Virgo

Virgo is an installation and performance piece that consists of a series of walls dividing domestic scenes, some of which are repeated. There is a diagonal hallway which cuts some of the objects in half and allows audiences to walk through the installation. Two large metallic frames, mounted on a hidden system of wheels, allow other objects, and the parts of objects, to move through precise gaps in the walls. Performers enter the spaces to move these metallic frames. A television plays a video of starlings in flight, a laptop navigates a map of ‘the eye of the Sahara’ as it plays fragments of Oliver Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, and an iPhone on a bed displays fragments from Annie Dillard’s non-fiction text Total Eclipse.

The work takes its name from the zodiac constellation and the Parthenon, which was known as the temple of Virgo and was built using repeated architectural features and optical illusions.

Biennale de Lyon, A Manifesto of Fragility (c. Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath) / 2022

Performed by Chantal Barioz, Claire Camus, Yves Chiara, Marie Darphin, Jocelyne Leault, Marie-Agnès Marguin, Elsa Passavy, Niger Pereira, Joëlle Pijolat, Hizia Ramli, Christiane Reymond, Céline Salvaire-Mouysset, and Sylvie Samy.

Technical director: Bart Callebaut