Mohamed El Khatib Valérie Mréjen
Gardien Party
© © Yohanne Lamoulère ©
© © Yohanne Lamoulère ©
Concept and realisation, Mohamed El Khatib, and Valérie Mréjen
With 6 museum security guards
Images, Yohanne Lamoulère
Editing, Emmanuel Manzano
Stage design, Louise Sari
Project assistant, Vassia Chavaroche
Linguistic collaboration, Marianne Segol, Iris Raffetseder, and Ludmila Anisimova
Les Spectacles vivants – Centre Pompidou (Paris), Théâtre de la Ville-Paris, Théâtre de Choisy-le-Roi and Festival d’Automne à Paris are the coproducers of this show
This show is produced in association with Les Spectacles vivants – Centre Pompidou (Paris), Théâtre de la Ville-Paris and Festival d’Automne à Paris.
With support from Fondation d’entreprise Hermès as part of its New Settings programme
Partnership with France Inter
“People don’t ask us many questions. Matisse, Chagall and the toilets.” After setting off to meet museum attendants from all over the world, Mohamed El Khatib and Valérie Mréjen draw upon their experiences to summon up routine life and inner life. Six security guards from all different horizons are invited onstage.
Here, the security guards are not in the corner of a room watching us. They are in front of us and it is us who are looking at them. The guardians of our artistic heritage look us straight in the eye and talk to us about their everyday lives, ranging from boredom and vigilance, immobile bodies with mobile glances, and the pragmatic reality of the surveillance itself to the fictions they make up in order to fight the boredom. Gathered from museums in Paris, Lausanne, Vienna, Tehran, New York, Saint Petersburg, Marseilles, Hamburg, Aubusson, Prague, Orleans and Lisbon, these spoken words give us a unique insight into our love of art. Alternating between tact and facetiousness, Valérie Mréjen and Mohamed El Khatib, carry the fine art of the portrait to new heights. By means of this highly original collaboration, they depict a museum-based portrait of a truly unexpected nature.
See also
Mohamed El Khatib La vie secrète des vieux
Mohamed El Khatib furthers his passion for documentary theatre by tackling a subject that he brings from out of the shadows, namely that of eroticism and the love lives of “oldies”. Put together in a daring yet tender way, his new piece explores this theme from the perspective of desire, thereby going against the usual connotations associated with old age.
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