENI
look 5 -
wool and leather coat, VISBOL DE ARCE
cotton leggings, POSTWEILER HAUBER
silk ruff and necklace, POPY MORENI
leather gloves, MAISON FABRE
look 6 -
wool pullover and leggings, TSUMORI CHISATO
look 7 -
quilted cotton pull over, FABRICS INTERSEASON
hat, BENOIT MISSOLIN
tights in wool, WOLFORD
look 8 -
quilted nylon pullover, FABRICS INTERSEASON
leather trousers, POSTWEILER HAUBER
hat, BENOIT MISSOLIN
directors : Fred Rambaud and Benjamin Donadieu
Style : Celine Ayel
Music : Stephane Theret
Model : Charlbi@ Elite Paris
Make up artist : Corinne Gues
Food stylist: Sandra Mahut
photography: Vincent Toubel
BAPTISTE VIRY (SS 2010)
TSUMORI CHISATO
MULHBAUER (SS 2010)
CONRAN SHOP
TSUMORI CHISATO
CONRAN SHOP
BAPTISTE VIRY (SS 2010)
BURFITT
TSUMORI CHISATO
BENOIT MISSOLIN
TSUMORI CHISATO
BENOIT MISSOLIN
TSUMORI CHISATO
PHILIP TREACY
BENOIT MISSOLIN
TSUMORI CHISATO
ALICE HUBERT
MADY'S Paris
MAISON MICHEL
PHILIP TREACY
BENOIT MISSOLIN
VENNA
ANDREA CREWS
TSUMORI CHISATO
Photos : Milo Keller et Julien Gallico
Style : Annabelle Jouot
“BARON"
photographs : Milo Keller & Julien Gallico
stylist : Annabelle Jouot
makeup : Hélène
hair stylist : Benjamin Muller
assistant style : Jennifer Clemson
assistant photo :
lace body suit, NATALIA VODIANOVA for ETAM
panties, ERES
elastic belt, REPETTO
hairband, BENOIT MISSOLIN
shoes, TSUMORI CHISATO
cotton body suit, VISBOL DE ARCE
tights, WOLFORD
headband, BENOIT MISSOLIN
dress, KOSTAS MURKUDIS
hat, BENOIT MISSOLIN
earrings, VIVEKA BERGSTROM
tights, WOLFORD
sequin dress, AMERICAN VINTAGE
earrings, HELENE ZUBELDIA
body suit, REPETTO
bloomers, ERIC TIBUSCH PARIS
cuff, POPY MORENI
tights, WOLFORD
earrings, VIVEKA BERGSTROM
shoes, TSUMORI CHISATO
sequin dress, AMERICAN RETRO
tights, WOLFORD
earrings, HELENE ZUBELDIA
shoes, TSUMORI CHISATO
earrings, VIVEKA BERGSTROM
body, AMERICAN APPAREL
lycra body suit and elastic belt, REPETTO
tights, WOLFORD
headband, BENOIT MISSOLIN
ring, YOSHIKO CREATIONS
shoes, TSUMORI CHISATO
leather skirt, TARA JARMON
jacket, NELL BY SJ
leather leggings, AMERICAN RETRO
belt, TSUMORI CHISATO
belt (worn as headband), TARA JARMON
earrings, VIVEKA BERGSTROM
tights, WOLFORD
shoes, TSUMORI CHISATO
bra, ETAM
bloomers, AMERICAN RETRO
jewelled dog worn on shoulder, VERONIQUE LEROY
earrings, VIVEKA BERGSTROM
tights, WOLFORD
“Fashion changes, style remains” Y.S.L.
Gaël Mamine, curator of the Foundation Pierre Bergé - Yves Saint Laurent, devotes his days to keeping the great couturier’s legacy alive. Exhibitions, publications… The single watchword for his staff: “style.”
An exclusive interview.
