Sans Objet

With “Sans objet” I wanted to bring an industrial robot onto the stage that had the strength to move all the elements of the décor as well as the actors.

Art is not moving forward, it’s not a high performer, it cannot be measured and it proves nothing. At the starting point of all my creations, I always ask myself two questions: “What’s it about? And, why do it?” At the same time I imagine the stage area. Set design has always played a central role in my creations. Its function is not decorative, but one of action. It acts on the actor, and reciprocally. Is the stage not the art of a space? With “Sans objet” I wanted to bring an industrial robot onto the stage that had the strength to move all the elements of the décor as well as the actors. As such, the machine becomes a protagonist in its own right. This machine is an articulated, mechanical arm. We are going to use it like a “puppet” – a 100% technological being – that dialogues with an ordinary contemporary being. These characters are obliged to cohabit the stage, and it is impossible to ignore them. It’s as if man today was made up of two facets: man is still human, but is becoming more and more technological. This relationship between man and machine is evolving. It’s not a question of judging it, but one of observing it. Robots first arrived in the industrial world in the 70s; the idea is to take it out of its environment and put it on stage. In this way, it moves into the field of art, of uselessness.  It becomes “sans objet” (no reason for being), actor. We have always attempted to cross the line between, the living and the non-living using our imagination: so, objects exist where we say they have a soul, the myth of the statue that comes to life, and so many other devices, props in science fiction… This perspective interests me to the extent that it’s becoming more and more concrete. Don’t we currently mix together biological and electronic, i.e. living and inert! Here, we can see a double movement: the robot tends to humanize itself, and man to robotize himself. There is a risk that man will become “weaker” than the robot. Performance is at the heart of this question. Man will be obliged to “technologize” himself if he wants to continue to compete. In the past, to test his abilities, he pitted his strength against that of animals. Today, the challenge is in technology. In robotics, the Japanese are almost twenty years ahead of the Europeans and I could have ventured over there to check out their latest developments. Yet, I chose this old, basic robot, which is the industrial robot to go back to the origins of this technological evolution. What interests me is this articulated arm, its strength. Olivier Alenda and Olivier Boyer are the performers playing the roles of the ordinary contemporary man faced with the ascendancy of a robot.
Technical implementation is always important in my creations. Yet, at the same time, this is all very small-scale, the robot itself is simple. And I have a loyal, highly-skilled technical team working with me in Toulouse: without my team, it would be hard for me to produce my creations. sans objet can mean “useless”. This title is also an echo to the space left empty in a field in computing: the uselessness of an email sans objet (without a title), the unspecified… And if in the surprise of its dance with man, the robot that has been taken out of its industrial context – and which has become functionally useless-, reminded us of the nature of art: to be totally sans objet (useless)?

Propos extraits d’un entretien de Marie Bertholet pour le Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne, juillet 2009