Fléau

“As an iconographer, I probe, elaborate and reactivate images. Through staging, re-appropriation and photographic or textual associations, I reveal a world of tensions—latent and mysterious. Through photography and text (installation, object, performance), my work questions the legacy of archetypal gestures and postures that draw their source from a hetero- geneous repertoire: mythology, fairy tales, news stories, historical facts and press photography. My work focuses on the poetic dimension of images and texts, close to a form of documentary lyricism.” AG

Fléau is a continuation of Agnès Geoffray’s (FR, 1973, based in Paris) artistic research, who explores notions such as control, the state of being under influence, domination and the resistance of the body. Fléau reactivates the ritual and cultural dimensions of ancestral practices, the body and its extension, the whip. The whip is borrowed from an imaginary world or history of violence and domination, assimilated in particular to training, punishment and torture. The word “fléau” comes from the Latin flagellum which means “to beat”. To beat time. Fléau takes inspiration from the traditions of the Geisslenchlöpfer, the Swiss whippers from the Canton of Schwyz or the district of Lenzburg, who draw on the pagan customs of trainers and carriage drivers. This ancient cultural tradition dates back to the 16th century and used to be performed at night in public places to chase away winter, demons and evil spirits with the deafening sound of whips.

These historical dimensions led us to present Fléau at the Musée d’art et d’histoire, Switzerland’s largest encyclopaedic museum. The museum’s courtyard is also an architectural gem that particularly enhances the specific sonic features of the performance.