Pauline P. Raybaud
Switching is a two voice poetical performance in collaboration with artist Philomène Amougou. The poems have been composed for one another's interpretation, and the experience lays in the switching of those texts, where the two performers interpret and explore through body language the words and inner resentment of one another. It's a play with the semantic use of language as a tool for meaning and the body as a tool for interpreting. While the temporality of both the pace of filming and of montage becomes a structural tool to gather both perspectives in one.
Stills from performance by P. Raybaud. Shot on 16mm alternatively by Philomène Amougou and P. Raybaud
Manual developing and editing by P. Raybaud
Poems A Viper by P. Amougou and Again by P. Raybaud
November 2017
Switching has a carnal approach to the meanings of words, merging at once two hectic perceptions and representation of inner encounter with oppression.
Meant to be read out loud and performed, the sonority and rhythms of the poems play a part in their further translation, while silences leave an open space for improvisation.
Excerpts from Switching
-See full bellow-
Given to a third collaborator, Kelsey Dykes, the costumes also enter this circle of communication, responding in another visual form to the depicted feelings.
The performance is emphases by the technique behind filming with 16mm, as the shots are short and precious the performances are spontaneous and unique, echoing and contradicting with the long process behind 16mm films.
The manual editing and the audio deconstruction of the poems are incorporated to this switching and bouncing between languages, merging different ways of communication, expanding the boundaries between subjects and their interpretations, allowing the works to be revisited, re-interpreted, in the making and in the viewing of this project.
Time is an overwhelming notion, switching between past and present, compressed between a dictated short footage and the endless sound of the projector.
Poetical Performance by P. Raybaud. and P. Amougou
Shot on 16mm alternatively by Philomène Amougou and P. Raybaud
Manual developing and editing by P. Raybaud
Poems A Viper by P. Amougou and Again by P. Raybaud
November 2017
And again and again and again and again again again
Everyday same landscape
Forever the same mistake
She stands there defying me
With her eyes of a fury
And a smile more than empty
And again and again again again and
I look back sadly at her
All the lines become a blur
Yet the clock keeps on running
The sound of time repulsing
A mirage of me crying
And again!
Like a loop from my own tape
forever repelling shape
Naked with myself again
Heart beating with the worst pain
better and stronger every tic tac tic tac tic
Again
by P. Raybaud
Again and again and again and and
In the darkness of her voice
I can hear the same old noise
Soon the sound covers the tic
And my pulse follows the tac
tic tac tic tac tic
And again and ag
My hands then enter the dance
My fingers follow the transe
Now holding on the mirror
And the nails scratching with horror
This image I can’t ignore
tic tac
And again and again and again !
Hitting her head against mine
Making sure we are one line
Soon the glass lays at my feet
And our hands drip with the beat
tic tac tic tac tic
And again.
