Testimony(ies) in Version(s) by Mehdi Idir, assiduous spectator


“All that we can really do is start over… Start over
from the beginning… So, we’re going to try to prepare
everything as quickly as possible… It’s 9.25 pm, we
started late, but we’re just going to take 10 minutes.
Sorry… Thanks.”
Cuqui Jerez, The Real Fiction

Most of us experience life as a linear progression…
but this is an illusion because every day, life presents
us with an array of choices… each choice leads to a
new path, creates a new reality. […] Dejà-vu is just a
glimpse of the other side. We get the feeling that we’ve
already been there and it’s true, we have, in another
reality. It’s another path that we already took.”
Walter Bishop, Fringe, season 1 – episode 19


Black.
Certainly, it’s a habit in all of your performances to question the notion of representation. What are its limits and how can we play with them? What is the nature of the relationship that is formed between the work and the audience? How can we play with the audience’s expectations? Where does fiction start and reality stop? As I always have ever since I have been watching your work, I have to be ready for anything, and to start with – even if I feel like it’s the first time – for that blackness and that silence.

Lights.
Somewhere around the middle of the day, in the middle of some other place, the sun is high, dazzling. Something like the beach on Ibiza, maybe? That’s where you’re grandmother’s been living since last year, right… In Ibiza? In Ibiza??? Not so sure… Then maybe on the sun-drenched edge of the pool where cocktail glasses clink together, under the sparkling eyes of the famous Tiger… For the moment, this seems more like the deserted hour, the point zero for what will become my story, our story, the first glance we give to the other side, that ties us and perhaps holds us back: hardly anything at all, nothing really, emptiness…!

Black.
Today still, I am searching and grasping without really understanding how during that one short hour, that interval that was as open as it was brief, how you were able to turn me upside down and play with me. By the way, what’s that noise???

Lights.
Just as I thought, this is definitely not the beach on Ibiza… Even if your grandmother is there, you certainly wouldn’t see any pushcarts! Just who do you think I am? Somewhere in the middle of another space, in the middle of another time that we have to build quickly, in the half-darkness of the back room, a shop or a hangar, in the infinite in-between-space that after the building will become your place, your house, your theatre here. Well, what, a simple pushcart, just like that, does that seem like a possible beginning to you?

Black.
Reality must be somewhere else, in the middle of that ford that I have to cross every time, unless it’s definitively stuck at the end of the race with the second pushcart that is added and all the following ones, unidentified rolling objects. What’s the difference between a shopping trolley and a hand truck? Will I recognize myself in it like you promised? When will you stop playing with me and taking down and breaking all the points of reference?

Lights.
The reign of the multiplication of objects defying all logic of accumulation and to start with: with you, one plus one easily makes more than two, fusion is greater than addition… Why did you bring me to this increasing infinity, in this wave of the material, this endless Bedlam? Do you hope I will get lost there and give in or that it will drown me like a tsunami? Maybe it is the beach on Ibiza after all; I think I recognise your grandmother’s umbrella…

Black.
Since I always worry half-way through this dark box, feeding on the frights that might be there… Worried too when I have to leave the blank screen (you can get used to anything!) and the lights reveal the effects of the causes that were carefully hidden away: an unlikely inventory, to the point of saturation, with series, families, that’s certain, that roll, that hold, that cable, electrify, hang, fall, join together, remind us of a hypothetical everyday… and come to sculpt space, perpetually changing not just the objects that it contains but their family and the frame that they were put in.

Lights.
Another upset, this time during what looks like the end of a day, when night has just fallen, the ear still worried from having passed through the black room. After our treasure hunts, in the middle of this unbelievable mess, after our role playing games all the way to the funny one where I tirelessly seek any trace that you might have left and you appear, perched, as if outside of even your world. Did you know what you were doing when you appeared? Did you know how much what would follow would leave an image of you “impressed” in the middle of the tower? How much your being suspended on high in each position you occupied would remind me of the omnipotence of those “deus ex machinas” that seek to impress in Baroque twilights?

Black.
What a shock that was to me when you appeared! Suddenly, I, feeling more in the right place, I hardly dared to breath, less alone with myself and certainly even more worried: from now on, silence is what fills our darkness. Not really reassuring, quite the contrary… and all the time imagining any kind of monster standing ready to spring from the darkness. What came before has already upset so many rules that you seem to have set…

Lights.
Motionless, you look like the guardian of a magic lair who hides her actions from the light of day and prefers to operate in the shadows. You govern your world, dominate all these objects, using a learned telekinesis of the darkness. Unless your ultimate goal is simply to manipulate me… Are you trying to seduce me by pulling that old apple trick? Do you think that in today’s world Adam’s lesson could be forgotten? Do you think that if we moved straight on to potato crisps I wouldn’t see the same string attached? You can try making noises in the light or another of your manipulations all you like, letting your hair down like some Salome and giving me an updated dance of the seven tee-shirts, I won’t be caught in your traps. Put away your shirtology and all the references that go with it!

Black.
I can tell that you’re preparing another surprise for me. Something that I’m definitely not expecting this time. A new beginning, another one, that will open up another pathway. What have you got for me? Just how far will you go? What other limits will you not dare to cross? Can’t you even upset everything?

Lights.
Something like the approach and the discovery, or like after meeting: you and him in the confused mess of a house. Are the two of you moving in? Have you already come there as you would come to the edge of a fountain? Like the first morning of the world, in the airy vapour of the beginning of Time. You are the first people to enter this place; you are the first to look at one another. To offer these looks to each other, making everything that I have seen into a vast prologue. You draw near to each other, little by little, nearer to us too, decreasing distances. We are already together.

Black.
Today still I am searching and grasping in my forgetful memory, agitated and bothered with everything that I have felt during this “crazy evening”: how could I, certainly not the last of the audience – certainly not for you! – how could I both literally forget myself, let go, lose myself and discover myself so much through this experience.

Lights.
Something like the post-disaster. You are all there, in the almost dark. The place is devastated, destroyed by the great waves, contrasting with your calm. You remain silent for a moment, almost frozen, like when you have been through a storm together, when you know that you just barely escaped disaster and all that’s left is a big ring on the water? Later, your voices will echo it, with the sweetness of the first words. This is the first time, the new world.

Black.
Light playing on mirrors, repeatedly, spreading out everywhere after this number, here and elsewhere, pulling or weaving the threads of a trap that it is always pleasant to fall into, to fall into again and again and let oneself go.

Lights.
After that, your voices come back to us, almost familiar already, for a new episode, another path, another litany. It’s almost funny to see you again searching amongst yourselves for the essence of things, as if it were a challenge, or again, a game. Another series. Lively, cuddly, knowing. Where one voluntarily provokes the other, to the point of absurdity. Where we could remain if the inescapable didn’t come to turn it all off.

Black.
What difference is there now between you and me?

Lights.
Today still, trouble assails me and no general or particular theory about my “commitment” in this proposal seems as if it could elucidate it for me.

Black.


Paris, 27 November 2011



Textpublished in Le Journal des Laboratoires January-April 2012