[one_half]
[/one_half][one_half_last]
La Marseillaise – 20 October 2009
(newspaper – French)
Theatre / Performance. The trio behind Grand Magasin look for the “secret geometry” of a panorama in la Joliette…
Shelf life.
In the absurd department, the three oddballs making up Grand Magasin know one aisle particularly well (cf. yesterday’s La Marseillaise). This week, they are the “very special” guests of La Minoterie theatre. Since yesterday, and continuing today, they’ve been applying their sense of the absurd to a symbolic place for their hosts, since the restaurant Dock of the Bay – which opens Monday, and is already showing its own pretty, off-kilter architecture – overlooks the terrain where the “minotiers” (i.e., “millers”) will be located, between the Silo, Besson’s cinema, and chic boutiques, in 2012.
But, this isn’t the subject of Panorama commenté, which troublemakers Bettina Atala, François Hiffler and Pascale Murtin have offered as an avant-goût of their show Les déplacements du probleme – displacements which will be analyzed on stage as of Thursday. However, in their desire to reveal the “secret geography” of a view that is necessarily disturbed by 1,001 micro events, between a highway on-ramp and construction site, clods of earth and asphalt, they lay the foundation for a poetry which, over time, reveals itself to be more and more necessary in this emerging financial district. In disarray and disorder, after a first experiment indoors on a still-experimental digital table, these mad scientists will end up counting the pylons on the construction site, the orange caps and waving flags, or even spot a lost gymnast or an abandoned chair. Funny, poetic, tender, like a film by Tati or a sketch by Devos.
D.B.
——————-
La Provence – 20 October 2009
(newspaper – France)
When Grand Magasin harangues the panorama
Since 1982, the collective, Grand Magasin, combine absurdity and irony in their off-kilter artistic activities. Founded by Pascale Murtin and François Hiffler, and later joined by Bettina Atala, the project returns once again to Marseilles at the Minoterie, a long-time supporter. This week, the reunion happens twice in the neighborhood of la Joliette. The public is still invited to show up today at 1 and 6 pm at the “Dock of the Bay”, a restaurant in the final stages of being built – it will open next Monday – just next to the “Suite Hotel” on Boulevard de Dunkerque. With Panorama commenté, the threesome offers the keys to a human and digital experiment, an encoding of the landscape directly illustrated on the current construction site underneath it (where the future Minoterie will be located). An exquisite taste of things to come that lasts thirty minutes, heralding their show, Les déplacements du probleme – which is on stage from 22 to 24 October at 8pm…
Patrick Merle[/one_half_last]