Reflecting Statement and Video
Diary of 2o2o.
I started thinking about the project in 2020. As life seemed to be running away from us, as suicides rates climbed, and as domestic violence rose. It felt like opportunities and hope were gone. IT WAS APOCALYPTIC.
As characteristic to my practice, I like to approach concerning topics with a pinch of surrealism, to highlight the absurd. I believe art to be a language were words are not necessary, the only language that speaks for itself without the need of words.
I wanted to work on 2020 which to some was the worst year in the world.
1)2020 the year, 2) the politicians in the format, and my 3)Judeo Christian background
1) 2020 and the succession of horrible events, that we would watch on TV wondering what would come next. We would be switching on the TV every night hoping that the French president Macron would have an answer as to when we would be coming out of this endless lockdown. The events in 2020 came one after the next and I felt like in Jumanji. I think I can speak for my generation when I say that we are juggling with so much that we have become alienated from the news. We watch them on TV, we scroll on Instagram. We have become indifferent to them and we watch them as if watching another cartoon or tv show. It feels like we forget that these are real people with real lives. We can look at what happened with Ukraine. We have now after a 100 days become used to the horror and are ready to celebrate the Jubilee and are planning our summers. Myself included.
In the performance it was important to recreate this separation from the world’s event, I liked the audience being in the raked seating. The “4th wall” being the watchers of the news. For this reason I wanted a multitude of Tvs in front, and I would have even liked for the audience to be switching them on themselves and to make them interact with the TV directly. Each news would be personified into a character being a politician, either a king a chancellor, a president, a minister etc. etc. And humanity was to be portrayed by the bellboy.
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Macron’s allocution during the pandemic 2020.
2) The format was to be a political gatherings where politicians give a press conference speech before going onto the red carpet and into the conference room where they sit around a massive table. Each character will have their individual teapots made for their highnesses. I was particulary inspired by the cop 21 and cop 26 summit this year in Glasgow. Sometimes it feels like those politicians, essentially a bunch of white men in suits, that we don’t necessarily trust yet are handling things that are going to impact our daily lives. I remember for the cop 26 in Glasgow, France and Britain’s government were at each other throats in an argument over fishing rights in the channel. This felt like a surreal conversation to have when the world’s ecological system is falling appart. They talked about their own interests when they are gathered to talk about commitments to help protect the planet. I wanted to highlight this irony by getting them into a room and to have a tea, which felt like the most contemptuous thing they could do in that room. All my 2020 heroes, my traumatic event would each be a politicians, and seen as a superpower.
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3)
Why 13 character? Why the number 13?
I grew up in a family where the superstition was that you couldn’t be thirteen around a table because if so something was bound to go wrong. I would find myself at age 9 sitting at the adults table, just to be the fourteenth person there.
In many cultures there is a superstition around the number 13, people are scared of Friday the 13th, there is no level 13 th on skyscrapers etc… SO WE HAD TO BE 13 to portray the apocalypse.
The superstition comes from the bible. Jesus’ last supper. The painting by Da vinci that we all have seen hundreds of time is an iconic representation of the last supper. There are 13 in total, 12 disciples, and Jesus. This is the last supper because Judas will betray Jesus and he will, as a result, be crucified.
In my performance I wanted to reference the painting and this last supper as the end of the world. Oleg was helpful in advising me with the dramaturgy of them. So we positioned them around the table as the painting with president coronavirus in the middle.
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Da Vinci, The Last supper, 4.6m x 8.8m, 1495-1498, Santa Maria delle Grazie, Italy
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4) Where does the sugar city idea comes from?
I was inspired by a film by Jaco van dormael, God exists and live in brussels, the brand new testament. Where he portrays God as very bad person with maquettes of the whole world. He throws water on them, it pours on the earth, he plans a car crash with toy cars etc.
2020 to me felt like I was a pawn in a maquette. Like a marionette in an escape game where things would be constantly thrown at us.
The sugar city was a good maquette to represent the world to be destroyed over tea. A city made of sugar cubes to be melted and later drunk in someone else’s tea.
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God playing with the maqyettes
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God in his office from the film the brand new testament
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Jaco van Dormael’s maquette
5) Why Sugar? Sugar because there is something sickening with sugar. I’ve been once to New York to Dylan’s candy bar and I felt like Hansel and Gretel, or also Charlie and the chocolate factory. It felt diabetic… like something is wrong, a little boy with a thousand donuts portrays the burden of consumerism. The excess feel ostentatious.
