Without a doubt we have to begin with Jérôme Bel who has always enjoyed questioning identity and the concept of the author. This is attested for by the titles of his pieces, such as Name given by the author or Jérôme Bel . Not so long ago, Bel commited himself in his own name to a show which, it is true, he left one of his colleagues, Xavier Le Roy, to create and produce. The result can currently be seen at the cultural centre of the Frankfurt Mousonturm and is entitled Xavier Le Roy - despite the fact that the latter was obliged even so to create the piece in accordance with his colleague's tastes, and thus to give it the feel of a piece by Jérôme Bel.
Up to this point it is all rather disconcerting. Le Roy thus took the ideas which permanently haunt his colleague's pieces and sketched out an experimental arrangement whose strict execution is not exactly in Bel's style : the latter's reflections do not appear in such a schematised way , but are more playfully presented.
But if one were to start describing Xavier Le Roy , one would have the slight impression of being a crime novel critic who gives away who the murderer is (in fact, the music at the start of the piece sounds like that of a detective film). After all, the pleasure of the piece resides a great deal in the fact that we suspect that there is some clever trick to it without being able to work out exactly what sort or how far it goes. A human being wearing an opulent platinum blond wig and with their head lowered all the time so that we cannot see their face, makes brief appearances from behind a black screen. Sufficiently voluminous clothing ensures that the spectator cannot tell for sure if it is a man or a woman who is striking a pose or executing short sequences of movements belonging to our collective culture: Charlie Chaplin's trotting gait, Michael Jackson's “moonwalk” or Marlene Dietrich's famous pose in the The Blue Angel , with her right leg bent and the upper part of her body leaning backwards, or Jesus Christ on the cross. As well as these we see every day gestures: walking, sitting on the floor, or lying down.
Here the movements are exhibited in the theatre like ‘ready-mades' in a museum: the abandoned object takes on new meaning through being presented in a new context.
Finally, the person measures the distance between the screen and a chair, carefully placing one foot behind the other. When they come to take the measurement a second time round, it is half a foot too short. Without a doubt that is an important clue for the spectator turned detective.
He will not be left in suspense for long: two performers who seem to be exact copies of each other appear for a few seconds. The sequences of movements are then repeated from the beginning. It only remains to be seen which of the two is Charlie and which is Marlene. A third part with a third repetition finally delivers up the key to the enigma, because this time the two performers are naked. Obviously in this way they have regained their sexual difference, but the distribution of roles is not neatly divided up even so, for he is Marlene and she is Jesus.
Xavier Le Roy's experimental Bel arrangement lasts for a short three-quarters of an hour. It is not without charm, yet it has a rather heavily academic beauty in the way it deals laboriously with questions that Bel himself has already invested in with more wit. For instance, in The Last Performance , when Hamlet appears in costume, he declares that he is not Hamlet and, to prove it, he undresses down to his underpants - on which we can read the name Calvin Klein.
Jérôme Bel thus makes the better Jérôme Bel of the two. It remains to be seen if he can also in the future make a better Xavier le Roy.
Up to this point it is all rather disconcerting. Le Roy thus took the ideas which permanently haunt his colleague's pieces and sketched out an experimental arrangement whose strict execution is not exactly in Bel's style : the latter's reflections do not appear in such a schematised way , but are more playfully presented.
But if one were to start describing Xavier Le Roy , one would have the slight impression of being a crime novel critic who gives away who the murderer is (in fact, the music at the start of the piece sounds like that of a detective film). After all, the pleasure of the piece resides a great deal in the fact that we suspect that there is some clever trick to it without being able to work out exactly what sort or how far it goes. A human being wearing an opulent platinum blond wig and with their head lowered all the time so that we cannot see their face, makes brief appearances from behind a black screen. Sufficiently voluminous clothing ensures that the spectator cannot tell for sure if it is a man or a woman who is striking a pose or executing short sequences of movements belonging to our collective culture: Charlie Chaplin's trotting gait, Michael Jackson's “moonwalk” or Marlene Dietrich's famous pose in the The Blue Angel , with her right leg bent and the upper part of her body leaning backwards, or Jesus Christ on the cross. As well as these we see every day gestures: walking, sitting on the floor, or lying down.
Here the movements are exhibited in the theatre like ‘ready-mades' in a museum: the abandoned object takes on new meaning through being presented in a new context.
Finally, the person measures the distance between the screen and a chair, carefully placing one foot behind the other. When they come to take the measurement a second time round, it is half a foot too short. Without a doubt that is an important clue for the spectator turned detective.
He will not be left in suspense for long: two performers who seem to be exact copies of each other appear for a few seconds. The sequences of movements are then repeated from the beginning. It only remains to be seen which of the two is Charlie and which is Marlene. A third part with a third repetition finally delivers up the key to the enigma, because this time the two performers are naked. Obviously in this way they have regained their sexual difference, but the distribution of roles is not neatly divided up even so, for he is Marlene and she is Jesus.
Xavier Le Roy's experimental Bel arrangement lasts for a short three-quarters of an hour. It is not without charm, yet it has a rather heavily academic beauty in the way it deals laboriously with questions that Bel himself has already invested in with more wit. For instance, in The Last Performance , when Hamlet appears in costume, he declares that he is not Hamlet and, to prove it, he undresses down to his underpants - on which we can read the name Calvin Klein.
Jérôme Bel thus makes the better Jérôme Bel of the two. It remains to be seen if he can also in the future make a better Xavier le Roy.
