Moving Earths

Moving Earths

idea Bruno Latour and Frédérique Aït-Touati direction Frédérique Aït-Touati co. Zone Critique

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03/06
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Montjuïc. Espai Lliure

Show completed

Timetable

Fri. 18:30

Running time

1 h

Place

Montjuïc. Espai Lliure

Language

In French subtitled in Catalan

Price

€15 / Subscribers €7,5

Founded in 2004 in England by Frédérique Aït-Touati, the company Zone Critique explores different modes of theatrical writing and questions scientific and ecological imaginations. After several years of exploration of the French and English repertoire (Phèdre by Racine, A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, Landscape by Harold Pinter, Elle est là by Nathalie Sarraute, En attendant Godot by Samuel Beckett), Frédérique Aït-Touati now dedicates herself to research-creation work, in collaboration with the CNRS, the Observatoire de Paris and the EHESS where she is a researcher in the history of science. She was and artist in residence at the Chartreuse de Villeneuve-lez-Avignon and the Comédie de Reims from 2011 to 2013, then at the Nanterre-Amandiers theatre since 2014 with SPEAP, the experimental academy she leads. Through collaborations with scientists of the Earth system, climatologists, musicians, designers, architects, philosophers, video makers, the company makes the theatre a place of exploration and testing of our representations of the world and the living beings. For more than ten years now, the philosopher Bruno Latour and Frédérique Aït-Touati have been working together on projects at the crossroads of research and theatre. Within the company Zone Critique, they have developed different forms of theatrical and performative experiments: conferences - performances ("Tarde / Durkheim", Cerisy and Cambridge, 2007 ; "Bergson/ Einstein", Centre Pompidou, 2010 ; "Anthropocène Conférence", Musée des Confluences and Quai Branly, 2015), the show Gaïa Global Circus (2013-2016, on tour in France, England, Switzerland, Germany, United States, Canada), the simulation of the "Théâtre des Négociations / Make it Work" (Nanterre-Amandiers theatre, with Philippe Quesne, 2015), INSIDE (creation at the Nanterre- Amandiers 2016 theatre, on tour from 2017 to 2019 in Berlin, Frankfurt, New York, at the
TJP-CDN in Strasbourg, at the Kaaitheatre in Brussels and at the Théâtre national de La Criée, Marseille). Between history of science, theatre and scientific research, this new project extends this collaboration and questions the aesthetic and political consequences of the change in the cosmos proposed to us by the Earth System Sciences.

Performative lectures are a subgenre of the performance which was a feature of the programme of Katharsis 20/21. This year, we return to this genre, which is being presented in the Espai Lliure, in order to continue our investigation of how we can convey knowledge through an artistic experience. With local and international artists and theorists, we will be seeking how to combine our intellect and sensitivity to bring to the spectator a wisdom that needs to be conveyed through the aesthetic enjoyment that the theatrical experience gives us. We seek to answer the questions by experience.

Where to land?
When in 1609 Galileo Galilei pointed his telescope at the sky, he discovered mountains on the surface of the Moon, making it another Earth, and the Earth a star among others. He thus upset the cosmic, but also political and social order of his time. Four centuries later, the role and position of our planet is once again being overturned by the new sciences that reveal how human actions make it react in unexpected ways. Galileo had taught us that the Earth is in motion. Researchers James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis discover an Earth "in motion" in another sense: they describe a planet where space and time are the products of the actions of living things. They are forcing us to change our view of the world and our understanding of the cosmos. And, once again, the whole organization of society seems to be called into question.
Whereas in 1609 we had to absorb the shock that "the earth moves", in 2020 we have to accept the much more surprising shock that the earth trembles and reacts to human actions to the point of disrupting all our development projects.
We invite the audience to evaluate the hypothesis of a parallel between the era of the astronomical revolution and ours. Are we experiencing a world transformation as profound and radical as that of Galileo's time? One thing is certain: we no longer know exactly what planet we live on, nor how to describe it. It is not a single, fixed and stable Earth, but a multitude of planets that lie before us, and which we must explore to find out which one to land on.
Between philosophy and theatre, this production claims to be a mix of genres: we think it is well suited to the current period, in which changes in ideas about the world are accompanied by changes in representations of that world. It is this aesthetics of science on the stage that we have been pursuing together for more than ten years.
_Bruno Latour

PERFORMER

Duncan Evennou

TEXT

Bruno Latour

SETTING

Patrick Laffont De Lojo and Frédérique Aït-Touati

VIDEO AND LIGHTING

Patrick Laffont De Lojo

THANKS TO

Robert Woodford for his Deep Time Cards

PRODUCTION

Zone Critique

CO-PRODUCTION

Centre Pompidou, Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers

WITH THE SUPPORT OF

NA Fund, Fondation Carasso and DICRéAM