Bettina Blanc-Penther
Too much tenderness - Film - 24min - 2017
présenté dans le cadre de l'exposition panorama 19
Film
Two soldiers without a war: absence has dug a hole.
Here we knew each other but didn’t recognize each other anymore
Now words are empty and language impossible.
So that’s why the characters won’t speak.
One skirts around absence without ever being able to draw it into language.
It must be prevented from entering us.
You and me in a house, far away from it all,
far from the noises of the city that haunt us like a melody going round in our heads.
There’s also a boy who thinks he’s a ghost.
All I know here is you and the joy of being together.
The house is sheltered by the shade of the trees.
We’ve leaned against their bark and now our T-shirts are stained with sugar.
You often used to ask me, why have we come here?
It is because we had to get far away from all you know, so the trees would be strangers to you,
so you wouldn’t recognize the fruits, the flowers,
the words on the biscuit packets.
But what happened?
Tons of things, tons of stories unafraid to be called reality.
Often we walk side by side, between us there is no room to think that the sky is begrimed or that summer is ending.
And then there’s that little picture in a pocket, streaked with white where the photograph had been folded, and another in a box, which one day went missing because we were foolhardy enough to think we’d like to forget it forever.
Bettina Blanc-Penther
Bettina Blanc Penther is a choreographer and performer. They studied applied modern literature at the Sorbonne before graduating from the Photo/Video department of the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in Paris. Between 2017 and 2018, they joined Le Fresnoy-Studio National des Arts where they made two short films: Too much Tenderness and I am a Beliver, which were shown in festivals and exhibitions such as the Art Press Biennale and the Xposed festival in Berlin. In 2019, alongside their visual arts practice, Bettina joined the curatorial study group "Displays" at EnsadLab-PSL as a student researcher, working on the notion of agency in artworks. They practice wrestling in national competition with the "Red Devils's club." At the same time, they dance and collaborate with choreographer Marcela Santander Corvàlan on her pieces "Quietos" and "Bocas de Oro". They give numerous dance workshops for all audiences at the CND, the École des Beaux-Arts in Dijon, etc. In 2021, Bettina and Pauline Brun founded the company No SMALL MESS, which hosts choreographic projects such as their new solo "Secretly Troubled" on the theme of shame. In 2023, they participated in the Danceweb program at Impulstanz in Vienna. In 2024, Bettina created and presented in Berlin with choreographer Antonia Baerh a piece on the transmission between two generations of butch entitled Silver and Baby Butch.
