Pièce touchée No. 1 is a performance designed to be experienced only through the touch sense. The eyes of the visitor are bound before he or she is led into a room he/she has not seen before and can only imagine. A 20 minutes piece is then performed in silence by one performer on the body of the visitor, who is not moving or active. It follows a notated score.
The piece can be compared to a virtual painting for which the visitor’s body is the canvas, or a music or dance piece, where the notes or gestures would be played on the body of the “listener” (who ends up being at the same time receptor, interface, instrument and performance space). The visitor's awareness of his or her own body architecture becomes heightened.
As in music or dance, phrases and a syntax are used. The structure is abstract, non-narrative, and only very short parts are improvised.
There are no objects, music, linguistic or visual elements involved. The performers use only their own bodies. The visitor can with a simple sign stop taking part in the performance if he/she wishes to.
The piece means to question our sense hierarchy (the touch sense being traditionally considered one of the lower senses), our privileging of visual/auditory perception and our becoming transhuman by creating an experience at the opposite of disembodiment and virtualization.
Its first aim was to explore the potential of performance work dedicated to the touch sense, while striving to go beyond the usual expectations or associations to touch – be it therapy (massage), the sexual or (in the dance world) contact improvisation.
Concept: Kenji Ouellet
Performance: Kenji Ouellet, Katharina Weinhuber
The piece being non-visual, I decided at the time to forbid photographs or a video documentation. It was documented by collecting written reactions, descriptions and comments from visitors who experienced the piece).
Excerpts from the documentation:
“A symphony of the tactile. (...) Maximum degree interaction.”
-C. Rusiecki, theater critique (Bucarest)
"Then it felt like I was touched by some kind of alien (from the deep ocean), which was very giant, soft and had numerous antennas and a warm backbone. Some kind of shellfish, probably."
-A Shanghai visitor (the performers use only their own bodies)
“It was a if there were drawings or images on the body, abstract images, which had different degrees of sharpness or flatness.”
„This work is changing the connotation of touch, it is subversively questioning, giving pleasure, waking up the senses and perception, crossing boundaries, being intimate and abstract at the same time.”
-A. Kaya, curator, Crossbreeds festival, (Vienna)
“One cannot here talk about the overcoming of the separation between the stage and the audience space, discovered long ago. The overcoming itself has been overcome, now the stage is the audience space, more, the stage is the body .”
-R. Knoll, Spots magazine.
„It was like experiencing a modern classical piece of music, atonal at times,
rhythmic, surprising.”
„I heard music, something like experimental sounds“ .
(the performance happens in total silence, but a few reported hearing music, not heard by anybody else in the performance space.)
„In short, the performance rendered me shapeless.“
Performances (selection):
E4 (2006) and Biesdorf Castle, (Berlin). Crossbreeds 2007 (Festival for Dance, Performance and New Media, Vienna), Tanztendenzen Festival for Contemporary Dance and Performance 2007 (Greifswald, Germany), Intrude366 performance series, Zendai Museum of Modern Art (Shanghai), Arena festival for the Young Arts (Erlangen, Germany), Man.in.fest. experimental Theater Festival (Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 2008), GrenzArt 1 performance Festival (Kirschau, Germany).
Kenji Ouellet
March 14-31, 2024
Clermont-Ferrand (FR)
Videoformes
February 16- April 21, 2024
York Art Gallery, York (UK)
Aesthetica Art Prize Exhibition
November 17-25, 2023
Lublin (PL)
Lublin Film Festival
November 14-19, 2023
Poznan (PL)
Short Waves Festival
November 8-12, 2023
York (UK)
Aesthetica Short Film Festival
November 1-5, 2023
Berlin (DE)
Zeichen der Nacht Int. Festival
October 27, 2023- April 21, 2024
Museum unter Tage Bochum (DE)
Die Stadt ist anderswo (group exhibition)
October 26-31, 2023
Namur (BE)
7ème Aaargh Film Festival
October 20-24, 2023
Yerevan (ARM)
Yerevan Int. Short Film Festival
October 17-22, 2023
Halle (DE)
Monstrale Festival
October 12-14, 2023
Novi Sad (RS)
October 10, 2023
Munich (DE)
September-26 - October 1, 2023
Baku (AZE)
Dokubaku Int. Documentary Film Fest.
September 14-23, 2023
Vienna (A)
Reaktor Int. Film Festival
September 8-10, 2023
Kanazawa (JP)
Kanazawa Film Festival
August 15-20,
2023
Boulder (US)
Mimesis Documentary Festival
April 10-16,
2023
Athens (OH/US)
Athens International Film and Video Festival
February 23-25, 2023
Lincoln (UK)
Indie-Lincs Int. Film Festival
February 15-19, 2023
Milan (IT)
Innuendo Int. Film Festival
November 10-27, 2022
Granada (ES)
Cinemistica
November 8, 2022
Lisbon
November 1-6, 2022
York (UK)
Aesthetica Short Film Festival
October 14-16, 2022
Lund (SE)
Lund Architecture Film Festival
October 5,
2022
Tokyo
Tokyo Film Awards
September 6-18, 2022
Paris
September 1-9,
2022
Split (HR)
August 5-13,
2022
Prizren
(Kosovo)
April 20-24, 2022
Bremen
Filmfest Bremen
March 19+22, 2022
Regensburg
Kurzfilmwoche Regensburg
October 26, 2021
Garage Museum of Contemporary
Art
October 27, 2021
Multimedia Art Museum (Moscow)
Shnit Film Festival
October 2 - November 21,
2021
Arsenale Nord (Venice)
Arte Laguna Prize exhibition
(postponed from March 2020)
June 11, 2021 - August 15, 2021
Haus am Kleistpark (Berlin)
Deceleration (group exhibition)
March 7 - April 4, 2021
Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Copenhagen)
Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition
December 18, 2020 - January
10, 2020
Back Forward Rewind
(online anniversary exhibition)
August 22, 2020 7pm Moscow
time
Pushkin State Museum /
WWW
Broadcast of 3 of my video works
(Duration: 24 hours)
Kinofilm
Festival Manchester 2020 postponed to May 10-16,
2021
November 13-18,
2019
Wilmington (N.C.)
Cucalorus Film Festival
October 11, 2019
Nice
Festival C'est trop court
September 28-29, 2019
Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki Cinedance International
September 19, 2019
Bremen
Filmfest Bremen
September 4-8, 2019
Bucharest
Bucharest Int. Dance Film Festival
May 25 - July 18, 2019
Städische Galerie Bremen
July 8-Sept. 4, 2019
Warsaw
On Art Film Festival
July 24-28, 2019
Manitoba
Glmli Film Festival
June 28, 2019
Trieste
20th Shorts Int. Film
Festival
June 22, 2019
Bangkok
17th Signs of the Night Festival
May 9-16, 2019
Skopje
October 14, 2018 - February 3, 2019
Marl Media Art Awards Exhibition skulpturenmuseum-glaskasten-marl
July-December 2018
Hannover
December 12-16, 2018
Belgrade
November 27-30, 2018
Lisbon
October 20-27, 2018
Istanbul
International Architecture and
May 18 - September 30,
2018
York Art Gallery
(UK)
Aesthetica Art Prize Exhibition