(g)hosts
“How much myth do we build into our experience of time?” The words are Don De Lillo’s, they reverberate in the theater when a white curtain is drawn downstage. How much myth do we allow into our lives? How much myth are we aware of? And which myths?”
Referring to Avery Gordon’s sociological study of haunting, André Lepecki approaches the ghostly as a critical agent at the borders of society’s intelligibility, promoting a heightened awareness, an alternative sensorial mode: “Such capacity to experience what should not belong to experience proper should not be confused with any sort of hysteria or histrionics. It is just a mode of composing perception initiated by the ghostly: “It is a suitable line in the program sheet of (g)hosts, yet the Portuguese, Brussels-based choreographer Lilia Mestre doesn’t shun embracing “improper” manifestations of the ghostly, that after all make up a major part of our cultural imagination. Not the pathological but the histrionic is what tempts her. We are in the theater, after all. And indeed, what can actually be said or shown about that realm in which the ghostly is taken for what it is? Listen! (g)hosts is Mestre’s most complex and radical work to date, a compelling exercise in reverse ghost busting.
(Jeroen Peeters, Etcetera, September ’08)
Credits
Concept & direction: Lilia Mestre
Creation & performance: Michel Yang & Lilia Mestre
Radio & sound mix: David Elchardus
Light design: Jan Van Gijsel
Artistic assistant: Pierre Rubio
Voices off: Michel Yang & Davis Freeman
Text sources: Bill Viola, Haruki Murakami, Mark Z. Danielewski, John Connely, John Don Delillo, The apology line (This American life), Paul Virillio & Charles Bukowski
Music pieces: ‘Sheets and chains’ by Alejandro Amenabar, ‘Poème électronique’ by Edgar Varese, ‘The last’ by Prefuse 73, ‘The black Museum’ by Orson Welles, ‘Realm of phantasy’ by Danny Cohen, ‘Inhale / Suspend’ by Anna Friz, ‘Tortured souls’ by Skream & ‘Underworld’ by MRK
Sound samples: Wax Tailor, Aphex Twin & Waldeck
Thanks to: Davis Freeman, Maria Clara Villa-Lobos, Edurne Rubio, Luea Ritter, Caroline Daish & Sam
Production: Random Scream vzw
Co-production: Buda Kunstencentrum & WorkSpaceBrussels
With the support of: De Pianofabriek & Bains::Connective