End of Victor Pilon’s performance | On top of the mountain

Those who attended the last minutes of the performance Sisyphus by Victor Pilon will long remember the emotion they felt.

At 6 p.m. on Wednesday, the artist put down his shovel, the one which, for five weeks, six days a week and seven hours a day, allowed him to tirelessly move a mountain of 50 tons of sand in a hall of the Olympic Stadium.

Silence has fallen. Victor Pilon took a moment. Then the hundreds of spectators began to applaud him wholeheartedly. They thanked him for having offered them grandiose moments, overwhelming images and moments that literally came from meditation.

By building and deconstructing a mountain with a shovel, Victor Pilon achieved an extraordinary physical, emotional and mental performance.

In total, the artist moved, during these 26 days, no less than 300 tons of sand and traveled about 600 kilometers.

A real madness!

Produced by Lemieux Pilon 4D Art, this artistic performance was inspired by Sisyphus who, according to Greek myth, challenged Zeus and Thanatos, god of death.

This outrage resulted in him being banished to hell and condemned to roll relentlessly to the top of a steep mountain an enormous stone which immediately descended from it, without ever reaching the top.

“It is this state that leads us to fully live every moment of our life. This myth is the supreme quest for meaning for women and men, it is the unreasonable silence of the world, ”Victor Pilon told me last August.

Read Mario Girard’s interview with Victor Pilon

A few minutes after the end of the experience Sisyphus, Victor Pilon thanked the many collaborators who worked with him. For my part, I will insist on Michoue Sylvain, a wonderful creator who accompanied the artist in the way of creating a highly poetic gesture which he knew how to brilliantly use. All this was bathed in fabulous lighting by Alain Lortie and a bewitching sound environment by Marcin Bunar.

Cameras filmed the entire performance. A film must be made. It will contain a lot of beauty.

Victor Pilon paid tribute to Michel Labrecque, President and CEO of the Olympic Park, who had the audacity to host a contemporary art performance in this temple of sport.

Then, his voice weak and knotted, he spoke of the looks he met during those difficult days, of the hands that agreed to take his shovel to help him in this superhuman task.

He spoke of those parents and their children who helped him carry sand with their hands. He spoke of this woman who, after grabbing Sisyphus’s shovel, decided to end a toxic relationship.

The tragic death of his partner Sylvain, in 2017, led Victor Pilon to carry out this disproportionate project. “We all have to mourn the absurdity of life in order, perhaps, to achieve a form of freedom, even happiness, he wrote to explain this project which required a long physical preparation. . This project is an effort to understand the eternal recommencement, to grasp the absurdity of existence and the quest for the why that inhabits us all. ”

When at the very end of the performance, Victor Pilon put the shovel on the sand before laying in his hollow a photo of his deceased lover while we heard the song Stay tonight, from Dear Criminals, many of us had our throats tight.

Tears flowed under the masks.

This is where we collectively felt the immense power of art.

Wasn’t that, too, the goal of this artistic gesture?