He has “no hang ups whatsoever” in the company of those two names, those two giants. His calm, almost ineffable, personality thrives in his work, his “research projects on the history of the French couturier, a veritable investigation that inevitably meanders to the outer fringes of the fashion world — the archives, the publishing world, the theater and the press…” Sometimes it even goes so far as tracking down the entourage of a man who, by the time he was 18, in 1955, was certainly Mr. Dior’s youngest assistant. “It’s always about finding new words to express the reality of Yves’ work, based on various elements, and channeling that into an exhibition or an anthology publication. It’s the same job an archeologist has. At the moment, for example, we’re working on his Rive Gauche line. As a forerunner of ready-to-wear, Saint Laurent was smart enough to define a space for his clothes that was innovative in his time. The boutique concept offered women the ability to walk in, right off the street, and adopt the designers entire look, thanks to all those accessories.”
For a foundation endowed with such extensive means — not to mention the 373 million euros in proceeds from the “sale of the century” last February — shouldn’t this be the moment to support young French designers or a House like Christian Lacroix that’s currently going through a difficult period?
“Let me remind you that Pierre Bergé is president of ANDAM [the National Association for the Development of the Fashion Arts] and the IFM [the French Fashion Institute]. Our funds to assist students circulate through those channels. As far as providing logistical support directly to young designers, Mr. Saint Laurent’s atelier has been open since 1999. Members of Stefano Pilati’s studio or other students are welcome to consult the archives. We hope to pass on the House’s style in the best possible way — the safari jacket, the women’s tuxedos, the dress silhouettes from the first collections… All those pieces can inspire entire generations.”
So that form of fashion epistemology seems to be right on track, as it continues to engrave the couturier’s work into our French cultural legacy. Or would you prefer the term “artistic” legacy?
“I consider fashion as an art form only if the design is unique, as an element of couture, for example. Harnessing reality as translated via the designer’s parameters of reference is what creates art. You have to understand a completely romantic conception, obviously.” A former student at the École de Beaux-Arts in Dijon, then in Marseille, who better than Mr. Mamine to comment on this subject of dissension? A debate that continues to feed the critical dialogue. Just as the evolution of the Yves Saint Laurent brand since it was transferred to Elf Sanofi in 1993 (except for the haute couture line), then the sale of Elf Sanofi to Gucci (PPR) in 2000. He replies, “I think that Nicolas Ghesquière, at Balenciaga [where Mamine worked in the archives department before taking his current post at the foundation], better digested the spirit of his House than [Stefano Pilati] has at Saint Laurent. That procession of artistic directors heading up the great names in couture could be interesting if the vocabulary is mastered. I didn’t really understand the use of motifs coming out of the collections at the last Saint Laurent fashion show, for example. But the idea of working on a motif is outdated when it doesn’t take the style, the silhouette into consideration.”
Is fashion as Saint Laurent knew it merely a memory?
“Today, the reality of fashion is at H&M and Zara. They’re the ones who officiate over the mass production of evolving silhouettes. And business is booming! Their designers are hired to come up with clothes that immediately appear in their shop windows, and out in the entire world. Sequined jackets, jeans riddled with holes, scuzzy T-shirts that used to be haute couture are incessantly adapted and cheaply churned out, like so many ingredients in bad cooking.” In that sense, Gaël Mamine seems to elegantly give voice to another evil that has seized a fashion industry gone consumerist, indeed vulgar (see our “La Mode fait son cirque” article). An elegant way to express another evil that has seized an industry gone consumerist. Nevertheless, projects* still abound at the Foundation Bergé - Saint Laurent, daily shaping another vision — the perpetuation of “style.”
(*) Jean-Michel Frank Un Décorateur dans le Paris des Années 30, an exhibition, at the Foundation through January 3, 2010.
Yves Saint Laurent Retrospective at the Petit Palais, Paris, March 11 through August 29, 2010.
Foundation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent, 5 avenue Marceau, 75016, www.fondation-pb-ysl.net
“The safari jacket, the women’s tuxedos, the dress silhouettes from the first collections… All those pieces can inspire entire generations.”
Photos : Me Myself & you
Style : chiara FrascÀ
Raphaële Bidault-Waddington
The Big Bush Circus Lands in Europe
MICHAEL PATTERSON-CARVER by JEAN-MARC AVRILLA
Immersed in a society full of dissent, some American artists, in the tradition of the Naïve Art movement, are resisting a hold over their country that’s squelching certain freedoms. In doing so, they embrace a form of artistic activism that’s become almost antiquated today.
