Pièce touchée No 2 is a haptic piece performed directly on the body of the visitor. The visitor cannot see (but can listen) and is not active. Like Pièce touchée No 1, its main focus is not therapeutic (like massage), erotic, or on challenging the limits of the visitor.
The visitor’s eyes are bound. He/she is then led into a closed space which he/she has not seen before.
The performance could be described as a suite (a work made out of a group of shorter, related pieces) centered on the touch sense. There are 3 different sections:
1- Purely haptic
The first section involves haptic interventions made by the performers on the visitor’s body following a very precise score. The only input is haptic, it is performed in silence. This continues and further develops an approach used in Pièce touchée No 1. It also involves musical structures like canons and rhythmic counterpoint.
2- Haptic/musical
The second section involves a touch score choreographed to a musical soundtrack. It uses partly a synesthetic approach (touch interventions corresponding to sound qualities/parameters like volume, intensity, pitch, attack, sustain, grain etc.), partly a contrapuntal and rhythmical approach. The haptic translation of the sounds and the music is performed sometimes together with the music, sometimes completely alone, sometimes the visitor only hears the music by itself.
3- Haptic/narrative
The third section involves soundtracks using voices, language, text and narrative. Touch meets language, and this segment questions its codification in society and the meanings we attach to it. Touch is first choreographed phonetically to the sound of words (not their meaning), then to meaning of single words and then of full narratives, complementing, commenting, illustrating, contradicting or re-contextualizing what is being heard.
Concept, sound, choreography: Kenji Ouellet
Performers: Aliénor Dauchez, Kenji Ouellet, Chloé Serres, Melanie Wyss
Pièce touchée No 2 was made with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
Press/Visitors comments:
"One's own body becomes the medium, the resounding board of art."
(Barbara Klauss, Mannheimer Morgen)
“Explosion of synapses”.
“Great composition, like a negative imprint of music listening. A great and sensitive way to make music become corporeal.”
“Because of the touch, the perception of the body grows into a fullness of images, thoughts and feelings – through the sound the images become more 3-dimensional, more filmic and are given with dream or nightmare-like motives an almost maelstrom-like force.”
“Music that one really grasps, instead of only understanding it intellectually.”
“First it was like music, though without sounds…”
“Imps, elves, goblins, trolls… voodoo, hoodoo, rhythms on my body.”
Performances:
Perfect Wedding Festival, Tanzfabrik Berlin 2010; 3d Prize Choregie competition 2011 Maribor (Slovenia). Mois Multi 2012 (Quebec City), Crossbreeds Festival 2012 (Vienna), Habeas Corpus Performance Festival (Cordoba, Argentina), Moving Sounds 2013 (New York).
Interview about Pièce touchée No 2 and Klangkörper.
Kenji Ouellet
September 13, 2024
Carrara (IT)
Onirica Film Festival
June 15, 2024
Los Angeles
Film Maudit
March 14-31, 2024
Clermont-Ferrand (FR)
Videoformes
February 16- April 21, 2024
York Art Gallery, York (UK)
Aesthetica Art Prize Exhibition
November 17-25, 2023
Lublin (PL)
Lublin Film Festival
November 14-19, 2023
Poznan (PL)
Short Waves Festival
November 8-12, 2023
York (UK)
Aesthetica Short Film Festival
November 1-5, 2023
Berlin (DE)
Zeichen der Nacht Int. Festival
October 27, 2023- April 21, 2024
Museum unter Tage Bochum (DE)
Die Stadt ist anderswo (group exhibition)
October 26-31, 2023
Namur (BE)
7ème Aaargh Film Festival
October 20-24, 2023
Yerevan (ARM)
Yerevan Int. Short Film Festival
October 17-22, 2023
Halle (DE)
Monstrale Festival
October 12-14, 2023
Novi Sad (RS)
October 10, 2023
Munich (DE)
September-26 - October 1, 2023
Baku (AZE)
Dokubaku Int. Documentary Film Fest.
September 14-23, 2023
Vienna (A)
Reaktor Int. Film Festival
September 8-10, 2023
Kanazawa (JP)
Kanazawa Film Festival
August 15-20,
2023
Boulder (US)
Mimesis Documentary Festival
April 10-16,
2023
Athens (OH/US)
Athens International Film and Video Festival
February 23-25, 2023
Lincoln (UK)
Indie-Lincs Int. Film Festival
February 15-19, 2023
Milan (IT)
Innuendo Int. Film Festival
November 10-27, 2022
Granada (ES)
Cinemistica
November 8, 2022
Lisbon
November 1-6, 2022
York (UK)
Aesthetica Short Film Festival
October 14-16, 2022
Lund (SE)
Lund Architecture Film Festival
October 5,
2022
Tokyo
Tokyo Film Awards
September 6-18, 2022
Paris
September 1-9,
2022
Split (HR)
August 5-13,
2022
Prizren
(Kosovo)
April 20-24, 2022
Bremen
Filmfest Bremen
March 19+22, 2022
Regensburg
Kurzfilmwoche Regensburg
October 26, 2021
Garage Museum of Contemporary
Art
October 27, 2021
Multimedia Art Museum (Moscow)
Shnit Film Festival
October 2 - November 21,
2021
Arsenale Nord (Venice)
Arte Laguna Prize exhibition
(postponed from March 2020)
June 11, 2021 - August 15, 2021
Haus am Kleistpark (Berlin)
Deceleration (group exhibition)
March 7 - April 4, 2021
Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Copenhagen)
Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition
December 18, 2020 - January
10, 2020
Back Forward Rewind
(online anniversary exhibition)
August 22, 2020 7pm Moscow
time
Pushkin State Museum /
WWW
Broadcast of 3 of my video works
(Duration: 24 hours)
Kinofilm
Festival Manchester 2020 postponed to May 10-16,
2021
November 13-18,
2019
Wilmington (N.C.)
Cucalorus Film Festival
October 11, 2019
Nice
Festival C'est trop court
September 28-29, 2019
Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki Cinedance International
September 19, 2019
Bremen
Filmfest Bremen
September 4-8, 2019
Bucharest
Bucharest Int. Dance Film Festival
May 25 - July 18, 2019
Städische Galerie Bremen
July 8-Sept. 4, 2019
Warsaw
On Art Film Festival
July 24-28, 2019
Manitoba
Glmli Film Festival
June 28, 2019
Trieste
20th Shorts Int. Film
Festival
June 22, 2019
Bangkok
17th Signs of the Night Festival
May 9-16, 2019
Skopje
October 14, 2018 - February 3, 2019
Marl Media Art Awards Exhibition skulpturenmuseum-glaskasten-marl
July-December 2018
Hannover
December 12-16, 2018
Belgrade
November 27-30, 2018
Lisbon
October 20-27, 2018
Istanbul
International Architecture and
May 18 - September 30,
2018
York Art Gallery
(UK)
Aesthetica Art Prize Exhibition