|
|
How to describe a friend to a group of people who don’t know him? Such descriptions are familiar to all of us from everyday conversation and vary invariably depending on the identity of the person described (man or woman, white or black). While studying the question, I wondered how I was described by others and discovered that it was often as “that girl who laughs a lot.” So apparently laughter is characteristic of my persona; it’s what ties me to the outside world, it’s what is “sent” by me and “received” by others. As it happens, such exchanges of energy in everyday life are the subject of my work. I constantly question conventions established by “the theater” and am specifically interested in the energy that circulates between people on stage and those in the audience, through an invisible fourth wall. The project Laugh therefore proposes the following experiment: one person (Antonia Baehr) is on stage in front of an audience and laughs. Laughter is communicative, so the theater becomes a kind of mirror to the stage: laughter is produced on stage and in the audience. This laughter has no reason, it is not forced, nor is it a reaction to something comic. The complexity and the multiplicity of what happens is visible thanks to the simplicity of the exterior form. This project is a continuation of my work on parts and the paternity of artwork. Since I can’t be alone, but exist only in the mirror my friends hold up to me, I will ask them to write me a part for the play. The parts must be formulated with precision because each word will influence the result: the interpretation, execution (in this case laughter) and thus the effect produced could vary considerably depending on the initial guidelines. On the other hand, there is no limit to the way the parts are interpreted (we may understand laughter as bodily movement or compose it following musical principals, it can also be produced and formulated according to the parameters of theatrical acting). The project relates back to certain minimalist experiments of the 1960s; some of Dan Graham’s investigations were a source of inspiration, even if in Laugh the mirror remains immaterial, a fourth dimension. The form will be simple, organized as a series of “tasks” or “an activity per task”. For me, getting to the heart of the matter of what the theater is and can be, means simplifying the situation to the extreme, avoiding useless accessories, and not getting caught in a story, or dramatic sequence of events. Nevertheless, this project diverges from the minimalism of the 60s in one fundamental respect: it isn’t looking for a utopian form of “pure” neutrality. I don’t wish to advance the postulate of a universal and impersonal laugh but rather to hold the sociological and sexual dimensions of our perception of outside phenomena up to a critical light. Laugh will be a “portrait” of Antonia Baehr realized through the eyes and the perception of others.
Antonia Baehr, December 2006
|
| |
|
Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers sont une association régie par la loi 1901, subventionnée par la Ville d’Aubervilliers, le Conseil général de la Seine-Saint-Denis, le Conseil régional d’Île-de-France, le Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication (Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles d’Île-de-France). Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers sont membres du réseau TRAM
|
