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Démocratiecréation

  • CCN2 Grenoble – Yoann Bourgeois

    France

    Participatory installation

  • 20mn
    Ages 10 and up
    Open air
    Free

Calendar

© DR
© DR
© DR

Presentation

– Free workshop within the limit of available places and subject to the health regulations in place at the time of the event –


For several years, Yoann Bourgeois has been creating original physical devices that amplify certain phenomena. These devices bring into play the universal forces that interact between human beings.

Now, Yoann Bourgeois wishes to share the intense sensory experiences of these devices using a new participative approach. The goal is to focus on the spectator's body by offering them a significant existential experience.

Through this monumental work, the usual relationship between a performance and the spectator is subverted by inviting them to become physically involved in the process.

This work is a fundamental experience that links us to the earth by amplifying the problem of balance: On an extensive platform placed on a fulcrum for balancing, groups of people attempt to coordinate their movements and seek to adapt the distribution of their weight on this unstable surface. The eloquence of such an experience is striking both for the person who experiences it and for the person who observes it. This proposal will be entitled Démocratie [Democracy] as each individual will have a concrete power over the collective.

This radical simplicity is also the source of powerful metaphors. The installation is intriguing because it amplifies fundamental sensations for the participant, and the visitors observing the participants can attest to the eloquence of such communal experiences.

Through these actions, there is a dawning awareness of fictional resources. These are not only experiential moments but also a time of observation and identification.

Finally, by asking visitors to collectively reach a point of equilibrium in an interaction with space, we reveal our links to nature and encourage an environmental exigency.

Idea and design Yoann Bourgeois
Mediating artists Alice Barbosa and Julien Tanner
General management Nicolas Anastassiou
State management David Hanse

Production CCN2 – national choreography center in Grenoble – Co-directed by Yoann Bourgeois and Rachid Ouramdane
Coproduction Biennale Internationale des Arts du Cirque in Marseille (Archaos national circus center) / BNP Paribas Foundation / Search for other co-producers in progress

Yoann Bourgeois grew up in a small village in the Jura area of France, and the rest went by very quickly... He trained at ENACR (the national school of circus arts in Rosny-sous-Bois), then at the CNAC circus arts center in Châlons-en-Champagne while also following the contemporary dance program at the CNDC national dance center in Angers. After his time as a permanent performer in the company of the choreographer Maguy Marin from 2006 to 2010, he set up his own company in 2010.

In recent years, he and his accomplices have been using an uninterrupted creative process to implement a program that consists of defusing time and is called "Attempts to Approach a Suspension Point".

His work is marked by in-depth knowledge of games, in particular games involving vertigo and simulacrum, which he explores and shares through his player’s workshop. His creations are unique because they reinvigorate the traditional artistic number by incorporating various inventions and eloquent physical devices. These spectacular and autonomous devices allow him to perform anywhere, particularly where he is not expected. As a result, in recent years, his Fugue Trampoline performance has become one of the most emblematic shows of the new generation of circus artists.

An outstanding acrobat, he expands his practice by designing multiple devices that seek to make the point of apogee perceptible. Each of his devices revolves around the notion of being suspended, and over the years, he has developed a growing body of work that forms "Attempts to Approach a Point of Suspension". This work is part of a more comprehensive search for a universal and technically rigorous language.

An enthusiast of wide-open spaces, in 2017 he produced an in-situ creation at the Pantheon called La Mécanique de l’Histoire, which was an attempt to approach a suspension point, thanks to an exceptional carte blanche offered by the Monuments Nationaux agency. Amateur videos of the event have become viral sensations and cemented his international reputation.

A tireless explorer of new horizons, in 2018, he and Michel Reilhac created one of the very first choreographic works for virtual reality and mixed reality: the Fugue VR.

Since 2016, he has been co-directing the CCN2 – Grenoble National Choreographic Center with the choreographer Rachid Ouramdane. This unique leadership combination is based on openness to the territory and the decompartmentalization of disciplines.

Yoann Bourgeois, whose life is dedicated to the performing arts, is the first circus artist to lead a national choreography center.

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