An immersive, multi-media installation of live aerial performance, large-scale projected video, and electronic music, ANIMA alters our perspectives on the “sensation of time” and the pace and effects of climate change.
Fresh from the Venice Biennale 2023 and Tate Modern, PS21 is bringing ANIMA to the Pavilion Theater for its only appearances in North America.
An immersive multidisciplinary installation by French visual artist/photographer Noémie Goudal, theater director Maëlle Poésy, circus artist Chloé Moglia, and composer Chloé Thévenin, ANIMA sits at the crossroads of visual, photographic, musical, video, and scenic arts. The work is grounded in the artists’ interest in recent discoveries in paleoclimatology, the study of ancient climate, whereby researchers project visions for the future, based on the metamorphoses of the natural world in the distant past. The arid expanses of the Sahara were once rich in vegetation fed by lakes and rivers, and Antarctic ice covers land where tropical rainforest once bloomed. ANIMA takes the audience on a journey through Earth’s seemingly fantastical landscapes, revealing the interconnectedness of all living organisms.
Through shifting and hypnotic images of palm trees, rocks, caves, and water in continual metamorphosis projected onto a triptych of giant screens, Goudal and Poésy confront the viewer with an experience of human impermanence. Thevenin’s music, a mix of electronics and recordings of sounds of flowing water, winds, and wildlife coalesces with the images to create a sense of the fragility of landscapes, the power of the elements, and the vertiginous nature of time.
Noémie Goudal
Noémie Goudal received an MA in photography at London’s Royal College of Art. Her practice involves the construction of ambitious staged, illusionistic installations centered on landscape, which she documents in film and photographs and into which she incorporates performance. Her interventions are grounded in research into the intersection of ecology and anthropology, in particular paleoclimatology, the analysis of climate and geology from the perspective of deep time, to explore the earth’s past and future. Her work has been presented at institutions and events in France including the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Les Rencontres d’Arles; Festival d’Avignon; Le Grand Café Centre d’Art Contemporain, Saint-Nazaire; Musée Delacroix, Paris; and internationally at the Tate Modern, London; Kunstverein Hildesheim, Germany; Ballarat International Foto Biennale, Australia; Musée des Beaux-Arts Le Locle, Switzerland; The Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki; The Photographer’s Gallery, London; FOAM Museum, Amsterdam; Whitechapel Gallery, London; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Lisbon; and the Horniman Museum, London. Goudal’s work is held in public collections including Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; David Roberts Art Foundation, London, UK; FOAM Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Fotomuseum Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, France; Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, India and The New Art Gallery Walsall, Walsall, UK. Noémie Goudal lives and works in Paris.
Maëlle Poésy
Actress, writer, and director Maëlle Poésy is Director of the Théâtre Dijon Bourgogne, Centre dramatique national. She trained at the École supérieure d’art dramatique of the Théâtre national de Strasbourg. In her work, she pursues a “theatre of confrontation” which questions society and its individual components. She appears often at the Festival d’Avignon, Lincoln Center, and the Festival TransAmériques and has directed, among other works, 7 Minutes at the Comédie-Française, Glory on Earth, at the Théâtre de la Cité Toulouse and Théâtre en mai festival (Dijon), and the short film Sans sommeil.
Chloé Moglia (at PS21 performed by Mathilde Van Volsem)
Chloé Moglia is a French trapeze aerial artist, choreographer, and dancer. Born in 1978, Moglia began her training on the trapeze at the École Nationale des Arts du Cirque de Rosny-sous-Bois (ENACR) and studied at the Centre national des arts du cirque (CNAC). In 2009, she founded Compagnie Rhizome, which she continues to direct. Called “the artist who explodes the boundaries of the circus,” her practice is equally influenced by martial arts. Her shows and performances play with bodies, slowness, the laws of physics, and vertigo. A defender of embodied thought and of a sensitive representation of physicality, she combines attention and acuity by weaving together physical practice, reflection, and sensitivity.
Chloé Thévenin
Parisian DJ and musician Chloé Thévenin creates work ranging from techno to confessional downtempo and blues-influenced indie rock. Her experimental, cinematic solo albums feature guitars, intimate vocals, and abstract song structures. As a DJ, she spins at clubs and festivals around the world, including Le Pulp and Lumiere Noire in Paris. She also composes classical music, soundtracks, and scores for art and dance pieces.
Credits
Concept, direction: Noémie Goudal, Maëlle Poésy
Suspension writing: Chloé Moglia With: Mathilde Van Volsem
Original music: Chloé Thévenin
Stage design: Hélène Jourdan
Lighting: Mathilde Chamoux
Costumes: Camille Vallat
Stage manager: Julien Poupon
Sound operator: Samuel Babouillard
Video and lighting operator: Pierre Mallaisé
Assistants: Clara Labrousse and Pauline Thoër
Production administrator: Miléna Noirot; assisted by Adèle Jaffredo, Marie Bloquel-Perrat
Film credits
Made by: Noémie Goudal, Maëlle Poésy; assisted by Claude Guillouard
Script: Mylène Mostini
Director of photography: Julien Malichier
Digital operator, optical calculator: Alexis Allemand
Camera assistant: Julien Saez
Special effects: Léo Leroyer
Electrician: Adrien Chata; assisted by Telma Langui
Head stage decorator: Thierry Jaulin; assisted by Eleonore Sense and Delphine Bachelard
Props: Thomas Piffaut
Post-production: Méchant
Color grading: Serge Antony
Production: Clara Labrousse and Claude Guillouard; assisted by Aménophis Boum Mak and Pauline Thoër; trainee: Salomé Fau
Appearances: Alexis Allemand, Aménophis Boum Make, Georges Olivier, Claude Guillouard, Maëlle Poésy, Noémie Goudal, Thomas Piffaut, Graciela Walinsky
A performance-installation conceived and devised by: Noémie Goudal and Maëlle Poésy
Based on the work Post Atlantica by Noémie Goudal
In collaboration with: Comune di Venezia / Cultura Venezia / Teatro del Parco
This project: came to fruition with the complicity of Christoph Wiesner and Les Rencontres d’Arle
Production: Théâtre Dijon Bourgogne, CDN
Film production and staging: Mondes nouveaux, a programme initiated by the French government as part of the Culture de France Relance, a scheme providing assistance in the conception and implementation of artistic projects
Co-production: Compagnie Crossroad; Atelier Noémie Goudal; Espace des Arts, Scène nationale de Chalon-sur-Saône; L’Azimut – Pôle National Cirque en Île-de-France – Antony/Châtenay- Malabry
With support from: Rhizome – Chloé Moglia, FONPEPS
Note: ANIMA was created at the 76th edition of the Festival d’Avignon with the support of the Kering Foundation and Les Rencontres d’Arle
