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Mountain/Fountain
”Mountain / Fountain” is the result of a partnership between Pierre Droulers and the plastic artist Michel François, the author of the narrative that runs through this piece: the Japanese Emperor Mikado ordered all the objects in his realm to be assembled in his palace so that he could make a final inventory of them. A task that was clearly both impossible and absurd, resulting in aberrant classifications, such as those between full and empty objects. Twenty-five years on, when someone risked asking the Emperor the reason for such an undertaking, he had vanished beneath the multitude of objects piled up. This mountain of dead materials (”Mountain” in the title) contrasted with the human activity (”Fountain”) that was deployed all around.
”Mountain”
Materials and objects are laid on the ground and form an inventory. A movement is organised to store them. This activity, obsessional, gives off something as vain as it is essential. Fill yourself with it like a ritual whose meaning remains mysterious. Dances, games, new forms emerge from these objects wakened from their sleep to form a series of pieces following on from one another. At the same time as the dances, like objects, the video images (courtesy of Michel François) form dreams of materials that combine: earth, gap, wood, hands, feet, they grasp the gesture: take, pass, pick up, twist, crush, fold, tear, stack.
”Fountain”
takes on again the forms of”Mountain”. The objects have vanished, the bodies have stored them in their memory and play on their absence. The tyranny of objects gives way to appeasement. The choreography, like a never-ending flow, drains a series of dreamt materials. The liquid side of the minerality of ”Mountain”, the metaphor of endless flow, ”Fountain” forms the liquid element that hugs outlines, rounds off edges, fills holes, and is constantly regenerated.
Source: Théâtre de la Bastille (1995) programme
Press extract
Inspired by the legend of the emperor Mikado, who carried out an inventory of all the objects in his realm, ”Mountain/Fountain” proceeds by accumulation and clearance of stones, tins, beads. A physical game, very noisy, of dummy storage, that disrupts and brutalises space; the dancers have no scruples about rushing spontaneously onto the stage. The dance thus progresses by sudden changes in mood and fits of anger, then remaining stock still in freeze frames.
Source: https://www.chronicart.com (Rosita Boisseau, 01/08/1999)
