performance-conférence, 3h30, le 08.10.2011 // FrasQ, rencontre de la performance , le générateur, gentilly
Salvons le stranièrois ! Is an association which campaigns to preserve Stranièrois culture. The Stanièrois, are an Italian minority that was expelled from Abruzzo in the 15th century during the Inquisition.
The survivors, after years of exile, finally settled in the area of Mayenne in northern France. In this period Mayenne was recovering from a long and bloody period of war and the locals, in need of manpower, called on the expertise of the Stranièrois. Centuries of peaceful coexistence followed. In 1887 following a brawl that broke out in the canvas factory of Brontz at Laval, the Mayennese hunted down and killed the Stranièrois. Since this bloody episode, a silence surrounded the history of this community of which only a few traces remain. In 2007 their existence was rediscovered by Pierre Bourdais who founded the association Salvons le stranièrois !
The play consists of a conference/performance, followed by the signing of a petition to open a bilingual French-Stranièrois school. However the performance hides one important detail: the Stranièrois people are fictional. The invention of this community creates a formal reflexion on the idea of exchanges between cultures that have never come into contact in such a way. To carry out this fiction Violaine Lochu borrow elements from reality, from a familiarity with the cultures of different regions – Mayenne, Abruzzo -, the history of the inquisition, the Jewish diaspora, the massacre of the Italians of Aigues-Mortes, the state of Ashkenazi culture in Poland etc. The artist also addresses the pitfalls and troubling aspects of the numerous cultural-revival associations founded on the idea of an “origin” or of a mythical “golden age”.