MATTERS / Duncan Evennou & Clémence Hallé

With Matters, actor Duncan Evennou situates and then transforms the historical, scientific and political voices of the members of the group, playing with their words in all their sensitivity, and moving from their narratives to their hesitations, their silences or their derision, plays with the frictions of thought when the sciences climb on the theater stage. Between the interstices of an increasingly disturbed performance appear the cracks of a dominant political discourse on the end of the world, powerless in the face of the representations of long and inhuman time that the geologists invite to imagine. Yet it is only the end of a world. Can we hear others emerging from the hubbub of knowledge blurred by the urgency to act?

Matters has been presented in Paris, Berlin, Milan, Cairo, etc.

Direction and interpretation: Duncan Evennou / Text and dramaturgy: Clémence Hallé / Research design: Benoît Verjat / Lighting: Patrick Laffont De Lojo / Production: Lighthouse Company / Co-production: Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, ENS

Duncan Evennou is a contemporary French performer and director. In 2012, he graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieur d’Art Dramatique du Théâtre National de Bretagne, under the direction of Stanislas Nordey. Having completed the Political Arts Experimentation Programme (SPEAP) at the Ecole des Sciences Politiques, he is now focusing on interdisciplinary work at the interface of drama, sociology and visual art involving the three key dynamics of creation, research and pedagogy.

Clémence Hallé is a doctoral student at the École Normale Supérieure in the “Sciences, Arts, Creation, Research” department. Her thesis is on the aesthetic history of the Anthropocene and she is continuing the research into ecological representation that she began with SPEAP as her field of study. She notably wrote a report on an advance simulation of COP21 at the Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers, Paris Climat 2015: Make it Work, in the form of a play, with SPEAP illustrator Anne-Sophie Milon.

Benoît Verjat is a graduate of the École Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, Strasbourg. For over 10 years, he has designed and produced numerous instruments for the creation, editing and exploration of visual representation. These instruments have found iterations and applications in art, design, scenography and performance, but also in political science, biology and social and human sciences. In 2015, he worked with the SPEAP, and joined the Médialab, a department set up to create instruments and visualisations in tandem with STS (Science, Technology and Social science) researchers.

Patrick Laffont de Lojo lives and works in Paris. Patrick Laffont-DeLojo is a visual artist, video director and set designer who develops his work “on stage” as close as possible to the performers. Since 2004, he has been working with Cyril Teste, Hubert Colas, Emilie Loizeau, Alain Françon, Robert Cantarella, Yves-Noel Genod, Jean-Louis Benoît, Thierry Thieu Niang, Benjamin Bertrand… Since 2017 he has been collaborating with Frédérique Aït-Touati and Bruno Latour and teaches at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

This event is part of the Franco-German series “Climate Crisis & Contemporary Culture” which seeks to explore the diverse means by which we communicate on our current climate crisis while exchanging experiences and art. It is designed by the French Alliance and the Goethe Zentrum in Atlanta, the Villa Albertine in Atlanta, the School of Modern Languages of Georgia Tech, with the support of the Cultural services of the Embassy of France in the US, the Consulate of the Federal Republic of Germany in Atlanta, the Franco-German Cultural Fund and DramaTech.