From the very beginning, Théo Mercier has claimed a great deal of formal freedom, working to deconstruct the mechanisms of representation. His paradoxical, strange and humorous approach results in a sprawling work peopled with dystopian myth and troubling performance, in which past, present and future, reality and fiction, confront each other in an orderly cacophony.
The Ballet national de Marseille accompanies the production of Outremonde, which is structured around a double device constituted of an exhibition and a performance, as part of the 2021 edition of the Festival d’Avignon. An unprecedented « fabrique du regard » emerges from this biotope of a new kind, from this traveling and cruise.
Théo Mercier opens here the way to new ways of thinking about the presence and the visit of the spectator in the exhibition's and performance’s rooms. In Outremonde which could be described as a theater of performances, the setting and the exhibition scenarios evolve throughout the show according to the spectators activation of the devices and the artists’ desires. The spectator finds himself embarked into a sensitive experience, in which bodies and objects become both a living matter part of the here and now experienced and an archaeology of an imaginary future.