“The absurd is reason which sees its limits”, affirmed Albert Camus. For a few weeks, Victor Pilon learned it the hard way, but not at his expense, aware of the disproportionate, even daredevil nature of the performance he delivered in the depths of the Olympic Stadium.
The figures speak for themselves: from September 28 to October 27, six days a week, seven hours a day, the 63-year-old had in front of him 50 tons of sand to move to form a small mountain which subsequently rose patiently at the other end of the room. His shovel collected the equivalent of 300 tons of sand, and his shoes traveled a lot: nearly 600 kilometers back and forth under the dumbfounded or moved eyes of the spectators. This happening minimalist and out of the ordinary titled Sisyphus, marathon performance drew as much from Greek mythology as from the work of the philosopher Albert Camus. All in the heart of an Olympic Park which, since 1976, has been used in all kinds of ways, until then foreign to this type of artistic event.
Victor Pilon, associated for more than three decades with Michel Lemieux, and discreet big manitou of their flamboyant creations, of the Museum of contemporary art (The great hotel for foreigners), TNM (The beauty and the Beast, Icarus) through the facades of Old Montreal (Memory City), this time ventured into uncharted waters. In the middle of this vast plateau, surrounded by quidams in the half-light and by five cameras to immortalize the event, he wanted to revisit the famous myth around this stone which ceaselessly rolls, and this Camusian conception “that it is necessary to make its mourning to want to find a meaning in his life… ”underlines the director of certain Cirque du Soleil shows (One, Delirium) and Diane Dufresne.
But then why have you lifted all this sand knowing that once again, this new adventure of his company, Lemieux Pilon 4D Art, would be as hypnotizing as it is ephemeral? The death of her husband in 2017 in an (absurd) car accident pushed him to put himself in danger, a motivation that was not always obvious to those who attended the event, sometimes invited to take relay for a few minutes, “because the shovel should never stop, just like time, when I sometimes had to rest”. Because the exhaustion came from a significant physical effort (“I trained for months”), but above all from the fear of this introvert of being in full light in the spotlight (and the magnificent lighting of Alain Lortie) , coated with the soundscapes of Marcin Bunar, as well as the songs of the group Dear Criminals. Her husband’s favorite disappeared too quickly, and too soon.
Call of the shovel
The spectators were not all warned, and the request could surprise, because without saying a word, Pilon handed them his shovel, still unaware of the reactions. They were diverse, surprising, as we have seen during the two passages of the To have to at the start and end of the course. To the embarrassment of being in plain sight could be added the fear of ridicule or physical incapacity. Reminding him of the tears of an elderly woman when Pilon knelt before her to salute her hard work, he became inexhaustible. “Nearly 50% of the people who took the shovel left crying,” recalls the artist. I asked for the help of children full of candor, and of old people who had difficulty in keeping their balance, but always with dignity. The woman you are telling me about wrote to me to tell me that she was sexually abused as a child and all her life shoveled this mountain. This image allowed him to evacuate his own… ”
In contrast, others accepted the shovel with irony, like this young man riveted to his skateboard, obviously there by chance. “He laughed, remembers Victor Pilon. I felt a little arrogant, he started shoveling very quickly, but his pace gradually slowed down: he understood that it was not easy and, when he gave me the shovel , his gaze had changed. Others were more categorical. “Yeah, I got refused, and it was good that way. But some of them later came to help me; they even interrupted my journey, sometimes seeing that I was exhausted. “
Desert crossings
This performance, whose echo resounded outside Montreal and could be reborn from its ashes – “certain festivals have expressed their interest in presenting it”, underlines the artist who still needs a rest before returning to Sisyphus -, was also surprising in this pandemic context. As curator Mary-Dailey Desmarais of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts pointed out, where the event was to take place before technical considerations forced its move to the Olympic Stadium thanks to the initiative of Fr.- dg Michel Labrecque, the pervasive presence of COVID-19 since March 2020 has made our daily lives absurd, and sometimes hopeless as to the outcome of the health crisis.
The symbolism did not escape Victor Pilon. Everyone who helped him was blessed with a compassionate look, and he didn’t hesitate to touch their hand. “Even though I still have a lot of horn, there was no way I was going to wear gloves. The touch would not have been the same, because it added a depth, an intimacy, especially during this period when no one is touching each other anymore. »And if we compared her approach to that of Marina Abramović, she who supported the gaze of 1000 visitors in 2010 at MoMA in New York in her famous performance entitled The Artist Is Present, Pilon is flattered, while making the necessary distinctions. “She was still, I was in action and movement. I am honored to be compared to her, but I would never have sat for three months [et huit heures par jour] ! “
Ironically, in the middle of this barren and sandy space, Victor Pilon also experienced some desert crossings. Because he was sometimes alone, without any spectator to encourage him. “As I had never been alone on stage, I ignored this feeling. The cameras were filming me, I had to keep shoveling, and especially to hold on to what and for whom I was doing it. In all ways, it was much more difficult. Especially when behind this exhausting and repetitive work hide memories that are both tender and painful.
“You miss only one being, and everything is depopulated”, wrote Alphonse de Lamartine. Victor Pilon knows this better than anyone, and preferred to shovel the impossible rather than get stuck in the quicksand of grief.