Animal Architecte Durée d’exposition

In this piece, Camille Dagen and Emma Depoid transpose to the stage the different steps of a manual of analogue photography. Durée d’exposition, a hybrid object on the frontiers of theatre and performance, functions as a methodical and playful attempt at capturing the real, thereby enabling us to rediscover the world.

The instruction manual unfurls before us, revealing the protocol behind the fabrication of an image, from framing to development. At each stage, and with disconcerting ease and astounding authenticity, the two performers embark on a performance, a sequence or an action which translates it, in artistic terms, to the stage. The writing draws upon texts encountered during the work process itself; fragments of different texts appear – Racine, Buchner or the front-page of a newspaper. In a way which is not void of humour, the piece touches upon the beauty of uncovered scenes, and the magic of the random and the incongruous. The vocabulary of photography, applied to time in the present, poses questions about the theatrical gesture and sheds light upon the inner workings of acting and portrayal. In doing so, the subject at the heart of the process reveals itself: separation, whether it be the break-up of a relationship or the distance which separates us from others. It is precisely this distance which this shared theatrical experience seeks to overcome. Animal Architecte bring us a piece which is both melancholic and joyous, and which makes full use of all artistic liberties.