Leur corps ayant pris la parole à leur place

Video and sound installation

Duration : 60′ – 2019 creation

I think it’s good to be comfortable with hairs… Long live hairs!!

Samantha

Vikings had long hair and that didn’t make them unmanly men.

Dorian

Strong men cry, are sensitive… it’s hard to be a woman, but even harder to be a black woman!

Aicha

We are all equal so I don’t see why we should be below men. We can do a lot of different things but in the end we all have the same impact.

Jade

Arthur Perole and Lynda Rahal (dancer, performer) supervised workshops on the theme of gender and the possibilities of (re)defining a free, singular and collective identity, in two middle classes in Marseille and Draguignan. That is to say about fifty young people from 11 to 14 years old from two different socio-cultural backgrounds but caught up in the same generational momentum. From meetings to reflections, from conversations to personal accounts, the project evolved, giving birth to an arrangement with voices and images carried out by Tadeo Kohan (exhibition curator) and Mujo Production (sound, images). Leur corps ayant pris la parole à leur place is a visual and sound installation designed as an ambulatory space…

“The immersive work questions – through a series of postures, gestures, dances and words – the ways of showing oneself, of presenting oneself, of inventing oneself in front of the other. To conceive identity in a reciprocal relationship between the observed and the observer, to develop a self-awareness tested by the presence of the other.

Borrowed from a passage of Edouard Louis’s novel The End of Eddy, the title of the exhibition refers to the revolt of the bodies, an instrument of social demonstration that is both intentional and beyond control. Leur corps ayant pris la parole à leur place thus deals with the way in which bodies sometimes speak in spite of ourselves: these moments when attitudes go beyond words, reveal the unconscious, assert identities in the subtlety of an involuntary gesture, of a discreet look or smile, of the pulled-up sleeve of an overly long sweater. The individuals facing the audience observe, speak, wait, dance. Dance is central here: witness to a bodily relationship between the intimate and the audience.” – Tadeo Kohan

Cast and creative
An exhibition of Arthur Perole
With the collaboration de Lynda Rahal
Commissaire : Tadeo Kohan
With the participation of the Collège Général Ferrié (classe 403) at Draguignan et Collège Edgar Quinet at Marseille (classe 603).
Sound and video : Mujō Production
Production : Sarah Benoliel
Administration : Anne Vion

Production : Compagnie F
Coproduction : KLAP Maison pour la danse // Théâtres en Dracénie

With the support of la Fondation BNP Paribas dans le cadre du programme Dream Up
Sponsorship : la Fondation de France dans le cadre du programme Grandir en Culture

” The visual and sound exhibition Leur corps ayant pris la parole à leur place, by choreographer Arthur Perole, does not claim to paint the portrait of a generation. It does say a lot, however. Girls-boys relationships, perception of the concept of gender, discrimination, religion, future, the teenagers reveal their truths. With spontaneity, modesty, humour. (…) By means of a system involving various screens and speakers, the image is separated from the sound.

‘It allows you to listen to a speech without bonding it to a face’, explains Tadeo Kohan, curator of the exhibition. ‘They were asked to dance to their favorite music. The idea was to show how bodies speak in spite of ourselves. We can also see what tiny details say about who we are. The result is a patchwork of unassigned identities.’ Liberated or even liberating words and movements.”

Zibeline