I,
Cockrel for Germans (coq à boches)
Not really a strip-tease, not really a rape, but both at the same time.
A work at the bounderies of theatre, a shaving as strip-tease.
A funfair strip-tease, an ugly carnival.
Haidresser's scissors and clippers.
Locks that fly, hair that falls.
A skull appears, who am I, once shaven ?
A shaved woman ? A plucked hen for Germans ?
In july 2004, I shot the slaughter of 10 hens by my uncle and my cousins.
When we were children, we used to play together.
Here, by the mill.
Today, I shoot Alphonse, Emmanuel and Pierrot.
They do not play.
Besides, we no longer play together.
The legs of the hen are wedged,
Between the thighs of the one that plucks it.
Series of close-ups : feathers, hands, hair.
In 2005, when I created this performance at Les Subsistances, in a former military hall, France was celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Liberation.
I wanted, through this performance, never to forget Marguerite Duras’ sentence :
“Shaving a girl because she loved an official enemy of the country, is an Absolute of horror and stupidity.”
Marguerite Duras, Hiroshima mon amour.