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Hansel and Gretel by the Germnan brothers Grimm
And Dylan’s candy bar New York
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Augustus Gloop
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Drowns in the chocolate fountain
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Another image that is stuck with me, is The Hunger games. In the film, when the capitol invented a drink to make themselves sick so they could eat even more, shocking when next door people are starving. The sugar city felt like a perfect representation of all that.
THIS IS IT FOR THE CONCEPT. NOW FOR THE COLLABORATION
This was a massive project I first wanted to take all on my own. I enrolled into a ceramic studio in September but realised that I would never become good and It was important to open up the project. I used to be so individualist doing everything for self glory and for my own. Through this project I realised and am now convinced that the future is in collaboration. There is so much more potential in several brains then in one.
Thre is no way I could have achieved this intricate performance without all the incredible people I worked with. Every skill is years to master, and years of learning, It made the project so rich to have all those people agreeing to step into the project and to add their knowledge and ideas.
I found satisfaction and pride in getting all these people to work on the project. I met with every single one of them, I have created with them and designed with them, into their studios or in University.
I managed the collaboration via the means of a monthly newsletter to keep the makers updated of the progression on the overall project and I would have a weekly call to talk about the piece.
For the headpieces, I started doing everything on my own. But again facing the amount of work and also realising that they would never look as good if I was doing all 14 of them. I put my pride and ego on the side for the sake of the project and I reached out to two fashion students at CSM. Then as people heard about the project I had lots of volunteers wanting to get involved. And I ended up with an army‼! The headpieces were a much more collaborative process than the ceramics. We would meet to organise “making days” at each other’s place, particularly at my house, where I would manage sort of workshops, or at university. Each had a different tasks for the headpieces, then we would assemble them together. For example I would be in charge of the structure for the piece, then someone else made the details etc etc…
The animation done with the character animation students were based on my sketches and drawings but were also enriched by their own ideas. We discussed every single one of the animations, then with their incredibly fast skills they pulled up the animation. I attempted it myself and it would take me days.
For the performers my working strategies with Dominika and Poppy were
1) To ask them how they felt at the beginning of every rehearsal,and to do a checkup in order to create a safe space.
2) Involve them from the start in the designing of their own movements
3) Ask them to write their feelings about each of the events
4) Before choosing sending them photos of the heats and videos to inspire them
5) Recordings of rehearsals for them to see , and then coming in with ideas.
6) Creating a massive whatsapp group for the general information and personal informations to be handled individually.
Things I would have done differently
I made many mistakes that were key to my learning.
I think I’ve been obsessive about the details and later that lead to panic. On the Friday before the dress rehearsal when I brought all the ceramics to uni, I seriously freaked out.
I punished myself for a stupid decision and was telling myself that there was a reson why things on stage were never fragile, because THEY BREAK. I made all the ceramicists do beautiful and intricate work and imagined them breaking on stage and them witnessing the end of their teapot.
Scared, I restricted the time with the teapots at its minimum which meant that they didn’t have their time to shine. I realised that although difficult to admit, ikea teapots or papier mache teapots would have looked the same on stage with the distance.
For this reason I did a photoshoot and will later do a film and an exhibition.
Secondly the sugar city was too far downstage, and If I could redo it I would have moved upstage as close as possible to the audience. This would allow the audience to see that it was made out of sugar cubes and would also allow to see the teapots better. It was 80+ hours of work and people didn’t realise the city was made out of sugar cubes. The table was also very intricate, water would be coming out of the taps and even if I had live feed to show the details on TV screens you couldn’t see the water pouring out of the tap.
The bellboy, essentially the most important character of the show should have interacted more with the characters, There should have been more contact and interaction.
Marguerite the cellist who played live wasn’t valued enough in the show. I should have put her more in the centre under a spotlight and should have made her more involved in the show.
I also had planned a very tech heavy show, without considering the fact that we only had an hour to design all our lighting queues, I should have planned ahead and spoke with luke before the madness of tech days.
Overall the rehearsals went really well. I knew that planning a show with students being volunteers was a challenge but never had I imagined such a big turnover. I had fourteen performers which was a lot and had pretty much one drop out every week. That lead to real panic and I should have planned more ahead. I should have asked for a commitment guarantee or something.. I even had dropouts on the day of the performance but luckily I was helped by Nefeli, one of my performers in finding a last minute backup.
Overall I am super gratedful and proud to have achieved this hugely ambitious project it was a hard journey but we did it. I met incredible people and understood the power of collaboration.
What’s next
I want to develop this piece into a film and into an exhibiton for the ceramicists to be able to sell their work.
