]domaines[ CAPITAL

Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier
31 March 2012. studio bagouet
in collaboration with festival hybrides4

Invited to take part in the project ]domaines[, I wanted to gather ideas that reveal a social and political practice of art. Indeed, I am really interested in artistic and cultural processes that question our relation to the world and to the living. My eye and my curiosity wander now in the global field of what make the “cultural matrix” of our shared world without favoring any disciplinary field in particular. 

]domaines[ is thus an inspiring idea thanks to the possibilities it implies. I therefore tried to imagine a content that would take into account what motivates me from my place as a man and as an artist today: my relation to the other, to the economics of the living, to the “experience” applied to the daily nature of my condition, to the notion of “temporary community”. Michel Schweizer

With the will to keep on looking at the living as non-programmable, as priceless and devoid of monetary value, Michel Schweizer and his cultural entity ironically named “LA COMA, profit center” set the boundaries of ]domaines[

Exhibition and performance

Since January 2009, Dorothée Baumann documents the implementation and development of the new multidisciplinary center to study the cerebral bases of human mental functions, emotions, and behavior as well as dysfunctions due to neurological or psychiatric diseases, the « Brain and Behavior Laboratory » (Geneva-CH). A photographic series and a performance were produced, specially created for ]domaines[, in collaboration with a researcher of the BBL, a digital native and Michel Schweizer. The audience member can feel dizzy imagining what is at stake here and now in the laboratory, as a recording device of our individualities aimed to serve, in a more or less near future, apps about which we still know nothing.

Public reporting

As part of his next creation and in the context of ]domaines[ CAPITAL, Michel Schweizer wanted to exhibit the bases that will make up his new choreographic project with the participation of six guests among whom a group of male ballet dancers at the beginning of a professional transition that will result in a gradual detachment from the disciplinary excellency acquired during their short career.

Six guests / Six scans will make the evening up. Each scan will last about 10 minutes and will present the results of the meeting between Michel Schweizer and each of the guest. The scans will be combined with the artistic idea of Jeanne Gillard and Nicolas Rivet named – Appendices (Appendixes) – Dancer Training (CH-2011). The concept is inspired by a process regularly used during restriction times. It is about placing bicycles set in motion in the cellars and other annexes of buildings as a power source. Today, ecological considerations about power consumption make luxury institution like the hotel brand Crowne Plaza offer the same measures to their clients by using the sports equipment of the hotel. Labourg and leisure are therefore combined in the same activity.

Dance piece

Bi-portrait Yves C. is the opportunity to ask about the other in the form of crossed portraits. In the “augmented duet” Mickaël Phelippeau and Yves Calvet, Breton traditional dance choreographer mainly start by looking at the local round dance of North Finistère practice in circle and with continuous singing, in order to extract sharing situations and experiences by shifting them from one another. From then on, in a round form, who is the center?

How can one take the shared space in a duet? What part of sensitivity and intimacy can emerge in a process of practice exchange?

Screening

England, sub, 2010, 14’, documentary

Ai Weiwei, Chinese dissident artist’s work is exemplary in the political stance and its relation to the world. The video Sunflower seeds made with the support of Tate Modern in London is a brilliant display of the artist’s ability to use an institution and its consumerist logics to strategically develop a human initiative that ends up with the creation of a work with strong symbolical and cultural value. 

Screening

Australia, sub, 2010, 10’

Nigel Marsh lists the organization of an ideal day that combines family time, personal time and productivity, and offer exhilarating perspectives to get there.