PORTE-VOIX

Walter Benjamin notes that we witness a Hellenization of the utopian imagination applied to the street-galleries in 1830 : the well lined up fronts of a sublime Antiquity hide the chaos of the nascent big city. It was then that Fourier built the first ways in Paris in a pure Empire style.

The phantasmagoria of the ways plunges into a mythical past combining timeless symbols. This is the beginning of the contemporary experience of shopping and malls. « The mall is probably the most striking contemporary illustration of what we understand in this book by phantasmagorias, enclosed places full of fantasies, « collective utopias » (…) » (Berdet Marc, Fantasmagories du Capital, p. 8).

The window displays are similar to dreamlike environments. The window then takes the role of a dream box, just as cinema or drama would.

My scenic proposal for windows is made of elements that recall this Hellenistic utopia characterized by the presence of drapery. The soft vases-faces and faces emerge from a surrealist and imaginary world. They enter the stage in this space as in a Greek tragedy.

These are characters, statuaries. Per-sonare.

They are also a receptacle like possible bodies. Abandoned molting, waiting for someone interested. Residues of theatre plays. Spaces to be inhabited, to have them resonate.

This gallery of portraits can be seen as a collection of possible megaphones. The stroller is the actor, what face am I going to wear today ? As all the shops of possible self.

We put a face on one’s face.