La Piscine brings to an end the two years of Myriam Lefkowitz’s residency in les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers. During these two years she has activated and created two devices for one single spectator - Walk, Hands, Eyes (A city) and How can one know in such darkness; and she has deepened her research into new forms of attention.

Wishing to associate different artistic practices that broach related questions, she opened her reflection to others and came up with La Piscine. During six straight days, seven artists - Jean-Philippe Derail, Valentina Desideri, Ben Evans, Alkis Hadjiandreou, Julie Laporte, Myriam Lefkowitz et Géraldine Longueville Geffriaud - will intermingle with the Leclerc swimming pool of Pantin, offering the spectators the opportunity to co-construct an experience between one spectator and one performer. The experience is to be placed at the crossroads between a health treatment and an aesthetic encounter. A singular itinerary will be proposed to each spectator through the following means: a silent, eyes closed walk in and out of the pool, an audio guide in and out of the water, political therapies which aim to link the mental and the corporal space. During the five days, the duets will meet randomly, entering in resonance and weaving invisible connections.

The chosen practices were all conceived as « attention devices » for one spectator and one performer at a time; they all question the conditions and the effects of an experience for two; they all generate a singular perceptive process, activated outside of the usual context of representation (the stage or the exhibition space).

Though heterogeneous, the different practices will nourish one another inside the space of the Leclerc public swimming pool, mixing in the liquid environment to the point of dilution, leaving the artist as transformed as the spectator. As an alchemical laboratory, constituted at first by the water element, La Piscine is a space where sensations slide, weight is suspended, outlines blur, silences appear.

Each session of La Piscine will aim to weave a dialogue with the singular space of the Leclerc public pool. Constructed in 1937, the pool is classified as a historical monument. It was built during the period called « municipal socialism », a time when the « the care of one’s self » seemed to be carried out by public architecture. The experiences happening during those six days of October will try to re ask this question through the invention of new techniques of care.

La Piscine proposes to question our capacity to open up to other ways of listening, of seeing, of sensing of touching the world as much as it is touching us - in other words « to take care » - echoing the words of Lygia Clark, who defined the artist « as a designer of the right conditions to allow the receiver to let himself drift into a disassembling of patterns - including his own – in favour of the composition of new flows. »

All appointment are reserved, La Piscine is SOULD OUT.

PRACTICES
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Et sait-on jamais, dans une obscurité pareille

How can one know in such darkness consists in the experience of a motionless body plunged into darkness. The device relies on the sense of touch and on the sound space that spreads out around and with the lying body. 

Walk, hands, eyes (a city)

Walks, Hands, Eyes (a city) is silent walk which weaves a specific relation between walking, seeing and touching.

Political Therapy

The Political Therapy is a mixture of a discussion on a political problem (brought by the spectator) and a treatment located in between a massage and an energetical practice.

 
The Ignorant Tour Guides

The Ignorant Tour Guides is an audio guide made of a series of questions, accompanied by a visual guide made of a series of images. One experiences The Ignorant Tour Guides while walking freely in the pool. 

Des eaux

Diverse waters will be proposed in the course of the experience, opening a possible dialogue between the sense of taste and the rest of our perceptions.

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With the support of Est Ensemble, the FNAGP
and the Département de la Seine-Saint-Denis