Make ecology an artistic reinvention force – Liberation
In 2018, I have been collaborating for three years with the choreographer Jérôme Bel. Tokyo, Philadelphia, Tehran, Bangkok, Budapest and Rome are some of our destinations. That same year was released The IPCC report on the consequences of global warming greater than 1.5 ° C. The press has an abundant echo. And I become aware of the magnitude of the danger that extractivist activities run to the existence of all forms of life on earth. Eco-anxiety tapped me, I go to « Living with trouble », As the philosopher gave us Haraway.
At the beginning of 2019, Jérôme Bel made the decision that neither him nor his collaborators, will not now use the plane for their trips. For the company, air transport constitutes, in fact, the first lever of an ecological transition, knowing that neither the decor nor the costumes are created for the shows and that more than half of our representations are abroad. How did this radical decision, taken from Solastalgia, become the engine of an in-depth change in our practices? How did I get it to reinvent my job and initiate the ecological transition of the company as I had initiated it in the private sphere?
In Europe, tours are now done by train with stages. My representation of this territory changes at all, I make mine the map of rail nodes, night trains, and maritime links. The broadcasting of the shows becomes inseparable from a plea in favor of an ecological turn of the sector. Because it is our whole ecosystem that must branch off. If some of our partners are first confused, others see it as the possibility of reconnecting with virtuous forms of cooperation which had been eroded with the generalization of scattered representations boosted by low-cost flights.
For more distant destinations, several devices for creating or reassembling shows with local distributions are developed and deployed from partitions and protocols. Our network of directors of theaters is coupled with a large circle of artists, choreographers and performers, who invest locally in these reasons. Rather than imposing our own conception of the theater is an intercultural collaboration that is committed, involving a greater sharing of artistic responsibility.
In 2021, the room Jérôme Bel further deepens this principle of delegation. She takes the form of a monologue in which the choreographer explains his work by illustrating it with archive videos. He conceived it with the idea that it could be interpreted in each country by an actor, in his language and independently. A text, notes and videos are transmitted by the company. Each occurrence is produced by a local theater. To date, 40 actors and actresses around the world have embodied him in 115 performances in 43 cities.
We have been experiencing these alternative methods of creation, production and dissemination for six years now, with the help of a quickly convinced team and committed partners. The company’s annual carbon footprint increased from 54 to 1 ton of CO2 equivalent, with a similar number of dates internationally. After the electroshock of the covid crisis and thanks to the remarkable action of actors such as the Arviva association, The ecological transition of the sector is underway. Many tools allow everyone to engage in there according to methods adapted to their activity and their works. Beyond renunciation, we can make ecology together a collective and artistic reinvention force.
