Chantier 2014-2018

IRCAM/Centre Pompidou-Grande salle-Paris

France

Stage Design, Director François Verret
Graham F. Valentine actor-singer
Jean-Pierre Drouet percussions and voice
Martin Schütz electric cello
Charline Grand, Jean-Christophe Paré actors-dancers
Video Claire Roygnan
Lighting Raphael de Rosa
IRCAM Computer Music Design Grégory Beller

François Verret will begin his vast 5-year project "Chantier 2014-2018" at IRCAM, passing through Paris, Grenoble, and Edinburgh. Chantier 2014-2018 combines sound fragments and vocal trenches, acoustic and optical landscapes, visual haikus, and the utterances of a ventriloquist. An on-the-fly assembly of tableaux vivants inspired by the hallucinations of those who come back from the battlefield, haunted by the ghosts of History; time is sometimes paused to show us the true nature of a still life. Chantier 2014-2018 is written like an improvised and premeditated journal, intermittent and collective. A crucial movement or the unique way the space has been arranged undermines the masterful authority of speech, of fiction, or of a date.
How does one expose an event, be it trivial or historical, sifting through uncertain, fading, outrageous memories? In his "pre-posthumous works", Robert Musil describes the agony of a fly caught in Tanglefoot, the threat of a flying arrow, a buzzing of iron in the southern Tyrol sky above the lines of combat. A horrifying feeling of foreboding mixed with an unexpected happiness.
Constantly on the lookout for these moments of shock, François Verret, as a playwright, engages a group of close artists-actors, dancers, musicians, and video artists-simultaneously in his research lab.
Where to start? In the very environment of the front lines.

François Verret : Chantier