Zoé Couppé ~ À la vie à la mort A voice and nothing more

Zoé Couppé's "À la vie à la mort A voice and nothing more" was presented before live audience at Centrale Fies, Dro, Italy on August 4, 2024 as one of 38 AEROPONIC ACTS of CHAMELEON ORBIT curated by Elisa Giuliani & Giulia Crispiani.

Here you will find the documentation of Zoé Couppé's presentation as filmed by Baha Görkem Yalım. The written report is by Bethany Crawford and it includes a summary of the comments by esteemed guest respondents.

À la vie à la mort A voice and nothing more

Zoé Couppé's question: What are three things you know for sure?

Zoé's introduction: Today this stage is my stage, this is my stage, my dance floor. The Present enters the stage, discussing with the Past and the Future.

What is happening backstage? Where is it? Would you like to know? maybe not. What, and who enters the stages? Who is present? and who is missing? Who is missing on the stage today?

There is always more to hear in the folds, and we have to strain our ears. From speech to song, from whisper to cry, the performance A la vie à la mort, A voice and nothing more explores where the voice appears and disappears.

Bethany's report: The stage is set with two small pianos—one toy-sized and noticeably smaller than the other, with two pefomers sitting infront of the pianos. The performance begins in darkness, punctuated by the rhythmic sound of footsteps playing on a soundtrack. A roving spotlight catches a performer entering, lighting a cigarette as the sound of burning paper (foley) fills the space, accompanied by the faint smell of smoke. A low rumble of thunder echoes, and the performer hums "I Will Survive" absentmindedly, with the lyrics subtitled on a screen above.

The stage becomes a nexus of presence and absence. The performers question, "Who is present, and who is missing from the stage today? This is my stage." A disembodied singer’s voice echoes, filling the void, as a live-streamed image of a miniature puppet theater on the stage appears on the screen.

Water streams on the soundtrack. The painists pretend to play alongside the piano soundtrack as the performer sings in French, her words subtitled. Live and recorded images layer over each other—her present self mimics a figure onscreen, reminisenct of a home video – likely the performer and her family - playing a paper guitar, she asks "I am looking for my voice."

A ruffled-collar performer enters: "I don’t know the future—I can only be the present." She hangs a clock on the puppet stage, a symbol of time’s unrelenting certainty. The narrative touches on death—specifically, the death of the performer’s father—and the surety of small things like sunrise. French music begins to play, prompting a the perofmer to move and dance with the puppet, interspersed with archival videos of the performer’s youth playing on the screen behind.

The tone shifts as the performer reappears in a long red dress, singing alongside the pianists, who pretend to play. "Where can we scream?" she asks, the stage becoming a space for the expression of fragmented emotions—anger, melancholy, despair, and nostalgia. As the performance progresses, these emotions take the stage as companions, embodied by her friends from the DAI. Dressed in vibrant colors, they personify sadness, anger, despair, and nostalgia—her closest confidants in mourning. Together, they demonstrate the fragmentation of grief, the way emotions fracture and blur into one another. The performer notes, "I feel less and less difference between joy and sadness," as their synchronized movements evoke the complex interplay of pain and memory.

The performance crescendos with a wedding as the perfomer decides to chose life and joy, in recognition of their indistinction from sadness and loss. Ramon, the respondent is brought onstage to officiate the wedding. The wedding unfolds as a jubilant celebration of this choice to continue being in love with life, and the turbulence that a life lived and loved well brings. The stage bursts into colour as her friends, her emotional companions, rush in, dressed in vibrant hues that mirror the spectrum of her journey through despair, anger, and melancholy to joy. They dance with her, their movements weaving together the threads of grief and renewal. Archival videos of her younger self play behind her, not as ghosts of the past but as cherished pieces of the present, integrated into the vibrant tapestry of her life.

Music swells, champagne flows, and laughter fills the air. The audience joins in the celebration, stepping outside as the happy couple departs in a car adorned with wedding paraphernalia. The performance is a theatrical documentation of the performers journey through grief, a mosaic of pain, love, and reflection. Through performance and multi-mediated memories, she crafts a space to confront the absurdity of living without someone you love, of grieving in a world that refuses to stop. The stage becomes a site of catharsis, a space to scream, to feel, and to find a way forward with the memories and emotions that linger, never fully gone, always part of the present.

Inti Guerrero: Inti started by playing a Spanish version of “I Will Survive” into the microphone. Inti found the performance deeply personal, resonating with his own life experiences, particularly in his reflections on marriage. He shared that he has been with his partner for over a decade but has only been married for two years. For him, marriage is not a finale or conclusion but a structure that invites deconstruction. He is interested in examining the institution of marriage, questioning its boundaries, and exploring its political and psychoanalytic dimensions. He pondered how the personal aspects of the performance could be expanded and further "contaminated," allowing the political to merge with the intimate.

The performance reminded Inti of the artist Louise Bourgeois, whose work often navigates the interplay between personal memory and broader spatial or familial structures. Bourgeois's imagery, such as the melding of a body into a house or the recurring presence of her father within her drawings, served as a point of connection. Similarly, Inti observed a relationship between space and structure in the performance—a tension between comfort and constraint.

Visually, the use of the ruffled collar in the costumes stood out to Inti, carrying cultural and historical weight. He connected it to its French origins, associating it with European imperialism and class structures that persist today, particularly in French territories still grappling with independence. This specific visual element became a powerful signifier, speaking to heteronormative and nationalistic ideologies embedded within European identity.

Inti also noted cinematic echoes within the performance, likening its exploration of familial and societal structures to Lars von Trier’s works, particularly The Idiots and Melancholia. He saw opportunities to delve deeper into these themes, perhaps by interrogating family structures and their impact on personal grief and identity.

