A taxi driver, an architect and the High Line, 2016
“In 2013 I received an invitation from Sophie Claudel, a cultural attachée at the French Embassy in New York, to be part of the Carte Blanche program. I thought of a project which would be a portrait of the city of New York itself, through its residents, its espaces and the links it has established. My dancer’s eye and my own body are involved, depending on the chosem medium: film, performance, soundtrack. I asked the visual artist Jocelyn Cottencin to join me on the development of New York(s).” Emmanuelle Huynh
New York continues to occupy a special place in our collective imaginations, it is probably one of the cities most presented and represented in film production. But the New York(s) project does not connect directly to that imagination. It chooses the body as a prism through which to read the city, the body placed in space, the movement and its rhythm revealing in its negative space that of the city, its architecture. Physical presence, walking and dance sharpen our gaze and allow us to discreetly highlight certain movemnts in the city, its masses and transformations.
A taxi driver, an architect and the High Line is a trilogy, a portrait of the city through three characters, their relationships to the space and to its architecture.
The first two characters are a taxi driver (Philip Moore) and an architect (Rick Bell). The third character is a landmark, the High Line. We consider the High Line metaphorically as someone who travels daily through the city, revealing it, bringing about encounters between people and their personal stories. The films are a collection of physical memories, intimate stories and spaces. Each film veers between fiction, documentary, performance and poetry. We entered into a dialogue with each of the protagonists, seeking the chronology of their physical memories, their personal histories.
Gestures, movements, trajectories were identified and re-launched in the city, placed in their normal context or displaced. Each action is part of the dialogue with the context, triggering a reading of the space from the space of the body. In counterpoint, the perspective on the city focuses on everyday activities, gestures linked to work, to the rhythm of the city.
The project confronts the reality of spaces and actions.
This trilogy is planned as both an installation and a performance piece. The installation can be presented in exhibition spaces. The performance piece will be an event inside the installation or will be shown in a theatrical space with the audience present on stage. During the performance piece, the films will be both a narrative through-line and a kind of score. The choreographic and kinaesthetic patterns in the three portraits will be material which will be shown, repeated, amplified or deformed like an off-screen insert.
teaser A TAXI DRIVER, AN ARCHITECT & THE HIGH LINE
photos © Marc Domage / Views at LiFE Saintâ€Nazaire, 2017
Distribution / Credits
Films, installation and performance Emmanuelle Huynh & Jocelyn Cottencin
Original concept Emmanuelle Huynh
Technical Management Maël Teillant
Production Plateforme Mùa
Coproduction the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York, Le Quartz Scène nationale in Brest, La Passerelle Centre d’Art
Special thanks to: the AIA New York, the Center for Architecture in New York, MOMA PS1, the Queens Museum, the Musée de la Danse - Centre chorégraphique national de Rennes et de Bretagne, La Criée centre d'art contemporain in Rennes, Sophie Claudel, Rima Abdul Malak, Dorothée Charles, Nicole Birman, Esther Welger-Barboza, Etienne Bernard, Mathieu Banvillet, Breckyn Drescher, Jumatatu Poe, Uta Takemura, Irène Hultman Monti, Shelley Senter, Walter Dundervill, Olivier Souchard, Xavier Leroy, DD Dorvillier, Jennifer Lacey, Ben Evans.
Press
Kostar / october-November 2017
Ouest-France / 2017 October 24