Animalism

thematiques de recherche - animalite

*In many ways animals are our masters. Their morphology different from that of humans invites us to question their correct response to Earth’s gravity and compare it to ours.

The only way to reach deep nature
of man is the non-human.
Zen proverb

References : Les Mutants, Cartoon, En ce temps là ils passaient, Im/mobile, Bugs, Mutatis Mutandis and the film Tezirzek

In many ways, the qualities of organicity and organization of the animal movement are exemplary: accuracy, economy, elegance, adaptability, availability, etc.

Animals give to see a game of shape, various dynamics which, by their adaptation to the environment, their permanent survival, reveal us behaviors far from realism and human psychology. Far from the manifestations of thought and its expression through language, animality invites us to return to a way of primacy of actions and reactions, a way of regressing in order to progress, and to question the essential.

The animals are for the actor an opportunity of imaginary opening towards

The elements: water, air, earth, fire

The relationship to the element: leaning on the ground, air or water

Extra-daily dynamic modes (immobility, perfect slowness… fulgurance)

Mimetic possibilities with different animal families: cats, insects, birds, reptiles… and in the same family of different types: eagle, heron, sparrow, owl or duck

Various types of movement: from undulation to transport immobility

Specific behaviours: power relations, love parades, territorial defence, flight, kidnapping etc.

The exacerbation of the senses: smell, hearing, look, touch

Gaston Bachelard’s notion of territory or “house” in the sense of the poetics of Espace: the nest, the terrier, the hive etc…

Specific types of organization, communication, social hierarchies: hordes of wolves, life of anthill and hives, rat societies etc…

All these themes were an invitation to cross-reference the notions of anthropomorphism, zoomorphism, and cosmomorphism.

And even though in many ways animals are our masters, research invites us to discover that it is less about imitating the animal than about revealing, understanding and playing what is animality (often lost) in the human and work out the form of representation that can be given to this animality.

Le corps à l’ouvrage, de l’art gestuel, de l’art théâtral