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Working residency SAY

We are constantly busy interpreting. Throughout the day, throughout our life, we incessantly try to make sense of what happens to us. We read our surrounding to know whether it is safe to cross the street. We read other people to decipher whether they are inimical or ready to support. We read our bodily sensations to make sure we don’t eat too much or get a cold. We read our own history to contemplate whether we have made the good choice in life. We read the newspaper to build up an opinion about politics. We read the clouds to have fun imagining figures and stories. Depending on our profession, we might read proton flux, residency applications, water pipes, stock market cash flow, trends, trees…

For the residency, I would like to research the practice of sense making, by focusing on the borderline case of the oracular technologies, where contingent formal composition (such as coffee ground in a cup, lines in the palm of the hand, configuration of thrown shells, the shape of an animal’s liver...) are granted the status of meaningful signs expressing some cosmic order. I am fascinated by the inflation of sense oracles imply: scrutinizing the sensuous features of an object gives rise to a narrative that could address the most intimate issues of an individual or the most shared concerns of a community.

Concretely I will work on developing an experimental, overtly made up oracular practice for one-on-one performances. People would assist to the creation and subsequent exegesis of a drawing they will take back home until a second meeting when they would discuss the resonance of the oracle after having spent some time with the physical object (the drawing) embodying it.

Julien Bruneau, June 2015

concept by Julien Bruneau / research developed with Maya Dalinsky, Anouk Llaurens, Lilia Mestre, Laure Myers

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