zon-mai

• The Zon-mai, "at home, elsewhere"
• The Cité and Zon-mai
  • The commission
  • Art and museum ?
• Through the eyes of its makers
• The artists
• Technical rider
• The book
• The credits

A gigantic multi-media installation in a museum of history… Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui returns to a collaboration that didn't seem easy in the first place

"What I find interesting – in this prototype of a museum on one side, and art on another – is that more often than not, the vestiges we inherit of the past are of art, be it a vase or a painting. It is art that usually provides us testimonies from history, from bygone times. It is not just things but art pieces or artefacts that survive as witnesses to these long-lost stories. So I feel that the Zon-Mai is at home here, because it can speak a little on life today. In fifty years, when people come across an installation like this, they could say “That’s how some people saw things in 2007.” The relation between a museum of history and art has always been present, and is natural. Art has always been present as a witness to reality, and therefore, to the past and to the reality of the past.

As far as performing arts in a museum of history, and the decision to offer another perspective simultaneously, not a scientific but an artistic one, it is difficult to say anything on that matter: quite simply because artistes are not anything other than human beings. Artistes are above all human beings who represent their generation and their time. I do not see dance as anything other than the representations of human beings and human emotion: dance does not develop separately from these roots. Dance is a language but one that many people understand – with their bodies, with imme- diacy. We are in a certain matrix that goes beyond the reflection and intellect and towards sensation: even when people don’t understand the words or the music, they feel. Art to me means accepting that some things need to be felt and not merely theorised.

Afterwards, we can theorise to our hearts’ content but first we need to feel. And as a spectator – again, I am positioning myself with the audience – feeling is primordial when I see a dancer move. It seems right to stage that, to share it with an audience, when I myself am moved, touched by what I see. When movement speaks on its own to me, I put it in a particular context and present it to others, so that they too may be touched by its power".

Performance as a celebration of co-existence...

"With the Zon-Mai, there is also this aspect. It was, as I mentioned, the chance to bring together all these dancers within the same house, and to inhabit the same space, conferring on each of them their place and their moment. I also wanted to transmit the message that we had to learn to co-exist, to leave place for others, and not clamour to be centre-stage at the same time.

In that sense, I like to think of performance as a celebration of co-existence, because we all try to learn to share, to give and make space and time for each other. Instead of fighting for primacy, we try to see how we can construct something all together. We tend to forget this, but the underlying beauty in a performance is that it is primarily the convergence of a mass of people, seated one next to the other, all sharing the same moment. There is nothing private about it; a perfor- mance is an extremely social experience. All of us assembled for this ritual, which is our bond with the performance.

What is pretty extraordinary about the Zon-Mai is that each spectator can choose his perspective, his viewing point. You can orbit it; you can move close to it or place yourself far away, or from a corner.  And I found that we get a glimpse of the personality of each viewer in the way they decide to watch it, in the choices they make. And the Zon-Mai leaves us choice, it lets us leave and come back, circle it or go outside and smoke a cigarette ... things we are not allowed to do in a conventional performance. So, a lot of codes are no longer extant with this installation. Besides, the Zon-Mai doesn’t depend on our presence either – whether we are watching it or not, whether we all leave or not, it can continue to live through its non-linear sequences".

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui 

 

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