A conversation with multidisciplinary artist Virginie Yassef about her work The Veldt, inspired by a play by writer Ray Bradbury. An interview contucted by Julie Pellerin, Mathieu Copeland, and Philippe Quesne.
The new Digressions is devoted to Virginie Yassef, who has opted for chatting with Mathieu Copeland and Philippe Quesne about the preparation of her project The Veldt. A first episode of the work will be presented at La Ferme du Buisson as part of “Performance Day” and a second at the Nanterre-Amandiers Theatre in November 2018. This dual interview highlights the back and forth discussions between curator and stage director regarding dramatisation, the transition from exhibition to stage, the handling of sound, scenography, timing, the score, and the quest for a new work methodology.
Digressions is a series of conversations with artists. Initiated by La Ferme du Buisson Centre for Contemporary Art in association with Captures editions, the series accompanies the art centre's exhibition programme. Taking as their starting point a group discussion, these publications offer an insight into the thinking, the references, the methods—and sometimes the meanderings—that fuel a creative process.
Published following the 3rd edition of “Performance Day” at the Ferme du Buisson, Marne-la-Vallée, on June 2, 2018.
Julie Pellegrin is the director of the Ferme du Buisson Centre for Contemporary Art.
Philippe Quesne is a stage director and head of the Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers.
Since the 1990s Virginie Yassef (born 1970 in Grasse, lives and works in Paris) has been exploring media including video, painting, photography and sculpture. Flushing out our buried emotions and our capacity for wonder with a witty inventiveness all her own, she creates worlds in which everyday acts take on a fantastic dimension as registers, references, historical strata and levels of interpretation all overlap. From one scenario to another the forms she devises reappear and mutate in line with her narrative variations. She constructs hypotheses just as she constructs buildings, in a constant oscillation between the mental and the physical—a game without rules that helps define a potential space for experiment somewhere between the surface of reality and fantastical projection.
