Dé-marche

Jan Kopp and I had a meeting of minds over Honoré de Balzac’s essay Théorie de la démarche, in which Balzac, as an observer of the social sciences, taxonomically codified and classified the subject of walking. The impertinent dandy made an inventory of appearances and examined walking as a natural function. He then amusingly showed that this so-called natural function was concealed by cultural practices to such an extent that it actually disappeared. In doing so, Balzac unknowingly foreshadowed the thinking behind the anthropology of urban, everyday life that was to develop in the second half of the 20th century. Rather than using the entire text, we use certain fragments as jumping-off points for partitions. The procedure for Dé-marche is a choreographic installation in two parts. Initially, the elements that make up the piece (record players, sound sensors, visual triggers, etc.) are left in a space for the visitors-audience to explore, and their movements will bring about certain events. The piece is, in fact, produced by the audience’s involvement and without their actions there is no piece. The artist no longer produces the movements, the public does. Secondly, we recompose the elements with their sound and video potentials and we restructure the space. This part involves the use of all the sound and video elements collected during the walk and the way they work as social, political and sexual revealers. In the piece, we see walking as a way of presenting oneself, a sort of self-portrait, playing on the elements collected and the way they split and disappear. This approach also shows that these movements and this device can be reiterated and multiplied to infinity. Dé-marche welcomes potential audience participation as an integral part of the piece. The audience acts and exposes itself as much as the performers who even go as far as to use the events they have produced. The device only has meaning when it is in use, by which we mean the use of art and the conditions in which it is received, the use of oneself as a spectator/producer. 

Alain Buffard [November 2001]