KLAP! KLAP! | 2008 – en

KLAP KLAP by Christian Ubl : bravo
Between them and us, it was a nice exchange. Muscular, sincere, creative and, to be honest, rejuvenating. They are choreographer Christian Ubl, dancer Marion Mangin and musician Fabrice Cattalano, performers of “Klap! Clap! “. We are the public, seated in the room of the 3bisF, a place of contemporary art in the psychiatric hospital of Aix en Provence. An hour to question the meaning of applause, this noise that resonates for each of us, this weapon of mass and passive destruction, this gesture of love, this political act.
Between us, there is so much to say! Especially since we have changed. We are no longer the uniform and docile audience that some programmers still dream of. Between the real sphere and the internet, our identity is multiple, our expectations and our desires constantly navigate between the need for secure entertainment (“not to worry about it”) and the search for meaning (“to get out of everyday life”). As for the artists, they never stop questioning their art, opening up, introspecting new fields to create new forms. Never has a profession evolved as much as this one, where the relationship with the public is a center of “gravity”

“Clap! Clap! is therefore a work that questions our relationship with artists, with humour, creativity, delicacy and depth. For this, Christian Ubl poses a containing framework, never disqualifying, which authorizes the word, without mask and with respect. The video tool, subtly used, is this reflecting mirror, this one-way mirror, this introspective space. The sound of applause melts into deafening music, which puts tension on this relationship that is usually so “soft”, so conventional. The danced bodies translate the nature of this interaction where the noise of our hands feeds the imbalance, the seizure of power, the manipulation of the artist, who has become a toy for the time of a final salvation. And we laugh to see this relationship so bland, when the applause comes, at a time when our era is developing increasingly circular forms of communication.
Christian Ubl questions, purges his fear, stages the meaning of the hysteria of this applause; he includes the public in the “game”, informs him of the meaning of his postures (even the most passive ones in a bleacher!). It challenges us on the function of these handclaps which become, like the status of the artist, “object” of covetousness of a society which places entertainment well above art (one need only be convinced to observe the attitude of the spectators in “Le grand journal” of Canal Plus where the body is only a machine to ovation in the service of a commercial vision of the culture, of a descending approach of the democracy).
As “Klap! Clap! advance, we are therefore linked, them and us, to give a new dimension to this gesture, to make it more complex, to include it in a political posture (even if it means putting on latex gloves and protecting ourselves from messy artistic proposals!). With Christian Ubl, applauding becomes a beautiful choreographic gesture.
It is a cinematic credits that closes this hard-hitting show. As the names parade, an in-between is set up, a space where the spectator takes the time to reflect on the meaning he will give to his applause. And I find myself clapping my hands differently, making them play different music, while questioning myself about this paradoxical gesture in the context of “Klap! Clap! “.
My hands no longer expel, they include.
With Christian Ubl, the spectator is an artist in the making.

Pascal Bély

UBL: to your applause!
Ubl dare. And asks questions, which open, gape, disturb. By jumping without precautions to conclusions: greetings, applause. The great moment of meeting, the obligatory offering, the peak of emotion. Except here out of context. Hollowed out of the content: without anything before. So what are these gestures worth? The causes of the lost relationship, the naked phenomenon, what do we see? Is there still a meeting? Is it us – the spectators – projected in synthetic image, reduced to postures, to the mechanical gestures of applause. Are they the artists, who only offer themselves? Reduced to only greetings, to their desperate thirst for recognition. Drunk with this emotion and fragile to break. The situation is declined, played, danced, in nuances, from factitious to paroxysm. Including the expected efforts of the hall driver with worn-out catchphrases, there a demonstration of a sad normality. Everything gets carried away without complacency until the din that deafens the meaning. The repetition accelerated until exhaustion, the artist collapses. What’s left of what’s going on between us and them? We are relieved of the mission of applauding the artists ourselves who are turned to other audiences at the four corners of the stage. We consider these virtual audiences, referred to a reflection on our own function as spectators. Without proposed answers: there are no other comments than those in the gestures and words of circumstances. With irony and complicity. Performance is reduced to the bone. Stripped, the result is stripper. With a bitter, provoking taste. salutary?
At Micadances, with Winter Facts.

Dimanche 25 janvier 2009 Guy Degorges