Specific witness - archive for Foam Lab/

The Foam Lab project is a collective form of lab in which a group of people are meeting during several times in 5 months to produce ” foam” coming outside of individual project.
I proposed to elaborate a process of archiving the foam based on the witness principle.
Here each participant will be a witness of each others work.
By binome dating one is following the work of the other.
At the end of the 5 months the participants will be a collective - witness of the lab.
Which will construct a “foam-archive".
In this lab : 11 people will be witness of an artist participant.
A catalogue of witness will be printed and could be contacted by the audience to meet the archive of each work.
Each archive has a different format considering the speciality of the witness.

Principle/

The witness- archive is a person who is giving a witnessing of the work of an artist .
He is first giving an observation of the result of the work given by the artist but also a period of this work ( date and place) in a certain context.
The context is the place where the work is shown.
The witness doesn’t give his own opininon of the work but more a precise description of the final elaboration of it.
He is giving an historical observation of it because the work is made at a certain date in a certain environement.
The archive will be embodied by the memory of the person and could be materialised by any kind of support link to the work to witness about.
But the more important is to be the gaze of the other as a relative person following the process of work.
The witness is different than an audience in the sense that he is not a spectator but an active relation for the construction of the work.
He is participating for testifying of it.
He is collaborating to the work itself.

The witness is made for testifying of experiences that are difficult to document, most of the time if the work is ephemeral or not an object. The witness - archive is made for performances, or in situ unexpected experiences of the work.

There is the time factor which is embodied by a person who is memorizing a moment of work.

The witness will stay the archive after the end of the work, a reachable person who could be able to report of the past work.

Then the archive is not anymore a document but a person.

Classification of works/

The witness - archive is part of the project “Classification".
Which is in itself an art work about how to classificate a work of art.
Classification is querying the way to ordonate your thoughts and your mind in a work of art.
It is not about classifying your art in a specific domain , but more about classifying your logic of constructing a work.
It is a reflection on a daily activity of producing artworks, and about inputs or informations you have to classify a logic of construction.
The rules you give to yourself in the aim to produce a work.
In every day there is a knowledge to embodied and to think about.

1/ To think, to classificate :

How do we think to classificate, ordonate our daily acts?
Put  your clothes in the closet, the veggi in the fridge, the beauty products in the bathroom, to set up the table for a dinner, the books in your library…
How do you think the way you ordonate things even when they are desordonated what is their logic, articulation …
I would like to start to classificate a library : books .
A library is part of your daily life : as a furniture , but as knowledges you pass by , some of them could be only  pleasure to fly trough, some other would be a reading that you will understand few years later or never.
The books in the library could be shared , could be a present you recieved, could be found in the street , could be in different languages, could be a key for understanding a simple thing or a complicated one.
Then ordonating your library could be a way to ordonate your mind …

This project is taken source in the Georges Perec book «  to think, to classificate » :

« a library that you don’t ordonate , is not ordonating : it’s an example that was given to me to make me understand what was entropy , and that i tried many times by experimentation..
The desorder in a library is not by itself a wrong thing; it is belonging to „ in which  drawer did i put  my socks?“ : we always believe that we knew where we put by instinct this book ort this other book , and even if we don’t know , it is not difficult to skim faster trough  the shelving“

After a reading of this book, i was playing as a every day game « to think » how to classificate and ordonate objects in my flat.
I put myself under tools and reflexion of how my mind can think to classify or be chaotic, what was my interns methods of work , of construction and logic..

2/ Defining tools of classification :

Tools of classification could be explored by:
-     intuition
-     colors
-     words from the same family
-     words beginning by the same letter
-     shapes,
-     sizes,
-     weight,
-     number of pages
-     themas
-     styles of characters
-     nature of images
-     taste
-     texture of the cover
-     authors
-     etc…

Each way to classificate will be questioned.

How to do a solo if you are never alone with yourself? how to do a solo if you are yourself already several people? Coming back to the canonical form of the contemporary dance "Five minutes thirty three" is emphasize the paradoxes and the absurdity.
While the work seems to be foremost an interior dialogue, we could realise very fast that there are more people on stage that we could believe when this sentence is said: "She is wondering how many gestures and persons she has in the mind."
We could discover later that the work is articulated around the way back of the individual and the group, in between inclusion and exclusion of the gaze.
The solitude here is a dynamical force, necessary for the making of the individual.

Duration : 45 min.
Concept and performance : Kim Liên Desault
Dramaturgy, assistance : Florent Delval
Texts: Kim Liên Desault et Florent Delval
Translations live : Teresa Acevedo (spanish), An Mertens (deutsch),
Michel Yang (english).
Costume : Patricia Fernandez

Co-production : La Casa Encendida (Madrid)
Thanks to APT and De Singel (Anvers)


 

Link: http://www.kimliendesault.blogspot.com/

www.kimliendesault.com

 Kim-lien Desault is working in the performing arts field.
She did a postgraduate school of performance researches in Anvers (Belgium).
 KLD is studying movement through Yoga, martial arts and improvisation technics.
She is playing improvised music with objects .
She created "classifegetation" (2008) ,"Cinq minutes trente trois " (2008)," Blinking in the cities" video (2008)," To Do "(2006)
And other projects in collaboration with:
-Teresa Acevedo " Below the page"
- Florent Delval "This Must Be the place".
- Olivier Toulemonde "Tables".
- Emergency Room by Thierry Geoffroy
- An Mertens about scores and notations in new technologies