Joana Hadjithomas
Histoire du vent - Installation - 2010
présentée dans le cadre de l'exposition Panorama 12
Installation
At the request of Avignon Festival and the CNAP, we have been working for the past year on a public commission on the theme of memory, trace and contemporary creation in the Avignon festival.
How should we tell this story? The mistral, often present during the performances given in the courtyard of the Palais des Papes, seemed an interesting start.
The wind is a form of a metaphor for the performance arts, as soon as it is captured, it disappears...
The manifestations of the wind alter the performances, magnify them or destroy them, but leave a durable trace in the minds of the spectators.
The wind is like a double echo, on the one hand of the theatrical representation in Avignon, with its specificities and, on the other hand, of the issues involved in the writing of a history of live arts.
Our artistic proposal consists in an installation showing a large photographic composition of the Court of Honour, 3 metres by 2 which, when it is not lit up, can hardly be seen. But this image acts like a translucid screen on which a double projection takes place. On the one hand, the eyewitness account of certain actors in this story of the wind which are also evocations of the performances and the history of the festival, but also a reflexion on the theatre, the image and the trace.
On the other, archive images of performances where the wind was present and which have been reworked digitally to be placed in the court of the Palais des Papes like a light breeze, un transcendent link, an element of history... J.H