The relationship between art and politics goes back too far to insinuate that these two highly sociable activities are not akin. Yet their very history seems to have distanced them from one another over the second half of the 20th century. In reality, history can no longer be dealt with by a factual reading of it, but rather in poststructuralist fashion, by analyzing the conflicts that underpin and structure our societies. As such, contemporary art offers an in-depth interpretation of history.
Félix González-Torres has shed light on the polemic of Western genres — in particular, defending Gay and Women’s Rights — by creating situations that allowed activism to slip into our daily lives. It is precisely that same defense of minority rights that has driven the Guerilla Girls’ since 1985. We must also cite David Hammons for intentionally establishing an American landscape and evoking the relationship of the present to history, in his case, from the viewpoint of the African-American community he came out of. Contemporary art deals with history, but certainly not as explicitly as the educational posters evoking the colonial conquest of the elementary schools of yesteryear.
Artistic Activism
It certainly seems that the great Barnum of the Bush era has succeeded in breathing life into a kind of artistic activism against his own agenda. The American press astonishingly recounts the discovery of a hitherto unknown, self-taught artist in his 50s named Michael Patterson-Carver in Portland, Oregon, in early 2007. Walking out of a grocery store, Harrell Fletcher, another local artist, was bowled over by what he saw — Patterson-Carver standing by the road displaying his anti-Bush drawings like political placards. From that moment on, Patterson-Carver’s exhibitions spread like wildfire.
I must admit, his work has the ability to surprise even the most powerful of art world muckety-mucks. First of all, by their explicitly treated subject matter — Civil Rights demonstrations, TV news reports of clashes, and perhaps the most emblematic, representations of a truly ferocious chronicle on political life in the Bush era, and since then, in the Obama era. Those works also distinguish themselves by their stylistic treatment, presented in the form of naïve watercolor drawings.
In them, we can admire George W. Bush as ringmaster at the Republican primaries. A ten-gallon hat perched on his head, he’s flanked by a Republican elephant straight out of the Big Top and a character strangely resembling former advisor Karl Rove wearing an S-and-M type undergarment. Champagne flows like water below swinging trapeze artists in panties and boxer shorts. In the background, we find a torture stand with demonstrators dressed in black. That acid Bush administration circus turns up again in a scene in which the former American president, like some magician or freak show barker, opens a closet bearing the delicate moniker “Bush Skeleton Closet.” A Henry Kissinger figure rolls out the door in a wheel chair, wearing black gloves, along with a Hitler-like Saddam Hussein, and the inescapable Osama bin Laden. In the meantime, Bush’s Secret Service team looks under the rug and inside vases for the slightest whiff of danger.
Creative Outpouring
The circus environment is a stylistic device widely used by the artist, as is evidenced in the drawing on the following page. The tiered background displays democratic and republican camps, like spectators at a concert, surrounding a long dais table where Congressional Banking Investigation witnesses are seated. These “witnesses” — in black suits and red ties, smoking cigars, sipping champagne, with butlers shining their shoes — are all undoubtedly bankers. As is typical of these political drawings, many details, words or names printed on signs, and objects placed on stage, enrich its quasi-journalistic content and make a veritable political narrative of it, an historicized chronicle of recent history.
As a small child, Michael Patterson-Carver was profoundly shaped by the struggle for Civil Rights he saw going on around him. As an adult, he became an activist in that movement. The struggle has now moved to his art. The scenes are different here — dense, smiling crowds waving massive anti-war placards, defending Gay and Women’s Rights, defending fundamental human rights in the face of rampant fascism… The list is long. We’re not in the middle of the road anymore, but facing a flood of humanity or a wall comprised of American activists, their smiling faces filled with hope.
Outsider Artist
Michael Patterson-Carver remains the activist he has always been. But he knows how to give form to that faith in his work. We might think this is what American critics call Outsider Art, a term we might easily translate as Naïve Art. The naïve forms of his drawings, his use of color, the prolific amount of work he produces, growing up in the home of an adoptive family, and the belated discovery of his work are the many elements that might associate him to that movement, whose most celebrated names remain Henry Darger or Martin Ramirez. But Patterson-Carver’s work includes neither narration nor compulsive writing. It seems much more interesting to compare him to a very influential artist in the United States with a highly political body of work — Diego Rivera.
