A “provocative, overwhelming” spectacle, in the words of Usine C itself, sparked intense reactions last week. At least two spectators at the Centre-Sud theater lost consciousness on Saturday. Several other spectators left the room during the three performances. It is only in Liebestod, the Spaniard Angélica Liddell casts a spell on herself, as much as on art and its gentrification: she begins with a scene of self-mutilation, starting from her artistic practice. And it bleeds.
The theater had issued a warning on its website, in the program and on a poster at the entrance: “This show contains a scene of self-harm and could offend the sensibilities of some spectators. »
The show, presented at the Avignon Festival in 2021, is subtitled The smell of blood never leaves my eyes. If the body artwhich is used in the theatrical practices of Angélica Liddell, appeared in the 1950s, and as the current experienced its strength in the 1960s-1970s, today’s spectators were surprised, and even immersed in a state of dismay in front of the staging.
A spectator saw two women lose consciousness during Saturday’s performance. She and three of her seatmates took a lady out of the room.
“She was heavy, limp and unconscious. We walked up the stairs carrying her out of the room. She was sat on the ground with her back straight, supporting her. It took a long time before she regained consciousness,” says the spectator, who asked to remain anonymous.
The other audience member who lost consciousness during Saturday’s performance was supported by his seatmate, according to witnesses.
Jean-Florent Westrelin, responsible for communications at the performance hall, ensures that a paramedic was there, ready to intervene. Three people from the administration with first aid training were also on site, according to him.
“We had taken our precautions. We knew that this spectacle could provoke strong reactions. It toured Europe 70 times, and each performance resulted in reactions from audience members who didn’t feel well. This was the case during the three performances at our house. »
The newspaper The world had received the piece lukewarmly in 2021. The echoesin a very positive review, in 2022, said that Angélica Liddell “no longer does theater, she is theater”, and that “ Liebestod is an artistic manifesto in the form of immolation.
Julie Paquette, professor at the School of Social Innovation at Saint Paul University in Ottawa, attended Friday’s performance. This specialist in fascism, who is particularly interested in freedom of expression in art history, appreciated Angélica Liddell’s show.
“I had read that there would be self-harm. I said to myself: “Am I going to see this play?” In the end, it was worse than I thought, but I had been warned,” she says.
She believes that in Ottawa, a show of this type would have resulted in a verbal warning before the presentation. At the Nouvelle Scène, for example, the director comes to the theater bar to give oral trauma warnings before each play.
At the time of submission of this text, Factory C reported to Duty that the “spectator satisfaction survey is very enthusiastic. They thank us for the audacity, for the performance. “Masterful, extraordinary, exactly the kind of show [que j’attends]”, they say.”
The survey also lists congratulations for “the care of spectators who had discomfort caused by the blood scene”.
Pain in (contemporary) art
“It is perhaps because it is in a theater that it is more disturbing,” raises Thérèse St-Gelais, professor of feminist art history at the University of Quebec in Montreal. If certain artists, since 1950, have worked specifically on pain, real injury, sadomasochism, these gestures are usually done in performance, sometimes in dance. Arts “which bring together a rarer public, also more informed and more informed about what they can see”.
“It’s a spirit “This is my blood, this is my body, this is my art” which directs these gestures,” summarizes the professor. As an example, she names the work of Gina Pane (1939-1990). In Sentimental Azionefor example, “the artist sticks rose thorns into his arm and cuts his palm with a razor to reconstruct the flower,” as the Center Pompidou describes it.
“She also “made up” herself with razor blades,” says M.me St-Gelais, who also cites the filmed performance Shoot (1971), where Chris Burden is shot with a rifle. The latter is now part of art history.
In 1974, Marina Abramović staged a ritual of artistic desecration, Rhythm 0, where she placed herself within the reach and at the mercy of the public, who could manipulate her, with or without accessories — flowers, feathers, knives, firearms. Sacrificial, you say?
Yoko Ono, a pair of scissors in front of her, asked the spectators to Cut Piece (1964) to cut off a piece of his clothing and take it away. Another example ? The Frenchman Michel Journiac creates Mass for a body in 1969: he invited the public to taste a blood sausage made with his own blood.
We could extend this list a lot, adding ORLAN and his multiple artistic-aesthetic surgeries, or Dave St-Pierre, local choreographer.
The professor mentions that she no longer knows, today, if she can teach these works to her students, or how. “Some come to ask me why I didn’t show Gina Pane’s photos in class; others tell me that they don’t want me to use the word “rape”. I have real questions. »
Have seen others — or not
Jessie Mill, artistic co-director of the Festival TransAmériques (FTA), for her part, sees a change in times, which she refuses to reduce to a single generational change. “When I observe the spectators, from those in their forties, let’s say, I know that these are spectators who have seen other Liddells, or other transgressive practices of the genre. »
“These spectators, including myself, are not shocked in the same way. We place these gestures in a very specific and contextualized story. But at the FTA, we receive questions and doubts from spectators of other generations… And that makes us think. »
Last year, to respond to these different sensitivities, the FTA assigned a person to provide “emotional support for three shows, including The Making of Pinocchio, where it was a request from the artists.” The service was used, specifies Mme Mill.
But the question is not simply resolved there either. “Should we announce that there is a person to speak in the room? If we do it, what does it change in the minds of the spectators? What are we changing, what are we preparing if we announce it? »
“The presentation contexts influence the reception of a show so much, you really have to think about it on a case-by-case basis, about each show,” says M.me Mill. Theaters are therefore experimenting, choosing to support the public a little, a lot or not, we understand.