As articial creatures in the art world, are monsters built to frighten? Are they built from the intimate fears of their creators? Can we trace how monsters confront our fears? How do monsters embody the unknown? How do they represent things we fear or cannot control? What do monsters do for us, emotionally and/or intellectually?
Monsters may have escaped from fantasy worlds, books, films and theatrical stages. Once the camouflage of our fears, they may have migrated to live in the world of our current confusions, becoming the camouflages of our daily lives.
This performance is derived from a lecture made for the conference on “the staging of monstrous bodies and orders”. The monstrosity of its form and content pushed it out of the conference room to meet other spectators, and worlds other than the academy, in an attempt to diffract our present world. A world in which monsters have emerged from certain actions to intrude on our daily lives, to be among us, and within us. This performance looks at how monsters are made. This conference creates monsters, to generate a situation in which we are invited to re-evaluate our view of the other, our relationship to the strange, between the unacceptable and the acceptable, between the desirable and the undesirable.
And if we accept that monsters can help us pose the question of what is acceptable or desirable in human beings and in social contracts, could they help us create a utopian and desired environment? Could they build relationships between beings and help us overcome our fears of others and of the possible collapses that surround, approach and sometimes haunt us?
Production: Association Le Kwatt
Co-production: Halle Tropisme
With the support of DRAC Ile-de-France - compagnie conventionnée.
Images by Tamira Kalmbach.
Xavier Le Roy holds a PhD in molecular biology and has been working as an artist since 1991. He is also a professor at the Institute for Applied Theater Studies in Giessen, Germany. His early solo works were credited as ground-breaking, opening new perspectives in choreography. Motivated by the need for transformation, he creates with the desire to alter our understanding of dichotomies such as: Human/Non-Human, Subject/Object, Passive/Active, Norma/Anormal, and to multiply our perspectives.
His latest works, such as We Are Not Monsters (2020) in collaboration with Dalibor Šandor and Per.Art, Retrospective (2012-), For the Unfaithful Replica (2016), Still In Hong Kong (2021), investigate time, space as well as the relationship between the public and live artworks made possible by exhibitions, museums and other public spaces.
His works have been presented internationally, including at the Taipei Performing Arts Center, Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017, Tapiès Foundation (Barcelona), MoMA (New York), Kaldor Public Art Projects (Sydney), Centre Pompidou (Paris) and La Biennale di Venezia Danza among others.