LA PROMENADE DU SCEPTIQUE

Held at:
Academy of Fine Arts, Venice (IT), June 2011.
Theatre Academy, Helsinki (FI), June 2011. In occasion of LAPSody.
PPP Progr Performance Plattform, Bern (CH), June 2011. In occasion of PPP Progr Performance Platform. Curated by Gisela Hochuli.
Galerie KUB, Leipzig (DE), October 2011. In occasion of Blauverschiebung. Curated by Christian Liefke and Franziska Eissler.

Dress design and realization: Students of Department of Design, Accademia di Belle Arti, Venice.

A dark space. The public enters with LED lights and torches. They discover in the centre of the room a blanket covered with broken glass pieces, on one side of the room a woman sitting on a chair, dressed in pages of a book, on the opposite site of the room a man with a big book in his hands. The partners whistle to each other through the darkness and distance. The woman's face is covered by her hair, the man's by a blindfold. The man walks blindly towards the centre. The woman's position on the chair continuously collapses and retakes. The man places the big book in the centre of the blanket on the floor and breathes on its cover and pages until exhaustion. The woman walks blindly towards the centre, crumbling white pages with each step. The man takes off his shoes and blindly enters the carpet of broken glass. The woman, blind and stiff, falls towards the blanket's centre. The man catches her falling body. She walks one time around the blanket, with each step falling onto its centre, the man always catches her, they are both blind. The man takes the woman on his arms and turns around himself in the middle of the broken glass. He places the woman to stand on the big book. He wraps up the blanket with the glass pieces. The woman uncovers her face. The man takes off his shirt. The woman exits the position and the man takes her place. The woman takes off a piece of latex from this back and invites the audience one by one to write on the man's back, asking them: "Do you remember?"

The performance and its title are inspired by the 1747 book "La Promenade du Sceptique" by Denis Diderot.

Photograph by Efa Mühlethaler (Bern)