There may be quite a time gap between them. But Rivera’s legacy as a muralist remains strong today and the compositions of his Civil Rights series respond to the issue of mural painting with a political message. Michael Patterson-Carver’s strength lies in the tight relationship between his work and his life, which makes his works veritable tracts, veritable demonstration banners. Beyond the form, his work sheds new light on this relationship between American art and politics in the noblest sense.
Michael Patterson-Carver’s work is represented by the Sorry We’re Closed gallery in Brussels and can be seen, for the first time in France, at the Galerie Laurent-Godin in Paris through February 6, 2010.
Springtime for the Republicans, 2008, ink and pencil on paper, 38x50 cm.
Sorry We’re Closed,
Rue de la Régence, 65A
1000 Bruxelles
www.sorrywereclosed.com
Galerie Laurent Godin,
5, rue du Grenier-Saint-Lazare,
75003 Paris
www.laurentgodin.com
Christoph Ruckhäberle et LIID
Marcel Duchamp
Tale(s)
Let’s play !
Christophe Ruckhäberle represented by gallery Nicolai Wallner,
Copenhague. nicolaiwallner.com
Artists Into the Fray!
MAXENCE ALCADE’s take on art world strategies.
The art world has the particularity of appraising a work commensurate with the reputation of the person who produced it or those in his or her outer circle. That explains why an Oceanic statuette that once belonged to André Breton has a greater value than an identical statuette without “pedigree.” From the artists point of view, it’s that particular dynamic that leads to the winner-take-all effect — the fact that a small handful of artists run off with all the profits — which is the topic of a book by Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook1. In this small world, everyone plays his role — artists produce more or less material objects, gallery owners and dealers come up with forms of exchange for those objects, and art critics produce writings intended to divert the gaze from the verbal shortcomings of artists or the sometimes too obvious greed of dealers. From this point of view, the art world begins to look a little like a Marx Brothers’ farce in which each role is judiciously cast in order to assure that the plot unfolds appropriately. Namely, to determine who will be in the Top Ten of the next Kunst Kompass. This system also allows for plots, quid pro quos and other, more or less improvised, tightrope acts to take shape around it.
Art Guru
Canvases under his arm, a young man exits a building, the words “Beaux-Arts” clearly inscribed on the pediment over his head. Ten men in dark suits bow before him, displaying open briefcases full of cash. High above them — naturally — floats an apparition of the Virgin. Then there’s an inscription at the bottom of the drawing, borrowing the codes of Mexican ex-votos, a kind of Raw Art very much in vogue in the United States. It reads, “December 15, 2004, I graduated from the Beaux-Arts in Paris. I had lots of gallery offers. Eternal gratitude to Mary. Wishes granted. Thanks.”
With his series of ex-votos, Pablo Cots plays with art-world codes, the tools of the trade, the vagaries of the life of an artist ceaselessly vacillating between celebrity and decline. Cots also makes pastiche witch doctor cards intended to guarantee gallery owners “a resolution to all problems, even the most hopeless” — winning back a woman, a female intern or an artist, and even commercial success. Absolutely guaranteed. Dr. Cotsou claims to have “saved a thousand gallery owners in the Americas.” Because as the wheels of success and the evaluation of esthetic qualities become increasingly more complex, all you can do is devote yourself to the saints, even if that devotion seems naïve and old-fashioned.
The art world is also guys in anthracite suits and girls in ultra-chic dresses. It’s all about looking artsy with an appropriate ironic detachment. For Ulla von Brandenburg, that’s all a question of scenery, stagecraft, set dressing.
Clothes and the Man
In Quilt I (2008), she lays out eight dark suits and ties so as to form a geometric pattern in the shape of a wheel. A flower motif appears at the center of Quilt I, as if to overplay the naïveté of the piece. In this case, it’s impossible to know if these suits belong to a café waiter or a Wall Street trader. All that’s certain is their ornamental features. The suit-and-tie goes from serious to grotesque, and winds up obliterating the social differences it traditionally is evidence of.
