Mette Ingvartsen Echelle Humaine - Manual Focus

Bodies are the vectors of this new edition of Échelle Humaine. Whether they be choreographed, directed, or imaginary, they occupy all the spaces of Lafayette Anticipations and invite us to observe what is beneath the surface of the world: our infatuations and our refusals, our hesitations and our affirmations, and our tenacity.

Manual Focus, a photographic term, refers to the manual focusing of images - as opposed to auto-focus. With their naked bodies and old men's masks, the three performers in this visual piece bring out new images and create unknown creatures. Faces are rotated 180°, arms become legs, top and bottom are reversed, front and back as well. And here are born animals with twelve legs, disorganized figures, chimeras. Through unexpected connections between naked and masked, artificial and real, young and old, human and animal, the bodies we know - identified, gendered, ordinary bodies - are transformed into monsters, fabulous and moving. They open the way to new glances, to the possibility that the banal becomes absolutely unexpected. But since monsters never become familiar, they disappear, merge into others, leaving it to our memory to reinvent them.
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Running time : 25 minutes