Capitals
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The formation directed by Daniel Buren settles in the Institute of the Arab world for a triple aerial and visionary spectacle.
Daniel Buren as director of a circus that bears his name? We will have seen it all. But in reality, it’s been almost twenty years since the “Buren Cirque” which settles for three weekends in front of the moucharabiehs of the Arab World Institute (IMA) started its tour. From Clermont-Ferrand to Auch via Bobo-Dioulasso, in Burkina Faso, where he had taken his ease on a roundabout as big as a football field. Each time, Buren’s transformist circus reappeared in a different form. His credo? Shake up conventions by sometimes encircling the ring with the help of a cylinder, by cutting the circus in four elsewhere, or by covering the bleachers to force the spectators to sit elsewhere. A way for the visual artist to accompany the transformation of a practice, the circus, which since the 90s has been constantly dusting itself off.
This time, it’s in a modest version that the Buren Cirque is back. It is made up of three colored capitals, rather “cabanons”, in reference to the famous “exploded huts” that it has sown since the 1970s. The show is called Rotation and reactivates a more widespread tradition in the United States, which consists of turning the public from one marquee to another. It was designed by Dan and Fabien Demuynck, pioneers of contemporary circus. Every evening, Daniel Buren himself will broadcast and mix live the images shot in each of the tents.
“He transformed space”
At the crossroads of this triangulation, the choreography of the s…