Highlights: Exit Festival (Paris) March 25-27, 2010

EXIT Festival (Paris)

As an active participant in the contemporary artistic creation, the Maison des Arts et de la Culture de Creteil is a place where all manners and movements of art are produced, displayed, and performed. With over 300 performances a year, MAC’s policy starts from the principle of contemporary art’s multiplicity : it helps fund and create projects that bring together aspects of theatre, dance, music, and digital art – a veritable melting pot for the most recent forms of artistic expression. Indeed, MAC gives preference to exploratory modes of expression, lending its support at every step in collaborative hybrid projects. During its regular season, the MAC organizes multiple exhibitions and festivals, most notably the international festival, EXIT. This year, the MAC has added a third space for performance and creation : the Satellite. This space is overseen by the Studio, a space dedicated to the artistic creation and the production of digital imagery for use in the performing arts.

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LAWRENCE MALSTAF – SHRINK

The work of Lawrence Malstaf can be situated on the borderline between the visual and the theatrical. After having studied industrial design, Lawrence Malstaf starts of in theatre. He designs scenographies for choreographers and directors as Benoît Lachambre, Meg Stuart and Kirsten Delholm. Soon he develops more into installation and performance-art with a strong focus on movement, coincidence, order and chaos. In 2000 he makes a series of sensorial rooms for individual visitors (Nemo Observatorium, Mirror, Pericope/Horizon Machine). Later he creates larger mobile environments dealing with space and orientation often using the visitor as a co-actor (Orbit, Nevel, Compass, Boreas, Transporter). His projects often involve advanced technology as a point of departure or inspiration but also to activate the installations. Lawrence Malstaf is exhibiting internationally and in 2008 he wins the Witteveen + Bos – prize for Art + Technology (NL), in 2009 he receives the Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica (A) an in 2010 he is the winner of the Excellence Prize at The 13th Japan Media Arts Festival in Tokyo (JP).

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PETER WILLIAM HOLDEN – [SOLENOID B] AUTOGENE ARABESQUE

With its roots in Mary Shelly’s “Frankenstein” (1818) and the alchemist’s laboratory, the installation presents itself as a mechanical flower: a simulacrum of nature. Life sized human body parts, impaled upon steel, move and sway and dance. The limbs, translucent and livid, bare their internal robotic mechanisms to the gaze of the viewer. The wiring itself is an aesthetic expression deliberately integrated into the installation to bring chaotic lines of abstract form to contrast with the organized symmetry of the body parts. The lifeblood of this organism is air and when activated this air flows invisibly, bestowing movement to these mechanisms and its presence is only betrayed when exhaled loudly from the valves attached to the serpentine air hose.This combined with the rattle of relays and the tandem clattering of pistons to produce a hyper-modern accompaniment to the music of Strauss. Part cinema, part theatre, “Arabesque” can be viewed form a multitude of angles, revealing a kaleidoscope of beautiful shapes and patterns created from the human form.

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CLOUD EYE CONTROL – UNDER POLARIS

At once playful and deeply expressive, Under Polaris confronts head-on the tension between primal nostalgia and modern technological optimism. In their latest mix of projected animation, live theater and electronic music, Cloud Eye Control charts an epic journey across a vast arctic expanse — a sublime icebound landscape illuminated under the ethereal lights of the Northern sky.

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Full Schedule the EXIT Festival can be found here.