I started thinking about the project in 2020. As life seemed to be running away from us, as suicides rates climbed, and as domestic violence rose. It felt like opportunities and hope were gone. IT WAS APOCALYPTIC.
As characteristic to my practice, I like to approach concerning topics with a pinch of surrealism, to highlight the absurd. I believe art to be a language were words are not necessary, the only language that speaks for itself without the need of words.
I wanted to work on 2020 which to some was the worst year in the world.
1)2020 the year, 2) the politicians in the format, and my 3)Judeo Christian background
1) 2020 and the succession of horrible events, that we would watch on TV wondering what would come next. We would be switching on the TV every night hoping that the French president Macron would have an answer as to when we would be coming out of this endless lockdown. The events in 2020 came one after the next and I felt like in Jumanji. I think I can speak for my generation when I say that we are juggling with so much that we have become alienated from the news. We watch them on TV, we scroll on Instagram. We have become indifferent to them and we watch them as if watching another cartoon or tv show. It feels like we forget that these are real people with real lives. We can look at what happened with Ukraine. We have now after a 100 days become used to the horror and are ready to celebrate the Jubilee and are planning our summers. Myself included.
In the performance it was important to recreate this separation from the world’s event, I liked the audience being in the raked seating. The “4th wall” being the watchers of the news. For this reason I wanted a multitude of Tvs in front, and I would have even liked for the audience to be switching them on themselves and to make them interact with the TV directly. Each news would be personified into a character being a politician, either a king a chancellor, a president, a minister etc. etc. And humanity was to be portrayed by the bellboy.
Macron’s allocution during the pandemic 2020.
2) The format was to be a political gatherings where politicians give a press conference speech before going onto the red carpet and into the conference room where they sit around a massive table. Each character will have their individual teapots made for their highnesses. I was particulary inspired by the cop 21 and cop 26 summit this year in Glasgow. Sometimes it feels like those politicians, essentially a bunch of white men in suits, that we don’t necessarily trust yet are handling things that are going to impact our daily lives. I remember for the cop 26 in Glasgow, France and Britain’s government were at each other throats in an argument over fishing rights in the channel. This felt like a surreal conversation to have when the world’s ecological system is falling appart. They talked about their own interests when they are gathered to talk about commitments to help protect the planet. I wanted to highlight this irony by getting them into a room and to have a tea, which felt like the most contemptuous thing they could do in that room. All my 2020 heroes, my traumatic event would each be a politicians, and seen as a superpower.
3)
Why 13 character? Why the number 13?
I grew up in a family where the superstition was that you couldn’t be thirteen around a table because if so something was bound to go wrong. I would find myself at age 9 sitting at the adults table, just to be the fourteenth person there.
In many cultures there is a superstition around the number 13, people are scared of Friday the 13th, there is no level 13 th on skyscrapers etc… SO WE HAD TO BE 13 to portray the apocalypse.
The superstition comes from the bible. Jesus’ last supper. The painting by Da vinci that we all have seen hundreds of time is an iconic representation of the last supper. There are 13 in total, 12 disciples, and Jesus. This is the last supper because Judas will betray Jesus and he will, as a result, be crucified.
In my performance I wanted to reference the painting and this last supper as the end of the world. Oleg was helpful in advising me with the dramaturgy of them. So we positioned them around the table as the painting with president coronavirus in the middle.
Da Vinci, The Last supper, 4.6m x 8.8m, 1495-1498, Santa Maria delle Grazie, Italy
4) Where does the sugar city idea comes from?
I was inspired by a film by Jaco van dormael, God exists and live in brussels, the brand new testament. Where he portrays God as very bad person with maquettes of the whole world. He throws water on them, it pours on the earth, he plans a car crash with toy cars etc.
2020 to me felt like I was a pawn in a maquette. Like a marionette in an escape game where things would be constantly thrown at us.
The sugar city was a good maquette to represent the world to be destroyed over tea. A city made of sugar cubes to be melted and later drunk in someone else’s tea.
God playing with the maqyettes
God in his office from the film the brand new testament
Jaco van Dormael’s maquette
5) Why Sugar? Sugar because there is something sickening with sugar. I’ve been once to New York to Dylan’s candy bar and I felt like Hansel and Gretel, or also Charlie and the chocolate factory. It felt diabetic… like something is wrong, a little boy with a thousand donuts portrays the burden of consumerism. The excess feel ostentatious.
