repetition-island:

Raimundas Malasauskas, when the Centre Pompidou invited you to create the first event of its new program Les Rendez-vous du Forum, you proposed immediately to install a daily ideal scenario during one week. From 11am to 9pm, successive and overlapping conferences, screenings, performances, lectures, concerts are given by artists in a space transformed by Pierre Bismuth. How came this idea of a day that repeats itself?

There are a couple of things to mention.

I had an idea of curating a full day since approximately one year. At that time, I have happened to be doing the Clifford Irving Show, a live variety show on the stage that lasted almost 4 hours. I realized that this format of long duration events has a great potential, especially in terms of experiencing time, the process and the audience.

I thought it is more interesting to be immersed into a longue durée experience rather than browse between jump-cuts. So I thought it would be nice to curate a full day you have to immerse into.

And then, I have been doing Hypnotic Show, two nights in a row, in Amsterdam and Paris last year. I realized in Paris that we were much more proficient the second night. Usually, when you do a one-off event, you notice that there are certain things you want to do differently, but even if you note them down, there is very high chance that you forget them and start from the scratch if your next gig is happening only in a month or so.

I do not want to say that I do not like starting from the scratch here; it is also very interesting. When I was doing CAC TV in Vilnius, it was the concept of the whole project: “Every program is a pilot; every program is the final episode”. We always started from a zero point – I mean, of course, starting from the scratch is an illusion, especially if you keep doing it for a while. But that was the idea of CAC TV. In the case of this project for Centre Pompidou, what would be nice is to build the space of a continuous exercise in which day by day, you approach the same pursuit, whether it is a task, a motive or a mise en scène and at the end, the overall script of the day.

 

How did you conceive the schedule of the day, the script and its relation to time?

I think the day, as a unit of experience or living is something quite fundamental. I live my life one day at a time – you say it, no?

 

Yes, today I did.

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