Benjamin Heller – A emporter

A emporter – Per­for­mance. Image by Fritz Lord

«C’est Jeu­di, le 4 août, il est 08:30 du matin. Je me rends au car­re­four du vil­la­ge. Ici, je com­mence mon voya­ge. Mon con­cept est clai­re : Je fais du stop, et je me laisse emporter par les desti­na­ti­ons de mes rencontres.»

With this sen­tence beg­ins the per­for­mance «A emporter», which was crea­ted during the resi­den­cy at Vil­la Vil­le­kul­la and pre­sen­ted in the exhi­bi­ti­on on site. The sen­tence explains the con­cept of my one-day hitch­hi­king trip that pre­ce­ded the per­for­mance. Start­ing from the cross­roads in Fau­co­gney, I tra­ve­led around, always going whe­re the dri­vers were going any­way. Start­ing with the elder­ly woman who dro­ve me to the neigh­bor­ing vil­la­ge, the jour­ney took me via 12 dif­fe­rent cars to Besan­çon, whe­re the ter­mi­nus of Tram­li­ne 2 was equal­ly the ter­mi­nus of my jour­ney. In «A emporter», this jour­ney is retold and the rou­te taken is recor­ded on the ground with chalk. The resul­ting map is not ori­en­ted to points of the com­pass, but is drawn from encoun­ters, sub­jec­ti­ve obser­va­tions, and the rela­ti­on to other geo­gra­phi­cal con­texts that came up in the conversations. 

A emporter – Per­for­mance. Image by Fritz Lord

«Depuis là, un aut­re jeu­ne hom­me me ramè­ne à l’entrée du vil­la­ge où je pas­sais il y a quel­ques minu­tes. Sa voitu­re est rouge, il por­te un pan­ta­lon Adi­das rouge, boit une bois­son dans une can­net­te rouge et son dif­fu­seur d’odeur rouge sens les cerises.»

«La pro­chai­ne per­son­ne est de mon âge, où voir même un peu plus jeu­ne. Il m’a vu et à tour­né au rond-point pour reve­nir me cher­cher. Il est fasci­né par l’idée de voya­ger sans but. Mais lui, il va com­men­cer sans tra­vail dans dix minu­tes – net­to­y­er des vit­res dans un restau­rant qui ouvr­i­ra demain.»

A emporter – Per­for­mance. Image by Fritz Lord

Bes­i­des this per­for­mance, the resi­den­cy at Vil­la Vil­le­kul­la allo­wed me to con­ti­n­ue working on ide­as that I have been car­ry­ing around for a while. A per­for­ma­ti­ve work, deve­lo­ped from con­ver­sa­ti­ons with my grand­par­ents and wri­tin­gs by them, is in the making and will accom­pa­ny me for a while. Yet the initi­al spark to bring this to a form has hap­pen­ed – Thank you Vil­la Villekulla.