Hansel and Gretel by the Germnan brothers Grimm
And Dylan’s candy bar New York
Augustus Gloop
Drowns in the chocolate fountain
Another image that is stuck with me, is The Hunger games. In the film, when the capitol invented a drink to make themselves sick so they could eat even more, shocking when next door people are starving. The sugar city felt like a perfect representation of all that.
THIS IS IT FOR THE CONCEPT. NOW FOR THE COLLABORATION
This was a massive project I first wanted to take all on my own. I enrolled into a ceramic studio in September but realised that I would never become good and It was important to open up the project. I used to be so individualist doing everything for self glory and for my own. Through this project I realised and am now convinced that the future is in collaboration. There is so much more potential in several brains then in one.
Thre is no way I could have achieved this intricate performance without all the incredible people I worked with. Every skill is years to master, and years of learning, It made the project so rich to have all those people agreeing to step into the project and to add their knowledge and ideas.
I found satisfaction and pride in getting all these people to work on the project. I met with every single one of them, I have created with them and designed with them, into their studios or in University.
I managed the collaboration via the means of a monthly newsletter to keep the makers updated of the progression on the overall project and I would have a weekly call to talk about the piece.
For the headpieces, I started doing everything on my own. But again facing the amount of work and also realising that they would never look as good if I was doing all 14 of them. I put my pride and ego on the side for the sake of the project and I reached out to two fashion students at CSM. Then as people heard about the project I had lots of volunteers wanting to get involved. And I ended up with an army‼! The headpieces were a much more collaborative process than the ceramics. We would meet to organise “making days” at each other’s place, particularly at my house, where I would manage sort of workshops, or at university. Each had a different tasks for the headpieces, then we would assemble them together. For example I would be in charge of the structure for the piece, then someone else made the details etc etc…
The animation done with the character animation students were based on my sketches and drawings but were also enriched by their own ideas. We discussed every single one of the animations, then with their incredibly fast skills they pulled up the animation. I attempted it myself and it would take me days.
For the performers my working strategies with Dominika and Poppy were
1) To ask them how they felt at the beginning of every rehearsal,and to do a checkup in order to create a safe space.
2) Involve them from the start in the designing of their own movements
3) Ask them to write their feelings about each of the events
4) Before choosing sending them photos of the heats and videos to inspire them
5) Recordings of rehearsals for them to see , and then coming in with ideas.
6) Creating a massive whatsapp group for the general information and personal informations to be handled individually.
Things I would have done differently
I made many mistakes that were key to my learning.
I think I’ve been obsessive about the details and later that lead to panic. On the Friday before the dress rehearsal when I brought all the ceramics to uni, I seriously freaked out.
I punished myself for a stupid decision and was telling myself that there was a reson why things on stage were never fragile, because THEY BREAK. I made all the ceramicists do beautiful and intricate work and imagined them breaking on stage and them witnessing the end of their teapot.
Scared, I restricted the time with the teapots at its minimum which meant that they didn’t have their time to shine. I realised that although difficult to admit, ikea teapots or papier mache teapots would have looked the same on stage with the distance.
For this reason I did a photoshoot and will later do a film and an exhibition.
Secondly the sugar city was too far downstage, and If I could redo it I would have moved upstage as close as possible to the audience. This would allow the audience to see that it was made out of sugar cubes and would also allow to see the teapots better. It was 80+ hours of work and people didn’t realise the city was made out of sugar cubes. The table was also very intricate, water would be coming out of the taps and even if I had live feed to show the details on TV screens you couldn’t see the water pouring out of the tap.
The bellboy, essentially the most important character of the show should have interacted more with the characters, There should have been more contact and interaction.
Marguerite the cellist who played live wasn’t valued enough in the show. I should have put her more in the centre under a spotlight and should have made her more involved in the show.
I also had planned a very tech heavy show, without considering the fact that we only had an hour to design all our lighting queues, I should have planned ahead and spoke with luke before the madness of tech days.
Overall the rehearsals went really well. I knew that planning a show with students being volunteers was a challenge but never had I imagined such a big turnover. I had fourteen performers which was a lot and had pretty much one drop out every week. That lead to real panic and I should have planned more ahead. I should have asked for a commitment guarantee or something.. I even had dropouts on the day of the performance but luckily I was helped by Nefeli, one of my performers in finding a last minute backup.
Overall I am super gratedful and proud to have achieved this hugely ambitious project it was a hard journey but we did it. I met incredible people and understood the power of collaboration.
What’s next
I want to develop this piece into a film and into an exhibiton for the ceramicists to be able to sell their work.