VIDEOBAR #89

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VIDEOFORMES and CLERMONT INNOVATION WEEK present :

The work

“In the middle of nowhere at the center of everything is a geopoetic writing experience of anticipation that questions the Anthropocene and the end of humanity, from a performative exploration of the landscape. It is the fragmentary and fragmented account of a journey, between a hike and a road movie, in which Hortense Gauthier tries to inhabit the coming disappearance by a real presence in space and time.

By imagining the disappearance of human beings, a hypothesis of anticipation that allows us to take another look at the landscape, Hortense Gauthier has practiced a psychogeographical drift, with the Auvergne as a field of experimentation and questioning. And it is through this territory that she went in search of a “center” (Massif Central, volcanoes and telluric places, geometric center of the French territory, ….) where to disappear, or how to pass through the prism of a speculative fiction to better look at and experience our present in an ecofeminist perspective.

From this (en)quest, and through various media (videos, photographs, poetry, plastic creation …) which are arranged in the form of installation, she questions the anthropocentric look, the centralized point of view that we have on the landscapes, and the impossibility of this position in front of the “nature” at the time of the collapse of the ecosystems. Thus, a post-survivalist poetic fiction unfolds that draws a counter-mapping of the future and questions our relationship to our ecumene.”

Hortense Gauthier

The artist

Born in 1983, Hortense Gauthier practiced dance, theater and video at a young age. She then studied history-geography, social and political sciences and met contemporary poetry around the year 2000.

Artist, performer, poet and curator, her work revolves around the relationship between body, space (cartographic, geographic, cosmic…), technology and language.

Since 2006, she has been developing a practice of intermedia creation, deploying writing in its multiple dimensions. In a transtextual dynamic, her action art approach mixes performance, poetry, visual and sound creation to question the images and discourses that shape the body, and explore its becoming cyborg (Haraway) to open its potentialities, and make it a critical tool of permanent creation.

She has created performances for the stage in complex digital devices (HP Process, duet with Philippe Boisnard), in situ actions in the public space and in nature, such as poetic, magical and political rituals of transmutation of language, as well as conferences-performances, or immersive shows crossing dance and poetry. In her creations, she seeks to hold a presence, which functions as a capacitor and becomes a transmitter/receiver, or the body as a “reading head” of the world.

More information on the artist’s website: www.hortensegauthier.org
Clermont Innovation Week: www.clermontinnovationweek.eu

In partnership with the City of Clermont-Ferrand, Clermont Innovation Week, Clermont-Ferrand Massif-Central European Capital of Culture 2028 and Radio Campus.
Technical partner MTEC.
With the support of the DRAC Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, and the DRAC Nouvelle-Aquitaine.