ATEM (the breath)

To transform the exiguity of a four on three meter box into an infinite space: here is the theatrical and alchemical experience(experiment) in which are engaged(surrender) Josef Nadj and Anne-Sophie Lancelin.

Piece by Josef Nadj

Argument

“… the rock which went to the wind near us rolls on the sea and in the wake it leaves behind, living, the dream opens”

                                      Paul Celan, “Ensemble” 

Prague, June 2011 – Box #15

At the origin of this duo is Josef Nadj’s invitation to the 12th Prague Quadrennial (June 16-26, 2011), an international festival dedicated to set design as “an artistic discipline at the junction of the visual and performing arts,” bringing together expositions and live performances. More specifically, the project in which Josef Nadj was asked to participate in this context, the major happening of the event, was entitled “Intersection: Intimacy and Performance,” and consisted of modular architecture installed in public spaces in the center of Prague, a temporary pathway composed of thirty “black boxes or white cubes” of which each element, each module, was taken over by an artist – set designer, visual artist, photographer, videographer, director, choreographer, or fashion designer.       In response to this invitation, Josef Nadj constructed a black box, Box #15 in the circuit, whose base is four by four meters with a stage space three meters deep and, separated from this space by a glass window, a passage or gallery one meter wide reserved for visitors. Then, in collaboration with Anne-Sophie Lancelin, he developed a short piece on the theme of intimacy, “the intimacy between two beings, a man and a woman,” but also “between a man and his roots, his native land with its trees, its river, its inhabitants…”. Finally, the intimacy that grows between an artist and his audience “through dance, drawings, scenic images,” reinforced in this instance by the proximity of being in such a limited space.

Atem, the art of detail

An extension of the Prague project, Atem maintains the same stage setup, with all its constraints and implications: a “black box” of reduced dimensions, raised and opened frontally this time, with a few clearings, passages, openings, niches, chinks, secret compartments or traps, hardly perceptible to the eye. As for the audience space, the corridor where Prague’s public remained standing, it has been upgraded to a set of seven rows of bleachers, ready to receive about sixty seated spectators and to guarantee them full visibility of the stage. The ensemble forms a small theater, light, easily deconstructed and transported, which can be installed indoors or outdoors, and can fit inside on the stage of a medium-sized theater.       Using this intimate-dramatic structure as a foundation, Josef Nadj’s reflections were oriented in two directions. One is about the relationship between the two dancers: “How to inhabit, how to live together in such a small space?” The other relates to the relationship between the stage and the audience, created by this particular structure, otherwise to a gaze informed by proximity. All the more so as the lighting, provided only by candles, lamps, forces the spectator to pay extremely close attention as the dimly-lit scene, plunged in diffused light, alludes to the history of theater. These two axes of reflection led Josef Nadj to concentrate on the “details, objects, clues, little signs.”

Dürer, Celan, returning to fundamentals

This new piece, in which Nadj continues his companionship with dancer Anne-Sophie Lancelin and sound designer Alain Mahé, marks the reprise of certain tones and a few of the recurring themes of his universe, shown particularly through his work with materials and their transformation, a reference to the elements and the cosmos, and especially the constant re-questioning of time, cyclical and linear, whose “inescapable flow contradicts eternity”: “one would have to be able to stop time,” he says, “in order for us mortals to understand something about eternity.”       However, beyond the “revisiting” or redeployment of motifs present in his previous works, Atem seems to constitute for Nadj a sort of return to his fundamentals, which is to say a return to the sources of his artistic inspiration. It is indeed the case, as he declares, “painting attracted me even before literature or music.” Dürer is one of the first – if not the first – artist that he mentions among those whose work he knew as a child, and who have influenced him in the long term. And so, for the first time and with a precise approach, he has decided to turn toward the engraving work of Albrecht Dürer for this duet. He did, however, also feel the need to read Paul Celan again throughout the course of this creative process, Celan being a poet who has accompanied and “lighed” him since his adolescence. In addition, he found in certain poems by Celan many echoes and interpretations related to Dürer’s engravings.

A moving painting

“Disfigured – a renewed angel ceases to exist – a face achieves itself” 

                       Paul Celan, “Dazibao”

An exercise in lucidity, in unveiling, Atem proposes an interpretation of one of Dürer’s major works, Melencolia I (1514), a very complex copper engraving which has been and remains, even today, the “subject of infinite interpretations” (H. Wölfflin). Among these, the ones which stand out first – at least, because they are immediately meaningful for Nadj – are those which see in the engraving a representation of creative thought. Then, come those which include three other engravings, which the choreographer also examined: Saint Jerome in his Cell (1513) and Knight, Death and the Devil (1514), which date from the same period, as well as Adam and Eve (1504). Finally, those interpretations which invite the viewer to doubt the surface of things, the image as it first appears to the viewer.       Nothing didactic, of course, in Josef Nadj’s approach to this work or the perspective he offers: for him, it is about “collecting” the elements, isolating the details, moving them around, combining them in new ways, making them echo the details of Dürer’s other engravings (whether shared or not with the first), and also Celan’s lines, to create a new image, a moving one, which is to say a tableau in which movement questions vision, even as it reveals the former, and becomes a guide for the eye.

Myriam Bloedé.

Credits

Mise en scène, chorégraphie et scénographie Josef Nadj Musique originale Alain Mahé assisté de Pascal Seixas Interprétation Anne-Sophie Lancelin, Josef Nadj Musiciens Alain Mah é ou Pascal Seixas Costumes Aleksandra Pesic Accessoires Laszlo Dobo Régie générale Alexandre de Monte Construction du décor Clément Dirat, Julien Fleureau 

Durée environ 75 minutes