Performance & interactive Installation – 2018

Camille Havas, Ponnara Ly, Jean-François Jégo, Judith Guez

Interactive installation, video mapping on “kakemonos”*, this project will make you experience some of the most interesting moments of a person’s pilgrimage of 500 km between Tokyo and Kyoto. Without any previous experience traveling alone or doing any more than a day’s walk, a young woman decided to give it a try, and tells her story with the same candidness you and I can relate to. The scenes the author lived experienced through her pilgrimage were in part filmed while others intimately shared in her travel diary and could be experienced by anyone in her place. The attention borne toward nature and inner sensations, however, could guide your attention toward planes you rarely visit. The relationship with the world intimately developed by Camille coupled with the suggested Shintoism floating through the Japanese air exudes through every stroke of her pen (both auditive and visual). The interaction and immersion offered by the installation allows you to experience a form of virtual reality that can be shared as a group, without a headset. Body motions perceived through the installation trigger projections and sounds, the story is built piece by piece in a unique way as it is shaped by the interactions. Immersion through the scenes can be explored in private or as a group, and you will have the occasion to discover how group collaboration could open the door to other perceptions, in spaces impossible to visit alone.

This project is inspired by the studies of phenomenology by Husserl or de Merleau-Ponty as well as the somatic dance practices and writings of Moshe Feldenkrais and Anna Halprin, by neuroscience through the work of Berthoz that defines “vicariance”*, and finally by the work of anthropologists like Eduardo Kohn or David Abram that suggest studying anthropology in a less “human-centered” way. By weaving links between all these disciplines, we offer the audience an intuitive experience, a non-quantifiable transmission.
*Kakemonos: vertical hanged paper usually used as a support for Japanese calligraphy
*Vicariance: “every creative act implies a change of point of view offering a new perspective on things, a decentering that only vicariance is able to provoke.” (Berthoz, 2013)