demonstration

based on pasolini’s theorem

photo credits | aline paley

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters”

Antonio gramsci

The monster is an insatiable hunger, impossible to contain, spilling from every seam. A thousand-headed hydra whose heads return multiplied each time one is severed. It is desire for oneself, for another. It is made of the traces left by gestures, whether tender or violent. Desire shapes the body through every movement, every caress, scratch, or hesitation.

Yet the monster-desire is monstrous only as long as it remains in hiding, repressed, pushed into darkness. The moment it emerges into the open, exposed to the light, its monstrosity dissolves.

The surface is a smooth, gleaming expanse. Naked skin that has not yet learned. It is the threshold between you and me, the shifting zone where our boundaries meet, that unfathomable chiaroscuro. It is the encounter between an old world and a new one, the present gazing back at its recent past, translating familiar gestures through unfamiliar paradigms. At the moment of contact, the trace appears. It spreads across bodies, then across the ground, turning this smooth surface into a battleground at times, a playground at others. How do we explore and navigate this mutable gray zone?

with Marylène Savoy, Flavie Tapparel et Alexis Wagner

director | celia hofmann

scenography, light design, sound design | clarus guignet