For its second year now, the Performées program has been put together to echo Aimée, the wall painting that Renée Levi did in 2021 on the façade of La Villa du Parc. But it is also meant to work its way into Niels Trannois’s show titled In Praesentia and spark a dialogue with the different through lines of that exhibition’s various narratives. The program is built around questions of our memory of objects, bodily and auditory presences that are ghostly and evocative, like a recollection. And the way the featured artists collaborate, combining their fields of experimentation and artistic expression, lies at the heart of this half-day of artworks that are very much part of the performing arts as well.

PROGRAM:

4pm-9pm: EAAPES by Charlotte Houette & Clara Pacotte

EAAPES is a French acronym for “Exploration of Alternative Arrivals of Extra-Solar Origin,” a group for collective artistic research headed by the artists Charlotte Houette and Clara Pacotte which focuses on queer issues and the plurality of feminisms in science fiction. Basing their work on shared experiences, translations of fictions and theoretical essays, the two artists have published collections of texts and put together workshops in which they and participants tackle questions touching on “hybrid bodies, inclusive writing, gender variables, and utopian and dystopian social projections.”

We are seeking people who would like to participate and work with the artists on texts and – why not? – bring in new content.

Starting at 7pm :

Beauté na yo by Monika E. Kazi

On view in La Villa’s veranda, Beauté na yo is an installation, an “object-body” or “sensory assemblage” containing a possible storyline, with texts and embedded visuals that are activated during the performance, which the artist sees as a form of ritual. It’s a question of appearances, beauty, textures, roles, memories, introspection, colonial history, and several layers of meaning that emerge when read aloud and through repeated gestures going on around this furniture and its female connotations – here boasting multiple ways in.

Calling The Operator by Axelle Stiefel and Octave Magescas

Starting with a body of juxtaposed archives created by the two artists – sounds and texts that have been “recorded, gleaned, addressed, forgotten, unearthed, refreshed, and digested, like memory” – Octave Magescas and Axelle Stiefel offer the public a shared audio experience in which chance and composition create correspondences between here and elsewhere. Everyone is invited to use their telephone (transformed into an instrument for the performance) to activate the QR source code on an imaginary geographical map that extends the collective experience to a sound landscape. Each map also serves as a concert kit, enabling users to explore sound materials beyond the performance itself.

Episode by Mélissa Guex and Charlotte Vuissoz

As hybrid performances done in a range of settings, be it public, private, scenic, or right in the world of contemporary art, Episodes combine a dance piece choreographed by Mélissa Guex and a musical composition by Charlotte Vuissoz. The performances generate a collection of costumed characters who bring along with them various accessories while moving around in and leaving their mark on the venue. The two artists each create a narrative inspired by details that are peculiar to each context, then blend them during a performance that involves on-site improvisation.