Filmed performances, 2018-2019
Whith : Valérie Blanchon, Marie Deren, Pierre Guyotat, Florence Lazar, Petra Marcuz, Cécile Portier, Isabelle Rivoal, Pia Viewing, Sophie Wahnich.
In a dream — a kind of found object — Petra visits an exhibition organised by the artist. Based on her account, the artist develops the collaborative project Discourir du rêve au cœur du rêve — a title borrowed from the Zen monk Dōgen (13th century) —. She invites several close collaborators to undergo a similar hypnotic experience, within a setting composed of her recent paintings depicting workers at work. The spoken narration of visions unfolds during this waking dream state.Eight people take part in this filmed performance, including the writer Pierre Guyotat, a few months before his passing.
The focus thus shifts away from the artefact or the artwork as an object that interrogates the world with the aim of transforming it, toward the activation of the imagination. This suspends the work in potential, within a dispositif that seeks the simple beauty of relation to the other, in the intimacy of the studio. The theme of labour operates in the background of the artistic process, creating a form of mise en abymThrough this work without end, without inside or outside — akin to the Möbius strip used in the performance in homage to the Brazilian artist Lygia Clark — Florence de Comarmond seems to have opened the possibility of unfolding her artistic practice beyond her own control, through the multiplication of authors, but also beyond her own existence.
Discourir du rêve au cœur du rêve may also be understood as a reflection on the work at the heart of the work itself.
