Walls and Bridges, the Franco-American arts and ideas event series which brought over 40 cultural events to New York in 2011, returns to the city in October 2012! Curated by Villa Gillet (Director: Guy Walter), and supported by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication, Walls and Bridges is a 10-day series of performances and critical explorations uniting French and American thinkers and artists from social sciences, philosophy, literature and live arts.
I CONTAIN MULTITUDES
October 19–21
The Invisible Dog
Identity is often represented by a huge and fixed tree, deeply rooted in a family, a country, or a legacy from the past generations. But is it perhaps better regarded as a moveable fiction constantly rewritten with the help of others and our environment, all the more pliable with the increasing interconnectivity of a faster-paced world? As new technology changes of how we present ourselves both physically and virtually—one’s name, appearance, even gender—we are becoming the authors of our own lives: “I” is the hero of a real science-fiction. How much can the better understanding of our body and its possibilities renew and contradict the traditional perceptions of human identity? The series of events “I Contain Multitudes” is a celebration of the metamorphosis of identity. An exploration of the boundaries of the self.
This special series is co-curated with Time Out New York and Les Subsistances.
Friday, October 19 at 6.30pm
Pre-Mix: A Mixologist Shares his Perfect Pours
Featuring: Eben Freeman (USA / mixologist)
Eben Freeman will create a series of cocktails inspired by classic beverages, to certify that influence can be ecstatic.
Free – Reservation Required: premix@villagillet.net
Friday, October 19 at 7.30pm
I Contain Multitudes. An evening of music, performance, and storytelling
Co-presented with Time Out New York Hosted by Matthew Love (USA / Books and Comedy Editor for Time Out New York)
“I is Another,” said Rimbaud. “I am large, I contain multitudes,” claimed Walt Whitman. “Each one of us believes himself to be a single person. But it’s not true… Each one of us is many persons, “ wrote Luigi Pirandello in his Six Characters In Search of an Author. A menagerie of French and America writers, artists, thinkers and performers will share stories, screen clips, stage protests, play musical selections and perform dramatic pieces to mine the multiple and contradictory facets of their identities. This series of five-minute performances will be preceded by Unison, a twenty-minute collaborative piece by the dance collective Loge 22 ( Marie Goudot, Julien Monty, and Michaël Pomero) and the music collective ensemble mise-en.
Claude Arnaud (France / writer and essayist), Poor Baby Bree (USA / actress and vaudeville singer), Jamie Block (USA / musician), Christophe Chassol (France / pianist and composer), Wendy Delorme (France / writer and performer), Joanna Groarke from the New York Botanical Garden (USA / curator), Thierry Hoquet (France / philosopher), Christophe Laudamiel (France / perfumer), Loge 22 (France / choreographers and dancers), ensemble mise-en (USA / musicians and music director), oh! oui (France / musician, actor and theater directors).
Free – Reservation Required: multitudes@villagillet.net
Saturday October 20 at 7.30pm – Series of performances
France-America Match. From Stereotypes to Reality.
Co-presented with Time Out New York
PERFORMANCE 1
The NTUSA presents french Me!
Featuring: National Theater of the United States of America. A collective work directed byJonathan Jacobs produced and designed by Normandy Raven Sherwood and co-created by Jacobs, Sherwood, Jesse Hawley and James Stanley.
Join the National Theater of the United States of America for its educational, stimulating and perhaps shocking exposé of French culture, behavior, and morals.
PERFORMANCE 2
An Ostrich Can Die from Stroke if it Hears a Lawn Mower Engine Start Up
Featuring: Les Chiens de Navarre. A collective work directed by Jean-Christophe Meurisse, with Caroline Binder, Céline Fuhrer, Robert Hatisi, Manu Laskar, Thomas Scimeca, Anne-Elodie Sorlin, Maxence Tual, Jean-luc Vincent/administration, and production: Antoine Blesson and Claire Nollez / Production: Les Chiens de Navarre / Executive Production: Lle Grand Gardon Blanc.
Around a banquet table, Les Chiens de Navarre will draw up a very French inventory of all the clichés for which the French say they love the Americans… and sometimes hate them.
Free – Reservation Required: match@villagillet.net
Saturday, October 20 at 10pm – Concert/Screening
Nola Chérie Co-presented with Time Out New York
Featuring: Christophe Chassol (France / pianist and composer) Lawrence Clais (France / Drummer )
Nola Chérie is a live multimedia performance featuring footage of the ReBirth Brass Band and the Troupe Brass Band of New Orleans. For this piece, commissioned by the Center of Contemporary Arts in New Orleans in 2008, Chassol uses his signature editing technique based on the harmonization of melodic motifs. The various sounds recorded by Chassol, from performances by brass bands, to the night song of crickets, to the melody of Mississippi riverboat calliopes, are matched with images such as the bright green wall of an abandoned warehouse, the Lower 9th Ward levee and passing trains. Nola Chérie is an ode to a city, an imaginative re-appropriation of the real through image and sound sampling.
Free – Reservation Required: nolacherie@villagillet.net
Dates + Time
Friday, October 19, 6:30pm & 7:30pm
Saturday, October 20, 7:30pm & 10pm
Admissions
Free
Reservations required
Location
The Main Gallery
51 Bergen St.