Scoli Acosta, Sophie Dubosc, Daniel Firman, Douglas Gordon, Lothar Hempel, Jacques Julien, Jan Kopp, Christophe Lemaitre, Gyan Panchal, Giulio Paolini, Tony Regazzoni

Following an exhibition focused on perspective—a concept developed during the first installment of the series—this exhibition takes the stage as its starting point. Another variation on the image box, the stage (theatrical, musical) offers a collective experience (both on stage and in the audience) in a frontal manner, activating notions of spectacle, performance, and representation.

The Western theatrical tradition has its origins in Greek theater and the festivals held in worship of the god Dionysus. Gradually emancipating itself from its religious vocation, it is characterized by the central position it accords to humans within its framework. Serving the city, it allowed passions to be regulated through what Aristotle called catharsis, based on the empathy that the spectator could feel towards the hero of the tragedy. Parallel to the codification of the theatrical genre, architecture became fixed in a spatial division between stage and auditorium. During the Renaissance, with the invention of Italian-style theater inspired by Vitruvius, the stage space became an illusionist space with architectural elements and trompe l'oeil perspectives, housed in a building designed specifically for it.

This illusionist space, whose physical and symbolic boundaries have been constantly challenged, is still today the preferred mode of presentation for performances, whether theatrical, musical, or visual. In this performance space, Le Bureau/ focuses on the boundaries and codes that determine the activity of some (the actors) and the passivity of others (the “set” and the audience in the theater). In a Brechtian attempt at distancing, a mirror is placed at the back of the room in order to multiply the viewpoints on the works and to fully include the spectator in the performance. The mirror thus re-enacts and complicates the separation between activity and passivity, here the inactive “stage” and the reflection of the active spectator, creating a new scenic and projective configuration of the whole.

Le Bureau/ : Guillaume Baudin, Marc Bembekoff, Garance Chabert, Aurélien Mole, Julie Pagnier, Céline Poulin, Émilie Villez