On the occasion of ArtGenève, Flux Laboratory presents Nature & Body and gives carte blanche to three artists who will present their work related to nature in the form of videos and performances.

 

 

Une minute de danse par jour – Nadia Vadori-Gauthier 

 

In January 2015, following the attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris, the choreographer Nadia Vadori-Gauthier decided to initiate an act of poetic resistance, One Minute of Dance per Day, in order to respond to this difficult context with sensitivity and not to give in to the fear or the flabbergasting caused by the shock of the events.

 

She chose to use her dance-performance tools in everyday spaces, to share them with others and to cross bodies and views, driven by the need to create links and to make life circulate. She embarked on what she believed to be an instantaneous and ephemeral action, without suspecting that she was initiating a long-term adventure woven with elements of current events.

 

Une minute de danse par jour is a daily act of poetic resistance, involving dance and video. It engages the body in relation to contexts, circumstances and environments.

 

Its realization implies dancing one minute every day in everyday spaces, outdoors or indoors, with those it encounters: artists, friends, strangers, shopkeepers, city officials, elderly people, students... And to publish the dances online the same day on the Internet and on social networks.

 

Une minute de danse par jour also questions the place of dance in different everyday spaces, including the urban space. In some of the dances, the body is incorporated into the materials of the city (urban furniture, architecture, etc.) or into the gestures of those who work there, in order to displace the habits of looking, to play with the body's inscription in space and to see what dance can do, in terms of an aesthetic medium - somatic, poetic - the politics of experience and transformation. Each dance bears witness to a particular day and their succession. Little by little, a series is developed which, like a diary, is inscribed in a historicity woven from both private and public, intimate and collective elements.

 

This project constitutes over time a danced testimony of our time.

 

 

One One One – Ioannis Mandafounis 

 

One One One is a creation by the dancer and choreographer Ioannis Mandafounis. Two chairs await two spectators, inviting them to experience a unique moment during which two performers will dance for them. Through One One One, the dancers take the spectators into an uncomfortable, but awakening experience. They translate and transform the feelings of the audience, offering a new dance experience. With subversive humour and ever-changing movements, the two dancers weave a complex array of emotions and images and create a magical moment of interaction with the audience: an experience that challenges roles and boundaries and that, although public, remains totally private.

 

In the summer of 2021, Flux Laboratory Athens invited filmmaker Yannis Karpouzis to accompany dancers Despina Sanida-Krezia, Leda Diochnou, Thanos Ragkousis and Symeon Tsakiris on a dance experience in Greece: a series of performances followed an imaginary sea route: from the port of Spetses, to the slopes of Dimitsana, to the lake of Stymphalia, to the mountainous village of Vyzitsa, to the lagoon of Messolonghi and the waters of the island of Tinos.

 

The performance took place "outside": in the small mountainous areas above the rivers, under the thousand-year-old plane trees, near the water springs, the salt waters or the busy harbours. The performance took place "there" with the people; with residents, travellers, visitors, who were invited to sit in a chair, fully connected with their body and mind. Through a performative practice taking place in nature, the project is based on the need to question the notion of attention, especially in an era of saturation and sensory overload. In the form of an experiment, One One One delves into the discourse of the "ecology of attention", reminding us of the natural body rhythms that technology and accelerated life have taught us to abandon. 

 

Yannis Karpouzis' camera documented the process, resulting in a series of experimental documentaries on the performance process, interweaving the dance movement and dancing bodies, with the bodies of the spectators-participants and their landscapes.

 

 

Why this now? Water – Lucie Eidenbenz

 

The choreographer Lucie Eidenbenz proposes, through her work, to experiment different ways of inhabiting the earth. She calls for inter-species conviviality, hybridization, the exploration of a plant world with which our existences are intertwined, and the way in which natural elements are manifested in the physical, social and mental dimensions of our lives.

 

Why this now? is a 27-minute film series, shot in its entirety in Geneva. It is composed of 4 episodes: FIRE, WATER, EARTH, AIR. The episode WATER (duration 8min) is the episode presented at Art Genève. 

 

The film features a group of 4 characters in search of something. Marked by a form of carelessness concealing a feverish state, they gather (Fire), run (Water), help each other (Earth), disperse (Air). We follow this small group through the filter of a camera that directs the gaze towards the interactions woven with the materiality of space, as well as the living beings that inhabit and compose it.

 

The humour that underlies the situations in which these characters evolve in and that they co-create, reflect at the same time a quest for connection, the tragedy of a relationship to a fragmented world and the absurdity of certain human behaviours.

 

The 4 elements are evoked in a subtle and shifted way, their presence and their influence manifest themselves through states of the body, actions, rhythm, or even the point of view of the camera.

 

In Water, it is the continuous thread of water that is at work, but also its power that which sweeps everything in its path and makes its way through, over, under and around obstacles. A voice is superimposed on the image extracts from the novel-poem The Waves by Virginia Woolf. Are our lives a quiet river, or a 'rushing stream of broken dreams'? Who has water? Who doesn't? What does our 70% of water in our bodies mean? What is the difference between sweat and tears?

 

Water was shot on the pontoons of the Cologny quay, a circular floating wooden platform which suggests the rings of Saturn - rings composed of 95% ice water! The camera shoots in a sequence shot, getting progressively closer to the bodies which gain in intensity and accompanies the circular movement that carries them along.

 

The energy of the water, which does not stop, whose mass is amplified in its course, carries our four characters along in an increasingly disordered flow. Carrying objects, clothes, accessories, the water strips the bodies of their superfluous and useless layers, leaving room for nudity and contemplation.

 

Artistic direction, choreography, direction: Lucie Eidenbenz

Artistic collaboration, camera: David Huwiler

Performance: Pauline Huguet, Sofia Kouloukouri, Hervé Munz, Lucie Eidenbenz

Sound creation: Ivan Verda

with extracts from Virginia Woolf's The Waves

Production: Association Brøcøliwald

Subsidised by the City of Geneva

With the support of the FEEIG - Fonds d'encouragement à l'emploi des intermittent-e-s genevois-e-s