image: David Horvitz, Ocean Sounds (2017)

While I was also listening to Krysten, LeRoy, Julien, Jennie, Félicia, David, Yann, Luke, Sarah…

La Criée, in partnership with Human Resources LA, invites seven artists to expand the notion of narrative and improvisation. Performing narrative, deconstructing storytelling; this session of While I was also listening to … challenges the traditional approach to narration, opening up the horizon of what narrative is or how a story can be told.

A choreographed narration responding to a set of live instructions. A translation of a language and sounds we cannot really write about – but only experience. A series of “automated” books speaking in tongues. A dialogue unfolding with or without words An thread that is an allegory of narration, linking bodies and stories together. An unexpected and silent presence, reminding us that every story in order to exist, need to be listened to.

The duration of each performance varies between 5 and 30 minutes.

Artists and performers:

Krysten Cunningham
The Human Luminescence
An interactive performance project for four performers. Inspired by left-brain, right brain experiments, it explores a bodily counterbalance to spoken language and orality.

Félicia Atkinson and Julien Bismuth
Talking with or without words
The artists will engage in an improvised conversation using sound, objects and images…

LeRoy Stevens
Performing books
Stevens will perform with books that emit pre-recorded sound compiled from television, radio and other sources.

Jennie Liu
The Telling
A remote-controlled performance with performer/potter Laura Stinger. In The Telling, choreographer Liu relates her embodiment through a context off-site to Stinger, who processes what she is receiving via several forms of orature: vocal, gestural, material.

David Horvitz
When the Ocean Sounds
The artist – together with the audience – performs a text translation of the sounds of the Ocean. (participatory performance, variable duration)

Lucky Dragons
Lucky Dragons open the door

Yann Sérandour
Audience dog
An unexpected and silent presence wearing a dog mask playfully reminds of the training techniques to give better public speeches by rehearsing in front of a dog. It also refers to the stillness of the performance and to the absence of verbal language. Performing silently for the whole duration of the evening, Sérandour makes visible the act of listening to –which gives the title to the whole program– and reminds us to pay attention to the multiple narrations unfolded.

While I was also listening to NY & LA is a performative extension of the yearlong series of exhibitions and events Alors que j’écoutais moi aussi […] developed at La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, France, in 2017. This program was conceived and organized by Sophie Kaplan, director of the art centre, in close collaboration with three associated artists: Félicia Atkinson, Julien Bismuth, and Yann Serandour. The American poet and performer David Antin is the figurehead of this ambitious and polyphonic program.

While I was also listening to NY & LA takes place in Los Angeles at Human Resources on March 22nd and in New York at Artists Space on March 27th and at the Emily Harvey Foundation on March 30th and March 31st.

The different components of this project are linked by a common thematic and conceptual concern, that of narrative. What is a narrative in art (i.e. as exemplified by the two extremes of a personal story and a general art history)? How is narrative used as a medium and form in the arts? How does narrative in turn generate different forms of interdisciplinarity and intermediality?

On March, 22nd, the first event takes place at Human Resources L.A., featuring Krysten Cunningham, LeRoy Stevens, David Horvitz, Jennie Liu and her performers, Félicia Atkinson and Julien Bismuth, Yann Sérandour and Lucky Dragons.

On March 27th, the second event takes place at Artists Space, N.Y., featuring Julien Bismuth, Charles Bernstein, Jay Sanders, Tan Lin, and Ellen Zweig.

On March 30th, the third event takes place at the Emily Harvey Foundation, featuring Morgan Bassichis, Constance DeJong, Wayne Koestenbaum, Sara Magenheimer, Félicia Atkinson and Yann Sérandour and is followed on March 31st by workshops led by Svetlana Kitto, Julien Bismuth and Lucy Ives.

The Paris based Italian curator Alessandra Prandin has been invited by La Criée to coordinate and curate this American chapter with local partners Luke Fischbeck from Human Resources in Los Angeles and Rachel Valinsky (Wendy’s Subway) in New York. The event at Artists Space is curated by artist Julien Bismuth, poet Charles Bernstein and curator Jay Sanders.

While I was also listening to NY & LA is made possible thanks to the generous support of Institut Français / Ville de Rennes / Rennes
Métropole / Ambassade de France / Ministère de la culture – Drac Bretagne.