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Where did the Do you have a minute project come from? 

The reflection started last year. I always try to be inspired by what concerns me on a daily basis. I then become obsessed with concepts and things that connect me to life. I question this obsession with overconsumption and the perpetual need to own things. 

I quickly thought of the work Do you have a minute? by the composer Thais Montanari, which is part of a triptych evoking contemporary obsessions such as the obsession with information or the obsession with time. It is finally this relationship to time that I chose to address. 

How did you imagine this concert and choose the composers who will accompany you on this project? 

Each of the works presented offers a different interpretation of time:

• A very short work, All we're made of is borrowed, by the Collectif Paramorph, of which I am a member, taken from our latest album which will be released next summer. This piece deals with time and the notion of heritage. How this heritage allows us to cross time and generations? Or conversely, could we go through time if we didn't have a legacy? Which is slave to which? who is dependent on the other to continue to exist?
• A work by Jing Wang, Give Time Some Time, which evokes time from a material point of view. All these objects that, in movement, in action, mark time: timers, Newton clocks, etc.
• A visual performance work inspired by Ivetta Sunyoung Kang's work, Tenderhands: Instructions for Anxious Hands. During the pandemic, time stood still. People became anxious not knowing what to do to "kill" time. So the artist wrote instructions, some simple, some more complex. Poetic actions, sometimes possible and sometimes impossible to realize. I decided to perform this work, and to install its material version in the foyer of the theater so that the public could see it before and after the concerts.

Has a work been imagined especially for this concert ?

Yes, it was my wish to include a commissioned work. I immediately thought of Gabo Champagne, with whom I have already worked. She has experience in composition but also in theater. I really liked the fact that she could bring these two facets equally to her creation.

She approaches time in its absurd and obsessive side of the search for productivity and performance. Always wanting to do something fast in order to do more!

Among all these interpretations of time, which one speaks to you the most ?

It depends. I rather like to question myself about the time that exceeds the human experience or about this overconsumption of time.

I make the connection with the contemporary music scene. Some artists will write a piece and play it in time, sometimes until their death, while others will put a lot of means and money for a single performance. Finally, I find this rather absurd.

Overconsumption is also revealed in our relationships with others. We systematically seek to meet new people without taking the time to maintain our existing relationships. 

Finally, our society is focused on speed, acceleration, the new. Why do we always want to go faster than time? This is what concerns me today.  

See you on April 19 and 20, at La Chapelle Scènes Contemporaines. Prenez vos billets.

Program of the concert :
Collectif Paramorph : All we're made of is borrowed, 2022
Jing Wang : Give Time Some Time, 2018
Gabo Champagne : Bryophytes, 2023 - creation
Thais Montanari : Do you have a minute?, 2016 - creation
Ivetta Sunyoung Kang : Tenderhands : Instructions for Anxious Hands, 2020 - creation

Interview by Typhaine Allain