tu es bleu

you are blue | Paris 2oo6

This work presented the totally one-off writing of Herbeck, a German author, both schizophrenic and handicapped, whose words have an amazing freedom about them. The daring of this poetry won over Frédérique Bruyas, Malte Martin and Pierre-Jean Gaucher, all brought together around a desire to spread the word about Herbeck’s emancipation from conventions, literary rules, linguistics and the representation of reality. The recital was set up in a printer’s workshop. The reading was enhanced by the rhythm of the machinery, and the smell of ink and paper, summoning the spectators’ other senses. Noises of words, traffic and interplay of the polyphony of voices, acoustic architecture, another perception of meaning, these were all ingredients of this performance. The machines made a “shadow theatre”, an off-kilter world: reality slipping towards a phantasmagorical daily round which the public could criss-cross. Asked to move about in the premises, to pass from floor to floor, and discover the actress in different positions, the spectators deciphered the “shadow theatre”. Minimal light play giving life to the machines, casting their shadows on silk paper screens — monster machines, or dream-like machines. The chorus poem was the meeting between the diction of the text and the original composition of the guitarist, the projected graphics were evanescent on the paper screens. The machines gave birth to the text, and the printing press was set in motion…