Grand Magasin Inventer de nouvelles erreurs

Pascale Murtin and François Hiffler, two artists working in tandem under the name of Grand Magasin, like to catalogue things: lists of individuals classified by size or type of toes, incongruous equations, and other odd categories. They catalogue things which were never meant to be catalogued, using rational methods and repetitive logic. Since the start of the 1980’s, this obsession has given rise to pieces of theatre with surprising titles, along the lines of Bilan de compétences or 25 chansons trop courtes et quelques unes plus longues. These “anti-shows” owe less to the heritage of French theatre than they do to literary and visual arts experimentation.

Here, these spiritual sons of Georges Perec or Robert Filou continue their minute, detailed explorations into the realms of the infra-ordinary, tautology and different poetic forms via a musical commission made to the American composer Tom Johnson to compose a minimalist work. Inventer de nouvelles erreurs or (or Looking for New Mistakes) brings together two sopranos, two flautists and a choir of six performers in order to explore the question of “tiny differences”. It was Leibniz who commented on them in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. He recalled a certain princess who, whilst walking in her garden, uttered her belief that no two leaves could be “exactly the same”. In the hands of Grand Magasin, this libretto has been turned into an improbable comparative study, and forms the basis for a “one-minute opéra”. Its construction is reminiscent of the Broadway “off-stage comedy” genre, which shows the work itself but also the different stages of its making.