We find that same scenery, stagecraft and set dressing idea in her film Ein Zaubertrickfilm (2002). Here, von Brandenburg asks her friends to do a magic act for her, with all the amateurishness implicit in such an undertaking. It spotlights a pleasant game of deception. Because for von Brandenburg, “You never really know if it’s real or not. Yet magic acts exist, so we always ask the question.”2
The all too familiar Flemish identity rubs Harald Thys and Jos de Gruyter the wrong way. It’s already been so ridiculed by their compatriots Marcel Broodthaers and, more recently, Luc Tuymans. So the two cronies leap at the chance to compare their artistic irony to what Vlaams Blok3 does in all seriousness. “The reports Vlaams Blok films are very similar to what we do — showing a Party member made up to look Moroccan and wearing a wig.” What amuses Thys and de Gruyter is the exploration of bestiality paradoxically generated by civilization.
Worthy heirs to the Dadaists, Thys and de Gruyter did a performance enacting the bizarre (to say the least) rites of furry communities4. The 48 Hours of Kwik and Kwak (2004) presents the two artists, dressed as monsters, locked in a gallery for two days and fed on a fixed schedule, in a kind of hodgepodge of their own making. Along similar lines, they’ve also presented a skinny acrobat rehearsing a circus act, who never manages to totally carry it off. The acrobat stumbles, falls, hurts himself, as the audience comes to realize how completely uninteresting the nonsensical act is. Yet the poor guy seems determined to polish it up.
The Artist’s Dialectic
All this leads us to realize that Thys and de Gruyter are more interested in playing idiots, not to denounce what society considers to be absurd, but simply for the regressive pleasure inherent in it. Is stupidity more a case of perseverance than a natural gift? Sometimes even their “intention” rings out like a definition of the artist’s craft. “We create characters who are very idiotic, yet persevering and stubborn, who always do the same thing.” In that way, Harald Thys and Jos de Gruyter construct a zany universe in which nothing seems to attempt to be serious for more than three seconds. Sad clown? I don’t know what you’re talking about!
Jana Sterbak’s Proto-Sisyphus gives the performer a contraption that transforms her into a kind of wobbly toy. Like a tightrope walker, balance is always precarious. Only movement keeps the performer from falling. Like Sterbak’s entire body of work, Proto-Sisyphus examines the conditions of our freedom — as much in our potential for movement as in the social representations that make us feel alternately free and constricted.
But contrary to the devices used by feminist artists in the 1960s, Sterbak’s sculptures/performances don’t confine themselves to playing with the suffering body. When all is said and done, that’s a slightly simplistic way of defining a condition. Once you get past the impression of strangeness in the device, Proto-Sisyphus seems like a playful sculpture in which the hampered body of the female performer winds up finding an elegance in the same way that a corset — another instrument of torture for the female body — might generate.
On another level, Eric Duyckaerts takes on an esthetic debate that artists are traditionally excluded from. Composing a grotesque rap song, he begins to knock Immanuel Kant, one of the fathers of Western esthetics, off his pedestal. The artist repeats his carefully considered words about the inventor of transcendental idealism in various tones of voice and in a dubious flow. “I fuck you, Immanuel Kant.5” A ludicrous gap builds between the relatively meager rap vocabulary Duyckaerts uses and the subject of his piece. So the speech is reduced to the simple scanning of Kant’s name accompanied by a flurry of dirty words that seem as though they can be repeated ad infinitum. Beyond the jokey aspect of this work, Duyckaerts shows how the least circular of esthetic theories works. In the end, his puerile “I fuck you” seduces us as much as the thousands of pages of Critiques by the thinker from Königsberg.
Art Battle
This quasi tautological circularity and the improvisation doomed to failure used by numerous contemporary artists allows us to rethink our modes of existence and the survival of art and its ecosystem. Presented like a fable, the moral of this story is probably to be found in the work of Tom Wolfe.
