Massimo Furlan / Numero23Prod.

La Bonne Aventure – Furlan et Fiat lisent l’avenir du spectacle vivant dans le tarot de Marseille (2015)

Project

About performing arts

What is the future of performing arts in France? Culture has always been subject to the ups and downs of politics and the economy. In the current context of a global crisis and threatened with budgetary cuts, culture is trying hard to keep its head above water. Targeted by contemptuous populist parties, contemporary performing arts are first in line,. In this context, the first to be affected are of course the artists themselves.
Confronted with uncertainty, doubt and instability, Massimo Furlan and Christophe Fiat have decided to meet in order to address this issue. But how? By calling upon magic, of course! Performer, writer and tarot reader Christophe will read the Tarot de Marseille and try to predict the future of French performing arts. Massimo will act as mediator and translator, transmitting the message to the audience, interpreting and discussing it with the expert.
The cards are actually read at each performance, so predictions may vary.

Magic and belief

The performance revolves around magic and belief. Fortune-telling is a show in itself – a fairground show at least. Nowadays, however, it is still occult, hidden most of the time, consigned to obscure programmes broadcast on private channels and to classified ads. Treated with contempt by high culture, it is nevertheless often practised– albeit secretly – by some politicians.
Since ancient times, men and women have wanted to find out about their fate, to know what to expect, to put words and images on the inscrutable future: what will happen in an hour, in a day, in a year, in ten years? What will become of us? Who will we meet? When and how will we die? The way we relate to future events is subject to the notion of belief. In every society, people have acted as mediators between men and gods, between visible and invisible worlds. The ancient Greeks’ conjectural knowledge was as much the privilege of physicians, historians, politicians, potters, carpenters, sailors, hunters, fishermen and women. This type of knowledge only requires flair, intuition and observation.
In a more specific register, shamans, wizards, magicians, seers and artists all observe symbols and seek to interpret them, to read their message, to translate and transmit them.

The artist as a charlatan

Here, the artist takes up a particular role: that of a seer. He grants himself the power to read symbols, hoping to predict the future of theatre in general and his own future in particular. He plays, subverts, questions and outlines fortune-telling on the contemporary scene. Is it serious? Is it a joke or is it fake? Where does the truth lie? Where does fiction begin? The audience hesitates and the performance swings either way. But it poses real questions about power and its stakes in the definition of performing arts. How does it manifest itself? Who funds the arts? How are affinities built, opportunities created? Can we talk about careers or destinies in the performing arts? How much is down to luck, to good fortune? How are failures and crises dealt with? The artist creates a ritual, a sort of ‘seer’s ceremony’ that enables him to be both on the inside and the outside, i.e. in the show as well as on the outside, pulling the strings, mocking his own device. Concerned about issues of economic crisis and political decisions, about his own future, conditioned by these constraints, but also making fun of the whole situation. He plays with the audience, with their doubts and unease, in a burlesque manner.

Storytelling machine

Reading tarot cards to predict the future: pretending to see, to be a telepath, to be someone else, pretending for real. The idea is to invent a device to tell a hypothetical story, the meaning of which will depend on the proposed interpretation. For Christophe, the card reader, as for Massimo, his interpreter, the point is to recognise rather than discover, even better to recognise oneself. Because the artist is not outside the ritual, he perceives and reads it. It concerns him. It is also his own story he discovers. He runs the risk of merging with the subject, of blurring all boundaries and distinctions: he becomes the tarot card; he incarnates the story, the sequence of symbols; he echoes it during a perfect moment of magic. The success or failure of the story becomes the success or failure of theatre as a whole.
The reading of the cards and their symbols questions our representation and conception of reality. This machine that creates stories of its own accord appears like a repertoire and a reservoir of possibilities, hypotheses and things that may never be, but could have been. ‘I believe that to draw on this gulf of potential multiplicity is indispensable to any form of knowledge. The poet’s mind, and at a few decisive moments the mind of the scientist, works according to a process of association of images that is the quickest way to link and to choose between the infinite forms of the possible and the impossible. The imagination is a kind of electronic machine that takes account of all possible combinations and chooses the ones that are appropriate to a particular purpose, or simply the most interesting, pleasing, or amusing.’ (Italo Calvino)
The two artists reflect upon the world they live in, subverting it, making it grow, taking it to the brink of insanity, and reorganising the it in many possible ways.
A world that opens and communicates with other actors in the performing arts – authors and audiences in order to let everyone’s invisible symbols, hopes, desires, fears and fantasies speak for themselves.

