2019
🏡  Bibliothèque Nationale de France (French National Library)

Hommage à Ōno Kazuo 

Performance  
November 13, 2019 
Rotonde des Arts du Spectacle, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Richelieu site

Born in Hokkaido, Japan, in 1906, Ōno Kazuo began his life as a physical education teacher. At the age of 23, he encountered Antonia Mercé (1890–1936), known as La Argentina, during one of her international tours. Her movements, “whose feet and hands made music,” so deeply moved the young Japanese man that he decided that very night to dedicate his life to dance. In 1977, Ōno created Hommage à La Argentina (La Argentina Sho). This piece was an opportunity for him to pay a vibrant tribute to Antonia Mercé: a translation of the experience he had of her fifty years earlier, through the incarnation of the dancer—a dance for her and through her.

We were invited to perform around the archives of La Argentina, exhibited in the Rotonde des Arts du Spectacle of the BnF. We experimented with different ways of embodying Ōno’s homage through dance, drawing from photographic and video archives of his performance. Thus, the documents available at the BnF about Ōno Kazuo and La Argentina were reinterpreted by three performers through a process of bodily incarnation of the archive.


Conference
November 27, 2019
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Richelieu site

This international symposium presented museological experiments focusing on sensitive modes of being-together between visitors, exhibited works/objects, and young artist-researchers. Artistic and digital gestures were used as mediums to engage and transmit archives tied to intangible heritage, some resonating with today’s environmental concerns. Attention to the body was central, aiming both at visitor well-being and at fostering synesthetic creativity through touch (digital media, immersive processes).

Researchers from various disciplines—performing arts, digital arts, anthropology, ethnology, geography, art history, philosophy, language sciences (including sign language), and sociology—were invited to reflect together on the contemporary stakes of these creative practices.


Publication
October 2020

The project was published in the collective volume La médiation transartistique au musée, Éditions Geuthner.

Original concept: Thomas Vauthier
Co-realization: Fanny Terno & Thomas Vauthier Performance: Emma Terno, Fanny Terno & Thomas Vauthier
Text & Conference: Thomas Vauthiere site Richelieu.