Les Exposés de Grand Magasin

A cycle of talks by the performance group

Grand Magasin

© Giovanni Cittadini Cesi

“For the past thirty years we have had a shared public activity, known as Grand Magasin.” This is how Pascale Murcin and François Hiffler introduce themselves in D’orfèvre et de cochon (Of Goldsmiths and Pigs), one of the four talks they are giving this season. In response to a commission, the duo (founded in 1982) has agreed to lead a public exploration on work – a word they have always avoided pronouncing until now. How can this word refer at the same time to everyone’s activity and also specify that of each? Can an enjoyable job still be called “work”? What does that have in common with a difficult, repetitive and badly paid job? Seated at a table with a xylophone (like the one in French game show “Jeu des milles euros”), Grand Magasin address such universal questions in an off-the-wall way. With dedicated self-mockery, they attempt to define their own activity, the vagueness surrounding artistic work, and in particular the difficulty of measuring it. Pascale Murtin and François Hiffler are not (in the conventional sense) actors, directors, or even really performers – although perhaps they are all of the above at once. They certainly enjoy inventing games and asking questions whose answers stretch out endlessly. And so the talk Le Sentiment de compréhension (I Feel I Understand) chews over the formula: “What do I understand, when I understand something?” And their talk in collaboration with Bettina Atala, Voyez-vous ce que je vois ? (Can you see what I see?), investigates the notion of individual perception. And last but not least, the Festival du cinéma sans image (No Picture cinema festival), curated with artist Antoinette Ohannessian, appears as a collage of black-outs from the history of cinema, with commentaries…

Sophie Joubert