ABOUT

For the artist, it’s a question of “weaving with” the world around him, just as contexts weave and reweave reality. ——— Paul Ardenne, A Contextual Art

Choreographer, architect and pedagogue

Contemporary dancer in many dance companies in France and Europe, Gilles Viandier develops as a choreographer within the generic #Number# project, an evolutionary investigation at the crossing of performance, dance, installation and architecture, in echo to an architect’s diploma in 1997, questioning the urban and artistic conversion of industrial wastelands in Europe. He creates projects that combine bodies into play, social responsibility, sustainability, respect and dialogue with the environment. In 2018, he followed the Choreographer <> Composer education program at the Royaumont Foundation (Paris, F).

Linked to the context, the history and the identity of every city, #Number# questions the urban perception, the movement and commitment of the body, the representation in general and realizes performative in situ devices (including Street Pantone variations), based on the apprehension of the public space, its diversion and spectator’s role. These attentions to the inhabitant, to the passer-by, to contact in general, to the involvement of physical commitment questioning the ordinary, to conscious breathing, have led to the development of pedagogical actions with various audiences.

#Number# project : bodies and contexts

#Number# project started in Montpellier/France around the concepts of limits (margins, presence of nature, privatisation, urban paradoxes), of convergence (streets, squares, rivers, public, art of walking…), of scales (from human to monumental), of urban harvest (waste, signals, symbols, perceptions…), flow, movement in posture and discontinuity in dynamics, in the form of choreographic palimpsests. #Number# enters into variations in the festival Improspekcije in Zagreb, along the canal in Brussels, in Skopje/Macedonia in the project for the Biennial of Young Creatives of the Mediterranean See, in Berlin in performances invited by Jeremy Wade or Peter Stamer (The Village, Tanznacht 2010), and in Paris during the Danse élargie 2010 contest organized by Boris Charmatz.

Within various artistic residencies at Trafó theatre in Budapest (Hungary, 2012), with the Council of Architects of Transylvania in Cluj-Napoca (Romania, 2014), in Ujgorod (Ukraine, 2013), at the Antigel Festival in Geneva (Switzerland, 2016), with [AADK] Spain in Blanca (Spain, 2017) and at the Prague Quadrennial/PQ (Czech Republic, 2015), #Number# continues to explore and question engaging the body, the paradoxes of the window-city and its realities, safety and mobility, changing flows, invisible borders and elasticity of the urban fabric.

Tat Vam Asi, You Are That, Budapest 2012: https://www.numberproject.net/tat-vam-asi-that-is-you-en-vagyok-az-budapest-hu/

Urban scenographer in relation to colours

 In the collection of choreographic and scenic materials, the appearance of the colour takes a particular place. Since 2015, Street Pantone, performative installations with 3 x 30 meters monochromatic lycra fabric, have been presented in many festivals, galleries and events (Heritage Days, Mouth of architecture, vernissages…). The next gathering of the 7 bands in rainbow’s colours will give rise to a specific project based on the queer carnival. After some scenographic creations for the theatre, and the original creation of gardens, he’s asked by the Mimos festival in Périgueux (F) driven by the Théâtre de l’Odyssée to rethink the urban scenography of the cultural event 2020-21: general survey, signages, flows between the different venues, manufacture and implementation of scenographic elements.

In 2022, a new creation, Sinople (generic term for all types of green in heraldry) approaches a choreographic, ecological, pictorial and literary research around our relationship to the colour green, its future in the city, its average place in the visible spectrum, on the globe, and complementary to our skin-self.

In 2023-24 Rain-Bow Variations open different projects based on the reunion of the 7 colours.

Tribute to Gabriel Orozco “Asterisms” – Libreville, Gabon 2020