le Collectif en Cours
The Collective in Progress
Collective research laboratory
The Collectif en Cours is a transdisciplinary artist collective focused on scenic research and the creative process, in a space designed to be separate from the imperatives of production.
The Collective came into being in 2016, born of a desire to (re)place the collective at the heart of the creative drive and to create more space for exploration.
The Collective is inspired by The SITI Company (New York), founded by Anne Bogart and Tadashi Suzuki in 1992. Like SITI, what binds the members of Collective together is a common work ethic as well as a commitment to scenic exploration and to the body of the group, as much as to the bodies that compose it.
Even if we go quicker alone,
we'll always go further together.
We have adopted and adapted the Viewpoints method, so as to study group movement and explore our artistic practices together through a trans·disciplinary lense.
We meet and exchange at the crossroads of our various disciplines : from circus to masked theater, from singing to visual art, through and between puppetry, photography and writing, in order to create a singular universe of our own : moving, improvising and acting as a unified yet multi-faceted entity.
Through Viewpoints and our collective practices we commit to examining and deconstructing our habits of performance and dramaturgy, and to de-hierarchizing the elements of performance space. We place ourselves as partners in play with space, time and rhythm... but also of materials, colors and concepts. The reification of the world around us is both the context and pretext for our research, its sustenance and raw material.
For us, the Collective is a home in which we can come together, to nourish and recharge our creative energies while maintaining a rigorous work ethic and placing an emphasis on group process.
The Collective offers a stable structure in which each person can find their own artistic autonomy, their own creative freedom or madness, without being alone in their research : here we give ourselves room to fail, so as to find new ways to get back up.
Identifying ourselves as a group means an attentiveness and openness to each person's artistic worlds, as well as to our own. The Collectif is rooted in a state of curiosity, with a desire to inspire one another, to taste of each life's journey and to collaboratively expand our creative horizons. It is through our differences that we find our collective.
The Collective remains a laboratory, a collective "in progress" that moves free from the obligations of production or any creative results whatsoever. When in residency the members of the Collective are joined by invited artists. These are instants of collective creative growth, where the dramaturgy is anchored in the fulgurance of the present moment.
Kallisti and the Collectif en Cours nourish and balance each other. Together we have the chance to be independent without being alone.
Members of the Collective
Baptiste Gaubert | Clément Malin | Frieda Gerson | Johan ‘Balou’ Pagnot | Julien Bruchot
Kostia Cerda | Léa Chalvignac | Mabeuko Oberty | Nina Bompard