The 2005 Avignon Theatre Festival sparked a vast controversy about the insistent presence of bodies (whether wounded, broken, or humiliated) on stage. Without subscribing to the reactionary critical response to the Festival, it is legitimate to return to the debate in order to question the ubiquity of the “victim body” in contemporary theatre. Such representations, far from being heterodox, are in fact part of the massive ideology of “the ethical”, as diagnosed by Alain Badiou. The oppressed body thus tends to (...) be assimilated to the body of the victim. The result is the obliteration of the resistance of subjects to their oppression, or of their active response to it, theatre being reduced to the maxims of a democratic materialism: “there are only bodies and languages”. (shrink)

Several contemporary artists represent or stage bodies which have been blatantly marked by History and by their own history. This marking may be determined by their social embedding (in terms of the social class to which they belong, their ethnic or gender origin), or may be a question of the confrontations and ordeals imposed upon them by the societies within which they act. Contrary to the predominant, normative exhibition of bodily purity, contemporary art presents bodies which are impure, ambiguous, or (...) disquieting. Faced with the various powers (political, economic, ideological, moral, religious, scientific, technological) which, as in the past, seek to subject the body, art avails of its capacity to conjure up certain images in which, whether as an absence or as a presence, the body of rebellion reverberates. (shrink)

Aujourd’hui, l’exposition plasticienne crée un nouveau langage en direction du spectateur. Réinventant des signes et des qualités sensibles, elle redéfinit la fabrique comme la perception du plaisir et du jugement de goût et, d’un même élan, restitue à l’œuvre ce que l’esthétique, comme science de l’art, n’aurait jamais dû lui soustraire : la foi en sa capacité critique.