Page 86 - PIP

When things
do not (just) do
what one intends
with them...
Clément Layes Choreographic Cycle of Things
„Some people want to run things, other things want to run.“1 Martina Ruhsam
The sheer mass of things produced and discarded in ever shorter cycles in times of planned obsolescence leads to a total devaluation of objects. In fact, smartphones, tablets, notebooks and other kinds of technological gadgets, as well as humble things like tables, chairs, plastic cups etc. choreograph us as much as we choreograph them. They influence our everyday life, our ways of thinking and behaving, our movements in space by proposing specific pathways and established modes of action. By means of their forms, arrangements, conventionalised meanings and functions, everyday objects co-determine the parameters of specific social courses of action and routines. Choreographer Clément Layes foregrounds the reciprocity between active humans and nonhumans with some sort of agency in many of his artistic performances. By constantly replacing and resignifying objects on stage, Layes and his collaborators expose the performativity of things and point out how they influence our lines of thought, our imagination and hence our behaviour. In 'Allege' and 'To allège' Layes staged the movement of thinking
as a sort of material endeavour linked to the materiality of things. For 'Der grüne Stuhl', he investigated the complex relationship between the materiality of everyday objects and their names. This research was carried on and led to the performance 'Things that surround us'. With 'dreamed apparatus' and 'TITLE', Layes completed his choreographic cycle of things.
A glass, a glass, a glass, a glass... On the one hand, uttering the names of things can serve as calling them forth. On the other hand, every item and constellation of things triggers specific associations. In 'Things that surround us', every modification or manipulation of an object seems to call for a new thing. In an interview1, Clément Layes explained that the collocation of things was connected with the discovery of relations between them: “What we were looking for is an object that is calling for another object. The chair, for example, calls for a table. The table calls for a bottle. The bottle calls for a glass. The glass calls for... There are chains like this. But there are also ruptures in the chain. [...] Different sets or chains of objects imply different situations. And there is a kind of climactic situation that we never reach, which would be the guy sitting at the table, with the bottle next to him, ready to drink. In our imagination he has his legs on the table. This would be the final image that is intended but it is never achieved.”
In 'Things that surround us', the performers are permanently establishing compilations of objects, but their constructions constantly collapse. Objects swing out of balance, things fall to pieces and they seem to resist the attempts of the performers to reassemble them in yet another way. Time and again their intention to organize the objects in a specific way results in their disarrangement. It is as if the objects are leading a life of their own, as if they have emancipated themselves from the script that is inscribed into them – their functionality.
86