Part of the exhibition The Real Thing?

Courtesy of the artist

This screening is presented in the context of The Real Thing?, an exhibition where diverse attitudes towards performance question the ambiguous terrain of the real, challenging its construction and our mediated experience of it.

Véronique Doisneau and Pichet Klunchun and myself  by Jérôme Bel, present the reflexive approach of the artist, dancer and choreographer, stripping bare the tenants of performance to expose and reflect on its constructs. His work can be seen as challenging the Aristotelian notion of direct speech, the moment when the performer (in the broad sense of the term) addresses the audience and the other, in order to force a distinction between a predetermined script that is being followed and an undefined space that allows for the self-determination of the actor/individual. The resulting distinction – and its subsequent blurring – draws into question the act of performance itself in the public and relational sphere, and the impossibility of differentiating the staged from an authentic site of being.

Biography:

Jérôme Bel (born in 1964 in France) lives in Paris and works worldwide. His performances include Disabled Theater (2012), premiered at dOCUMENTA(13), Pichet Klunchun and Myself (2005), Véronique Doisneau (2004), The Last Performance (1998), and, in 2001, The Show Must Go On, for which he received the Bessie, a New York Dance and Performance Award, in 2005.

Work descriptions:

Jérôme Bel, Veronique Doisneau, 2004, 37 min., © France 2005 – Opera National de Paris – Telmondis

Coproduced by the Opera National de Paris, Telmondis in association with France 2

Jerome Bel was supported by the Direction regionale des affaires culturelles d’Ile-de-France (French Ministry of Culture and Communication) and by Cultures France (French Ministry for Foreign Affairs) for its international tours.

Invited to make a piece for the ballet of the Paris Opera by her director Brigitte Lefèvre, Jérôme Bel wanted to stage a kind of theatrical documentary on the work of one of the dancers of the ballet: Véronique Doisneau.

The dancer, closed to the retirement age, alone on stage, retrospectively and subjectively considers her own career as ballerina in the institution itself.

Jérôme Bel, Pichet Klunchun and myself, 2005, 105 min.

A commission by Tang Fu Kuen for the Bangkok Fringe Festival.

Produced by Bangkok Fringe Festival (Bangkok), SACD Le Vif du Sujet (Paris), Festival Montpellier Danse 2005 (Montpellier), R.B. Jérôme Bel (Paris).

With the support of Cultures France (Paris), French Alliance of Bangkok, Cultural Service of the French Embassy in Bangkok and « The Flying Circus Project » in Singapore.

A direct dialogical confrontation between two artists who know nothing about each other and who have very different aesthetic practices. They expose different societal constructs such as euro-centrism, multiculturalism and so-called globalized culture. The conversation produces a theatrical and choreographic documentary that attempts to address their respective ‘real’ situation.