In The Painted Word6, Wolfe relates the ruthless “gang war” on 10th Street in New York City that was played out in the 1960s between the preceding generation of Abstract Expressionists (Pollock, Rothko, De Kooning, etc., supported by Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg) and the Pop Artists of the time (Jasper Johns, Lichtenstein, Warhol, etc., supported by Leo Steinberg, William Rubin and Lawrence Alloway). The artistic clans confront one another by way of intervening critics and exhibitions, like some cheesy remake of West Side Story. With Wolfe, the circus takes on all its glory — a postmodern human comedy in which nothing is really serious despite double dealing and nosedives. Because what remains, in the end, is the audience’s applause.
Worthy heirs to the Dadaists, Thys and de Gruyter did a performance enacting the bizarre (to say the least) rites of furry communities.
1 Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook, The Winner-Take-All Society: Why the Few at the Top Get So Much More Than the Rest of Us, Penguin Books, 1995.
2 An interview with Daria Joubert, Edit, issue 5, “Trouble Boredom / L’Ennui,” 2007.
3 Flemish extreme right, nationalist party.
4 A practice initiated in North America in which individuals, in animal costumes, assemble to abandon themselves in orgiastic celebrations.
5 Eric Duyckaerts, Kant, 2000, video DVD, 6 minutes.
6 Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975.
Mood Curve
(from Warm to Gray) Industrial Choreography
GILLES TOUYARD as interpreted by the warmgrey agency
In October 2009, the WARMGREY creative agency invited artist/choreographer Gilles Touyard to occupy their L’Espace d’en Bas for the length of an exhibition.
A veritable “project room,” that space is as much a gallery as crossroads and work space for the protean, committed creative team. Seizing the circumstances inherent in that traffic, Gilles Touyard came up with an artistic action protocol that fits neatly into daily life at the agency, scripting, modifying and punctuating the most habitual of gestures by staff and visitors. That’s what led to this mood curve.
The space is equipped with a simple apparatus made up of lengths of wood artfully arranged to form a kind of binary spatial/musical score. Each passerby is invited to use that structure to free themselves of items of clothing, hats, gloves or objects they’ve dug out of their pockets. Thus, over the course of the exhibition and depending on daily whims, a surprising ballet took shape — made up of silhouettes and the remnants of bodies that literally disappeared — like shadows of a tacit activity in progress. Perhaps mirroring the creative work that happens just upstairs…
One of the project’s criteria was that each daily composition had to be photographed and Tale(s) is delighted to share the following slideshow of that small metaphysical circus.
L’Espace d’En Bas, 2 rue Bleue, 75009 paris. warmgrey.fr n
reiko underwater
Harmony(s) Editorial
The reason why a blurring of artistic genres is so particularly exciting may perhaps lie in the very idea of performance, be it musical or theatrical. It’s that place where the beginnings of chaos reside, of disorder evoked by the very notion of the circus.
The circus — not as a spectacle of precision and agility, but as a visual representation exploding with wild movement — includes the strange, singular nature of deviant, almost imaginary, beings.
It becomes a kind of original — indeed futuristic and moving — vision of alternative, underground circuits that may approach a sketch of truth.
karine Charpentier
De toutes les images ayant cristallisé les clichés du rock, celle de Marlon Brando en perfecto chevauchant une Triumph Thunderbird 6T dans le film The Wild One reste la plus forte, la plus indélébile, la plus primitive. Si les pionniers ont conquis l’Ouest à cheval, les blousons noirs ont envahi le monde à moto. Dès 1953, le rock, ça n’est donc que ça : un homme, sa moto et la route. Un jukebox dans une station service. Cela suffira à bâtir une mythologie qu’on célèbre encore aujourd’hui, à la manière d’un rituel désincarné. En 1972, il ne faut pas plus de 110 minutes au réalisateur Jérôme Laperrousaz pour faire voler en éclat un mythe qui se voulait éternel. Pour son premier long métrage, Laperrousaz a choisi de suivre le Continental Circus 1969, c’est à dire le championnat du monde de moto qui se déroulait, à l’époque, uniquement en Europe.