Music played a significant role in his reflections. He was struck by the use of pop music within the performance, which he contextualized in relation to third cinema and the generational significance of pop in Latin America. He highlighted how genres like "bailar music" (dance music) are deeply classed, often associated with privilege and the labor of others—referencing the phrase "music to iron to," used by those who can afford domestic help. He challenged the performance to consider what pop music means, both personally and generationally, and how it interacts with the broader audience.

Drawing connections to Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a musical about survival and transformation, Inti suggested exploring the potential for creating something new through a reworking of songs and themes. He admired how the performance invoked images of a wedding but also saw it as an opportunity to challenge normative ideas. He was reminded of a story about a Cantonese pop singer in the 1990s who, upon knowing she was dying of cancer, staged her final performance by marrying herself in a wedding gown.

Ramon Amaro: shared a deeply visceral and enthusiastic response to the performance, admitting that within the first minute, he regretted not enhancing his sensory experience with something like hash, acid, or a bonbon, as he felt the work demanded engagement on an entirely different register. He described the performance as a glimpse into the future, something that, if materialized in other forms, could become a cult classic—something to revisit and dissect for years to come, debating its rich layers of symbolism, tropes, and meaning. To him, it was the kind of work that births new genres.

Beyond this future potential, Ramon admired the performer’s ability to articulate a personal language so powerfully and authentically. He reflected on the struggle many artists face in finding and refining their language, often feeling pressured by the finality of forms and materials they see around them. In contrast, the performer’s language felt distinct, strong, and inspiring—an embodiment of her unique voice. Ramon noted the importance of protecting such a singular vision and ensuring it reaches a wider audience.

What struck him most was how the performance achieved this through heterogeneity and layering—folding together different genres, memories, and time periods. Each "fold" in the performance revealed something new, transcoding and transforming itself as it progressed. He marveled at how these layers weren’t so much unravelled as discovered, like finding micro pockets of connection within a contained universe. He drew on Deleuze’s concept of the fold, quoting, "No matter how small, each body contains a world pierced with irregular passages, penetrated by an increasingly vigorous fluid." To Ramon, the performance embodied this idea, showing how sociality, difference, and identity emerge not from a singular source but from the compilation and interplay of memories, times, spaces, genres, and rituals.

Ramon saw the performance as an invitation to journey through the psyche of the performer—an interior exploration made possible through exterior materialities that became textures for the audience to connect with. It challenged his own philosophical tendencies to think of identity as a binary negotiation between external and internal forces. Instead, the performance blurred those boundaries, allowing the audience to experience a merging of interior and exterior, facilitated through song, voice, vibration, and tension.

What he appreciated most was the generosity of the performer’s approach. While she clearly assigned meaning and weight to the symbols and semiotics within the work, she left room for the audience to navigate these associations on their own terms. Ramon likened the experience to being guided through an ocean—initially splashing and navigating its waves, but eventually becoming part of the ocean itself. This breaking of the inside-outside barrier exemplified the power of performance to create a psychosocial space that transcended the physical room they were in.

For Ramon, the event they had witnessed was singular—something they would never see again, yet it left him deeply satisfied while still longing for more. He imagined this work expanding into new forms, such as a feature-length film or a 24-hour stream he could immerse himself in completely. The performance, he concluded, was transformative, not just for the audience but for him personally, as he navigated his own period of change. In closing, Ramon thanked the performer for opening the day with something so profound and inspiring, a rare and extraordinary event.

Antonia Majaca: Antonia began by declaring, "This is literally one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced in my life. And I don’t say that lightly." She was reminded of Clara Saito’s performance, which she responded to the last time she participated at the DAI, and reflected on how transformative this performance felt in her own journey of finding her voice. For her, this moment in their gathering was essential, a place to ask, When and where can I scream? She emphasized the rarity of spaces like this, where screaming—expressing raw emotion—is not only allowed but supported.

She recounted saying to Ramon earlier, "This is the beginning of the day, and I can’t believe this is the actual beginning of the day." The experience felt monumental, like the moment a seven-year-old wins an Oscar—leaving her to wonder, How do we top this? Antonia spoke of the unique convergence of joy and sadness in the performance, describing it as "that gift of crying" the performer was searching for. This duality was central to her experience, encapsulated by the line from the performance, “I want to die on stage.”

For Antonia, this line carried profound significance. It redefined the relationship between crying, dying, and the stage. She questioned what it meant to have the capacity to cry or die on stage and how not all stages are equally accessible or supportive of these acts. "Not everyone can afford to go mad," she said, pointing to the inequalities inherent in who is allowed to grieve, express, or transform publicly.

She then touched on psychoanalysis, mentioning a reference to a book about the voice (perhaps by an author named Dolores?) that explored different iterations of the voice. The first voice, she explained, conveys meaning; the second is tied to aesthetics or fetishized associations. But it is the third voice, the one that does not serve meaning or aesthetic goals, that she found most resonant. This is the voice that breaks the circle, the voice of the search, the voice that transcends language, action, thought, and art. For Antonia, this performance embodied that third voice.

Antonia returned to the question: When and where are we allowed to scream? On which stage are we allowed to die?She emphasized the importance of finding a stage where dying—whether literal or symbolic—can be witnessed with care, love, and support, allowing us to die in the way we would want. For her, performance itself becomes this space, the eternal present where past, present, and future collide.

Concluding her reflection, she said, "That’s why this moment is so important. Performance is where we are allowed to die on stage—and you did. And we just witnessed your rebirth." For Antonia, the performance wasn’t just a moment; it was a transformative act that redefined the boundaries of grief, expression, and renewal.

AEROPONIC ACTS 2024 ~ Chameleon Orbit

About Zoé Couppé