the String Snake

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The String Snake (or Cord Snake) is the name of the fourth Lecture given on the Encyclopedia of Prof. Henry-Jacques Glaçon.

It was premiered in Johannesburg on the 8-10th, at the Market Theater, in collaboration with the beautiful Bela quartet.

This important opus of the Encyclopedia project introduced the Tournesol Gate to an knowledge-thirsty audience :

Robert and Amelia Filin, aka Tournesol

Some people give sense to the world through money, sex, philosophy, psychoanalysis, marxism... the Tournesol made it with numbers.

Anatole Richer

This apparently inoffensive couple spent most of its time in its native village, where it began a systematic tally of all the objects there.

Robert and Amelie were absolutely certain that by these means they would be able to prove the existence of an exact replica of their village somewhere else on the planet, in the secret hope that many others would follow in their footsteps, just as exhaustively.

Not a perfect likeness, due for example to an identical street layout, or all houses being exactly the same size, but a more subtle identity, one might say on a higher plane, that of the number of components making up their village, regardless of their subsequent arrangement as: blocks, railings, stairs, plates or tiles.

These connections are supposed to describe an invisible state of the world : the very hidden structure of the world itself, given by NUMBERS.

Beginning with their home in 23 AG, they finished the inventory three months later (28-AG), having first removed the entire roof to be able to count the nails. we can see them removing the first tiles, then the frame, leaving a pure, empty space !

Empty, but full of numbers : 540 tiles, 4600 nails, 36 pieces of wood.

They recorded their impressions in a heavy 800-page folio entitled
"Notes on the impressions of an exhaustive survey of an Arbiguian house".

Then they offered themselves a long awaited entertainement : the went to a concert of the Bela quartet, which was performing the one-second quartet composed by the a-composer Arjobaste Rigodenol-Benjaise, which is nothing but the transcription of the famous one second song rue du glu.

After this wagnerian experience, they set onto their neighbour’s house (not without difficulty, as they first had to overcome Madame Poulepais’ resistance by murduring her husband).

Denounced to the police by their neighbour, Mrs Ouate-Zebzeb, and in spite of the doubts of mr Renolphe Rigodenol-Benjaise, who was the brother of the composer Arjobaste Rigodenol-Benjaise, who wrote the quartet the Tournesols went to listen, which is nothing but the transcription of the famous one second song rue du glu.

I'd like to take the opportunity to mention that Arjobaste Rigodenol-Benjaise didn't only write this string quartet, but another one as well, called : String Quartet.

Anyway, the Tournesol's atrocious crime became famous, so they escaped and were never to be found again.
Following the Tournesols, an indiscriminate number of measurers of all kinds cropped up: counting chains, boats, train lines, travelling lamp-post wheels, winter-rose petals, grains of couscous, petrified carrots, funeral marble, hard, clear, rubber flex, blue cycle-straps, wild boar-motors, daydream lengths, streets that rise, other streets that just lead downwards, corners in bars, broken prams, abandoned bakeries, etc.

The infinite and unstated quest was, it will be understood, to possess, grasp and understand the world in order to heal the proliferation of the singular, to heal the world of these forked-fingered special cases.
To reduce them to numbers, to lengths that one assumes to be common and among which one may have found numerous connections.

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Telegrams from the Nose in Johannesburg

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With a great team of south african performers, the collaboration piece with William Kentridge Telegrams from the Nose has been performed three times at the Market Theater, Johannesburg.

It was part of a beautiful festival dedicated to Kentridge's diverse works, in collaboration with dancers, musicians and me.

On the 16th of september was the awaited premiere of his new show, "Dancing with Dada".

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In Telegrams, the audience could discover this wonderful mix of live and filmed mime, with animation movies, live music composed especially for them.

The texts by Daniil Harms and the Minutes of Bukharin trial give a narrative line, and make explicit the topics of censorship, oppression and destruction of an individual through a politic system.