Joséphine Evrard:
The Root

I remember now that Feldman spoke of shadows . He said that sounds were

not sounds but shadows. They are obviously sounds that‘s why they are

shadows. every something is an echo of nothing.

John Cage in Lecture on something

A year ago Joséphine Evrard found a root in an open field in the city. She looked for a place for the root at home and eventually took it to her studio. This new presence shifted her working perspective and became an enigmatic orientation point. The unrooted root - no longer fulfilling its function – reminded her of the words: they are containers, something which describes without being - like a skin that envelops its own signification and subsequent loss. What happens when something has been removed from its environment? When it is uprooted? When something reveals the loss of something else? Does this loss remain visible? What emerges out of it? The root amplifies the gap between what is no longer, and what becomes, present. It points towards the friction between these two realities, and allows for this movement to become visible. A drift in perception. The tension between what one can recognize and what one can’t understand opens a space full of physical poetry.

Where are the words when they are not in my mouth? When its silence, when there is nothing to say? What happens to the words I don't know? Where are the words of the voices that are no longer here? Where are the invisible words? Where are they in the silence? Where are the words that have never been existing? What happens to the words when they are not there?

CONCEPT, CHOREOGRAPHY, PERFORMANCE Joséphine Evrard LIGHT DESIGN Jan Maertens SOUND INSTALLATION Roy Caroll OUTSIDE EYES Shannon Cooney, Christiane Hommelsheim, Antonija Livingstone, Roger Sala Reyner VOICE COACH Christiane Hommelsheim COSTUME ADVICE Sophie Reble

Produced by Joséphine Evrard. With friendly support by Christine Schmidt and the Gundlach Stiftung. Media partner: taz. die tageszeitung

photo © Luca S