Christophe Fiat

Writer, director and performer Christophe Fiat was born in Franche-Comté in 1966. He has published a dozen books, including Stephen King Forever (Édition du Seuil, 2008), Retour d’Iwaki (Gallimard, 2011), Cosima, femme électrique (Éditions Philippe Rey, 2013) and La Comtesse (Editions Naïve, 2014). His literature – a blend of novel-writing and poetry – focuses on stories and the evocation of contemporary myths. His light and neutral style contributes to an impression of ‘déjà-vu’, while exploring the dark side of our beliefs and desires. Its oral tone is particularly recognisable. As a director, Fiat focuses on direct, clear and simple forms, where words are thrown in the manner of monologues or polyphonies, combining epic saga and rock culture. All of this inspired by sound poetry and ‘urgent theatre’.
Author of many radio-plays broadcast by France Culture, including the Stephen King On the Radio (2010) series with Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Spirit of Marcel Pagnol with Stanislas Nordey (2014) and Vive La Comtesse! recorded at Festival d’Avignon (2014) with Irène Jacob and the students of the Théâtre National de Bretagne, Christophe Fiat also presents artistic performances at contemporary art exhibitions (Espace Louis Vuitton, Fondation Cartier, FRAC Pays de Loire, Contemporary Art Fair in Brussels, CNEAI – Centre National de l’Édition, MACVAL and, soon, Centre Pompidou-Metz).
In 2003, he presented Trois Ritournelle Live at Festival Montpellier Danse – three plays inspired by sound poetry. In 2006, he created a performance in five parts, La Reconstitution Historique, at Théâtre de la Bastille. He was then regularly invited to Festival d’Avignon by Vincent Baudriller and Hortense Archambaut: in 2007 with La jeune fille à la Bombe and Stephen King Stories (repeated in 2008 at Festival de La Bâtie); in 2010 with Laurent Sauvage n’est pas une Walkyrie in the ‘Sujets à Vif’ section; and in 2011 with l’Indestructible Madame Richard Wagner, created at Théâtre de Gennevilliers, where he was invited as associate author by Pascal Rambert. He then went to Tokyo to produce Daikaiju Eiga (‘A Film about Japanese Monsters’) at the Agora Komaba Theatre, which was repeated at Théâtre de Gennevilliers in 2013. That same year, he created Les Superpouvoirs de Marcel Pagnol at Festival Actoral, following a residency at Marseille Provence 2013 – European Capital of Culture, and in 2014, Bienvenus au Château de Fleurville at Palais de Tokyo, a public commission for the Centre National des Arts Plastiques (CNAP).
In 2015, he presented Miss Monde at Théâtre Ouvert in the company of musician Vale Poher. He worked with artist Thomas Hirschhorn on Bataille Monument, Dokumenta de Kassel, 2002, Musée Précaire Albinet, Aubervilliers, 2004; 24h Foucault, Palais de Tokyo, 2004, The Bijlmer Spinoza-Festival, 2009 and Flamme Éternelle, Palais de Tokyo, 2014. He was also writer and performer for Massimo Furlan in 2007 for Les Filles et les Garçons. In 2012, he mentored Marie Fourquet for her Mercedes Benz W 123 project for the SSA, Textes-en-scène project. In 2015, he had a residency at MACVAL where he created an audio guide for the museum’s 10th anniversary. On that occasion, he presented Marc Antoine est un homme viril (at the ‘Cherchez le garçon’ exhibition) with comedian Judith Henry. Christophe Fiat is also a member of the rock band Poetry.
www.rocklefutur.com