CATSTCROLLING
A performance by Lucille Calmel

Doors at 20:00, performance at 21:30

“What would animals say if… we asked them the right questions?”
Vinciane Despret, La Découverte, 2014

For its first performance of 2020, Sub Rosa Space proudly presents CATSTCROLLING by Lucille Calmel.

CATSTCROLLING explores the interplay of the animal and the digital: two varieties of the non-human, one living the other machine. When and where an animal—a cat, let’s say—encounters us on a computer, we have already crossed a dynamic series of terrains. From machine, to the vision of an other via the machine, to the vision of an other who is non-human, animal, again, still, via the machine.

Unwittingly or fully conscious of the fact, online cat videos summarise and steer the shift of our post-digital, post-human paradigm.

Calmel has long explored the dynamics of this moment since her earliest experiments with online performance in 2003. CATSTCROLLING marks the latest phase of the artist’s research. An ASMR performance for the cats of Exarcheia, the work is a critical sociology of territory, crisis, anti-crisis—articulated in the tensions of human and non-human, of actual and virtual.

Lucille Calmel is a French artist, based in Brussels. Her practice encompasses performance, writing, digital art, theatre direction, pedagogy, and curation. While living in Montpellier (FR) she initiated Les Trifides, a collective of women performers active from 1990 to 1995. She subsequently directed, with Mathias Beyler, the experimental theatre company myrtilles as well as .lacooperative., a space dedicated to research and transdisciplinary residencies. Since her arrival in Brussels in 2005, she has developed collaborations, research, and curatorial projects, whether live or online, that revolve around performance, sonore and visual poetry, experimental music, and digital scenes. Her current projects explore performance with or for animals and inter-species communication. 2019 saw the publication of her monograph when i’m bad i’m better, which covers her digital works and performances.

Calmel’s latest works have been supported by le Fonds National de recherche Scientifique /FRArt, le service des arts visuels et le secteur des Arts Numériques de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, la SCAM, Wallonie-Bruxelles International, le Centre des Arts Scéniques, Wallonie Bruxelles Théâtre/Danse, « Villa Médicis Hors les Murs » Institut français, la Commission des Aides aux Projets Théâtraux and la promotion des Lettres de la Communauté française de Belgique.

The performance of CATSTCROLLING is the culmination of Calmel’s research/creation residency at Sub Rosa Space. Calmel’s residency is supported by Wallonie-Bruxelles International.