Dès les première minutes du générique, le jeune réalisateur (il n’a que 21 ans quand il tourne) nous présente une série d’accidents de moto, et des portraits de coureurs crucifiés sur les circuits. S’ils tournent en rond, c’est aussi qu’il n’y a pas d’autres issues. Au bout de la route, il y a la mort, et rien d’autre. Mais la course est un rush unique qui vaut qu’on y risque sa vie : « Après la première course, ça y était, j’étais accro, déclare un des motards, la course c’est comme la drogue, il faut toujours continuer, dépenser de plus en plus d’argent… je ne sais pas si c’est une bonne ou une mauvaise chose, parfois je souhaite n’avoir jamais commencé. »
Sisyphe et la moto
Dans cette existence violente, les motards ne sont pourtant pas égaux face à la faucheuse. Il y a, d’un coté, les privilégiés, les coureurs d’usine pris en charge par une marque de moto et, de l’autre, les pauvres, les coureurs privés qui doivent se débrouiller seuls pour suivre la compétition à leur frais sur des motos qu’on leur prête. Ils subsistent grâce aux primes qu’on leur octroie durant les courses. Leur vie est dure et la route qui les mènera peut-être à la gloire est un véritable calvaire. Giacomo Agostini est un coureur d’usine. Il est beau, il est riche, les femmes, les medias et les sponsors se l’arrachent. L’arrogance de son talent n’a d’égal que l’invincibilité de son bolide. Il gagne tout le temps (à la fin de sa carrière, il totalisa quinze titres mondiaux, ni plus ni moins, record à battre).
Jack Findlay est un coureur privé, il n’a pas une gueule d’ange, il n’a pas un sous en poche, et vit dans une caravane avec sa compagne/infirmière/manageuse/protectrice Nanou qui tremble sur ses talons hauts à chaque fois qu’il enfourche les motos pourries qu’on veut bien lui prêter. Elle le retrouve souvent à l’hôpital, car en cette saison 69 Jack n’a pas eu beaucoup de chance, il s’est souvent crashé contre les glissières avant de finir la course. Faute d’argent, la mécanique claque. Mais peu importe, en véritable Sisyphe des circuits, Jack remonte toujours en selle. En claudiquant. Chaque fois un peu plus abîmé. Nanou bien plus tard : « Dangers et blessures, les courses étaient violentes, beaucoup de pilotes se tuaient. Nous vivions dans cette atmosphère de liberté et de plaisirs éphémères. J’ai parfois eu la sensation que le rêve de Jack serait de mourir en course... J’étais tellement impliquée dans sa vie que cette idée était probablement fausse. Cet homme avait un courage hors du commun, mais ce courage l’emmenait dans des situations de danger où il aurait encore plus besoin de l’exprimer. Une sorte de cercle vicieux. »
Le Continental Circus est le chemin de croix de Jack Findlay. Il espère un jour y gagner sa place au paradis. C’est son destin, sa passion, il n’a pas le choix. En 1968 il est sacré vice champion derrière Agostini. Mais après avoir grimpé sur la seconde marche du podium, Findlay chute en 1969. Continental Circus raconte ceci : un homme qui tombe mais qui se relève toujours. L’opposition entre Agostini et Finlay a évidemment ici valeur de symbole. David contre Goliath. Tel est le cœur de ce documentaire poignant : suivre un pur qui ne renonce jamais, même s’il sait qu’il n’a aucune chance. Si Agostini incarne ici le winner flamboyant dans toute sa splendeur grinçante, Finlay dépasse la figure imposée de l’éternel perdant, de l’outsider, pour atteindre celle d’une résistance aveugle portée par la seule foi. Un Jésus bardé de cuir défiant l’empire en sillonnant les circuits d’Europe sur son cheval de fer. Bien loin des poses étudiées du rebel without a cause, le motard vu par Laperrousaz est un ange cabossé qui plane très haut, porté par une B.O. tripante confiée à Gong qui exprime a peu près un : « Je serai le plus rapide. J’arrive derrière toi. Ne me vois-tu pas, Agostini ? Je te rattraperai un jour ». Ainsi soit-il. n
Les pochettes de disque figurent une empreinte sociétale précieuse et inaltérable. Tel un manifeste, elles reportent tendances photo et de style. Pour le plaisir des yeux, qui précède celui de l’oreille. Attention, vintage !
