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David Noir plays JaZon, contemptor of easy emotion | La Toison dort © David Noir

Emotion in question | What is the pleasure of a spectator worth?

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A guarantee of quality questioned: the value given to the viewer's emotion could also be a sign of a lack of standards

Quest for emotion: waiting to be moved

It is common to find in the public an imperious thirst to be emotionally shaken or carried away by a spiral of grandiose feelings in front of the show they have come to attend. It would almost be a law, an absolute guarantee of quality. The thing represented would only make sense - all the more so in the case of abstract propositions that would thereby be "saved" - if it provoked this jolt that transcends everything: emotion.

Make me come

This idea of having to give pleasure to others at all costs as the crowning glory of exceptional circumstances, and to share the source and fruits of this pleasure, has become partially foreign to me today. I suspect that it cultivates dependence at the expense of a vision of the beautiful and the sumptuous, the dark and the tragic. I must even say that the narcissistic enjoyment of the spectator, including my own as an audience member, disturbs me; that I have no particular desire to satisfy it, nor to do what I have to do in order to obtain this trickle of complacency, suitable for generating admiration. This same emotional taste for the cult of another, which would like to transform it into a mirror of oneself, is identical to the one that makes the passing value of a posture, of an ideology with regard to a given time, of a love, disarrayed at the first shake that life imposes on us.

The questionable virtues of spectator emotion

To be only a human being with its limits is one thing; to wish to be a dupe of them is another. In this sense, the show and, at its peak, the show of bodies, appears to me each time I cross it to be precisely the cleanest place to experience solitude and its real emotions, outside of any influence. It is a matter of building oneself up, of being reborn alone, in a space that is well defined from that of one's neighbour; including with regard to my playing partners, whom the crudity of the air on the stage makes appear in all their immeasurable difference - in their great indifference even - stripped in depth of all factitious adhesion to my own person. All of us, looking at each other naked; as if suspended in space; knowing that not one of us will make a gesture to prevent the drift of one of us when it occurs.

The scene I want to design and see born today is a culture of non-assistance.

David Noir plays JaZon, contemptuous of easy emotion | La Toison dort © David Noir
David Noir plays JaZon, contemptor of easy emotion | La Toison dort © David Noir

David Noir

David Noir, performer, actor, author, director, singer, visual artist, video maker, sound designer, teacher... carries his polymorphous nudity and his costumed childhood under the eyes and ears of anyone who wants to see and hear.

This Post Has 2 Comments

  1. hein ?

    Yes, the emotional shot that one comes to look for in a show, the directors who use effects to suck it up, all that smells bad of manipulation, self-manipulation, the "between us" hand job. On the other hand, the naked, the raw, the risk-taking of nothing, the show that leaves the spectator empty, lost, unable to comment, boredom, the micro-emotion that remains, doubt (what am I doing here?, why did I go to see this?), the in-and-out of the actor and the spectator (who doesn't believe for a second in what's happening but lets himself go a bit anyway), yes, the show for which one can neither "like" nor "dislike", it's perhaps a much more interesting experience to live through, much more transforming than an emotional tsunami.

  2. admin

    First of all, thank you for your comment which is the first one on this brand new blog, so double thank you.
    What I mean by this post is that the "I like - I don't like" is a kind of natural laziness to summarize one's feelings about anything, which passes for a character trait. Whatever motivates us to do something or meet someone - by which I mean meeting him or her in what he or she fundamentally is; and that's precisely what art as a space offers - doesn't necessarily boil down to like or dislike. It may be a result of it, not even an obligation. It's what interests me at this stage of my journey, through what I can deliver or seek. It's to go and draw elsewhere than in the sacrosanct temple of love, which represents a value, but not unilaterally a goal. It all depends on the pleasures and excitements one wishes to offer oneself. There is something that still seems to me to be very strongly anchored in the notion of 'family' and, by the same token, of 'religion' in the way the show is perceived, expected and experienced. This is probably due to the physical gathering of people in the same place. The famous "communion". Everything has to go well and you have to come out of it feeling full and satisfied, like a Sunday with your cousins. I've been there. It wasn't necessarily unpleasant, but I'm not sure that I find much nourishment there today. Contemporary art, whether visual or musical, has a head start in my eyes in this area, which is rarely achieved and sought after on stage, either by its audience or by its artists. This is a good thing, because otherwise I wouldn't be interested in it.
    Have a nice evening.

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