performance and installation of a ballroom 15’, 2012

On the tables of the ballroom we find the the elements common to the sort of folkloristic events of which this performance is a pastiche. One can can help oneself to the stelloïs - a culinary speciality of the Stranièrois, or taste a little ratafiamau – the typical alchoholic drink produced and consumed by this people. Violena Lochoï, my Stranièrois double, performs authentic songs and dances. Members of the public dance a farandole, we applaud, we laugh, the fiction takes root.

This ball investigates “traditional music” and all the elements which surround it, by playing on the ambiguity between belonging and distance. Everything is put in place so that the ball seems realistic. I want us to feel that instability, the friction between the possible poetry of such an event and the dangers inherent in searching for lost authenticity.