Jérôme Bel: Pichet Klunchun and Myself at Marian Goodman Gallery Paris
January 20-February 18, 2012
Commissioned by the curator Tang Fu Kuen on the occasion of the Bangkok Fringe Festival, this film is the result of a collaboration between Jérôme Bel and the traditional Thai dancer, Pichet Klunchun. In 2008, they both received the prize Routes-Princesse Margriet pour la Diversité Culturelle awarded by the European Foundation for Culture for this performance.
“ In September 2004, I was invited to Bangkok by Singaporean curator Tang Fu Kuen to lead a project. I wondered for a while if I should accept the invitation or not, and I finally proposed to try to work with a traditional Thai dancer.
I am indeed deeply interested in the non-western performing arts traditions, for both dance and theatre, since being dazzled by a Kabuki performance I attended in Tokyo in 1989. I had similar feelings with Indian traditional dance and with the Rio de Janeiro Carnival parade.
Tang Fu Kuen suggested to dancer and choreographer Pichet Klunchun that he should meet me during my stay in Bangkok in December of the same year. We met without knowing anything about what could finally result from our meeting. I had just prepared some questions to ask this dancer. Personally, I had only a vague idea of what traditional Thai dance was, and Pichet Klunchun didn’t know my work.
The circumstances of our meeting determined the nature and the form of the result we obtained. Jet lag, the fascination that the city of Bangkok and its inhabitants exerted on me, the monstrous traffic jams which did not make it possible to do all the rehearsals, the context of the Bangkok Fringe Festival where the piece had to be premiered, led us to present to the audience a kind of theatrical report of our experience.
We happened to produce a kind of theatrical and choreographic documentary about our real situation. The piece puts two artists face to face who know nothing about each other, who have very different aesthetic practices and who both try to find out more about each other, and above all about their respective artistic practices, despite the cultural abyss separating them.
Some very problematic notions such as euro-centrism, or cultural globalization, are issues defined in the piece. These delicate notions cannot be left undiscussed. The present situation doesn’t allow what is at stake here to be skipped.”
Jérôme Bel, Seoul, 1st of June, 2005.
Jérôme Bel was born Paris in 1964. Apart from Pichet Klunchun and Myself (2005), he also produced many other works, such as his first creation Nom donné par l’auteur (1994), or Jérôme Bel (1995), The Show Must Go On (2004). His most recent one, 3Abschied, was made in 2010. Through his choreographies, Jérôme Bel is interested in the concept of language, whether it is visual or gestural language, being inspired by the works written by Roland Barthes or Slavoj Žižek. The films of his performances have also been shown in contemporary art biennials (Lyon, Porto Alegre, Tirana) as well as in museums (Centre Pompidou in Paris and Metz, Hayward Gallery, Tate Modern in London and MoMA in New York). Jérôme Bel lives in Paris and works internationally.
Pichet Klunchun is a Thai dancer and choreographer. He was the student of one of the most famous masters of Thai traditional mask dance called « Khon ». In his work, traditional dance is interwoven with a contemporary touch. Pichet Klunchun is considered in his country as one of the most innovative artists and his work is also celebrated internationally. In 2001, The Asian Cultural Council awarded him a grant which enabled him to perform in the United States. Recently, he started his own dance company, LifeWork Company, in which he teaches traditional dance to young dancers in his country.
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