Par sabina kangerud et Mathieu Cesarsky
whistletaste.blogspot.com
The Body’s Place In the Confusion
Helga Wretman makes body art. Born in Stockholm, Sweden, she’s lived in Berlin for several years. After earning a degree in contemporary dance at the Royal Swedish Ballet School, she now explores the free and creative sides of performance.
Reiko Underwater: How did you begin your personal research in terms of performance?
Helga Wretman: The fact that I was just a dancer and didn’t take part at all in the decision-making process really bored me. I was a performer on projects I didn’t feel very strongly about. So I initiated my own projects by beginning to experiment with video and performance. I still work with other people as a performer but, from here on in, I’ll only involve myself in projects I find exciting!
It goes without saying that performance is a collaboration with the body. From my point of view, your way of working with your body has something extreme about it that I’d compare to the work of a contortionist. You’re able to play with every part of your body, to do whatever you want with it.
I don’t really see myself as a contortionist. I’ve trained my body to the point that I’m able to do what I want with it. I love the realm of movement on several levels. I love working with movement in extreme situations because visually that can create a surreal sensation.
Nudity also seems to play an important part in your work. Is there a political point of view behind all that or is it more instinctive?
Nudity is a way of getting rid of any situation that clothing brings to the body. On stage, clothing always defines temporality and character. The nude body has a surprising quality to it, because it’s somehow erotic and because it’s something we don’t reveal to everyone in our daily lives. But I think a body clothed simply in underwear, for example, is much more sexual. The nude doesn’t need accessories and there’s nothing to hide. And that’s the best way to create a certain atmosphere.
It seems to me that the body language in your work positions itself between circus act (the body’s place within confusion) and ballet (as physical beauty and perfection). Do you like to play with those two notions? And what does the circus mean to you?
To me, the circus is about creating illusions and being able to do things that the audience can’t imagine are possible. Ballet is a form of circus in the sense that it produces what other people can’t do. The circus, as performance, doesn’t interest me that much. In the circus, I don’t think there’s any place for the confusion of the body. It’s about precision and perfect timing, just as ballet is. That’s what makes it fantastic. I don’t try to be beautiful when I perform and I sometimes use a language of movement that’s completely unbridled, but that doesn’t mean I lose control of what I’m doing.
How do you work when you choreograph something like “A Network of Love,” which you collaborated on with Aids-3D and Donna Huanca*?
That performance in particular was a kind of improvisation. Some things had to happen in a certain order and a certain atmosphere, but otherwise the movements were all improvised. I only work that way when I’m the only performer. Otherwise, yes, I work on the choreography with the help of other dancers. Each project has a process that’s a little different. That’s what’s motivating.
You also worked with Peaches on the “Relax” music video. Could you talk a bit about that?
Peaches and the director, Fubbi Katlsson, came to me with the concept of a mad scientist (Peaches) who is trying to create an army of perfect women and a kind of Frankenstein character who goes awry. Things turn bad and the monster kills her in the end. They contacted me, then Peaches and I worked on the choreography together. It all went very quickly. It was really a lot of fun to do.
I’m very curious about your work as a stuntwoman in films. How did you get into that kind of work?
I’m really a novice at stunt work and I like it a lot. Creating illusions and intense situations on film is really something. I work with the Buff Connection stunt crew in Berlin as a stunt double for children and small women. It’s really interesting and fun to be transformed into another person, who herself has been transformed. The idea came to me after I did a combat performance on stage that had some body stunts. So I thought it would be cool to do that in films. You can’t compare some of the things that happen on stage to what they do in the movies. It’s much more extensive and the situations are very different. I still have a lot to learn and I’m really throwing myself into it. I have to get in a place where I totally trust my crew. And one day, once I’ve done more training, I hope I can offer them a certain amount of security, too. The wildest thing I’ve done was doubling for a 5-year-old girl. I had to slip at the edge of a huge waterfall and get rescued. I was totally safe, thanks to the ropes and harnesses, but it was really an incredible experience.
What projects do you have in the works?
I’m choreographing a performance for Art Basel Miami, called G.S.M. (Global Short Message). The piece will be performed by the Miami Gay Men’s Choir and the 60 members of the Miami Roxy Theater Company. I’m staying in the wings on that one!
(*) A performance at the Exit Art gallery in New York.
