CHRISTELLE LHEUREUX - L’EXPÉRIENCE PRÉHISTORIQUE

With Oscar Van Den Boogaard and Midori Sawato L’Expérience Préhistorique is inspired by Gion no Shimai (Sisters of the Gion), one of the first spoken films by Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi, made in 1936 in Kyoto. Christelle Lheureux used the soundtrack as a source of inspiration for a new silent movie of the same length, with the same settings and characters, who, barely moving, seem to be waiting for a voice and a storyline. Several actors were invited to invent a story through improvisation, from their own language and subjectivity, as an investigation into various ways to interpret the relationships between the characters. Even though the resulting accounts vary; they reveal a common structure of the social interactions themselves. In the installation two interpretations are offered: Dutch and Japanese, with the silent film in the middle, linking two perspectives, two voices, interpreting dual viewpoints. Male and female, the contrast of oriental/ European. The hyper expression and the classicism of Midori Swato co-existing with the laconic attitude and narrative of Oscar Van Den Boogaard.

audio | col.
spoken | ja, fr | english
installation

Christelle Lheureux In her video work and installations Christelle Lheureux (°1972) explores the formal conventions of cinema and television. She deconstructs the narrative constructions and the mechanisms of projection and identification, creating sterile, anonymous surroundings, encompassed by emptiness. Because of the dismantlement and reconfiguration of signifying, representational elements of cinema and television – mainly sound, image and language – room for interpretation is created, in which individual trajectories and experiences might be recorded.

https://www.christellelheureux.com

This event is part of Multipistes