Le Tigre de Tasmanie: Lecture musicale & projection
English Title
The Tasmanian Tiger: Musical Reading & Projection
Creator
Vergine Keaton
Year
October 2018
Form
Reading, with projection of a short film & musical accompaniment.
Reading of the texts of Empedocles by Adèle Haenel
Projection of film Le Tigre de Tasmanie by Virgine Keaton
Music by Les Marquises
Reading of the texts of Empedocles by Adèle Haenel
Projection of film Le Tigre de Tasmanie by Virgine Keaton
Music by Les Marquises
Staged
Maison de la Poésie, Paris
Synopsis of the film that was projected
Le Tigre de Tasmanie (2018)
A Tasmanian tiger wanders around in his zoo enclosure. A glacier is slowly melting. Facing its predicted disappearance, nature exerts its fury, bursts over the frame and resists its extinction by transformation.
Trailer for the short film Le Tigre de Tasmanie
This film was projected during the reading & musical performance.
Synopsis of the Musical Reading & Projection
“This hybrid form is an augmented presentation of the animated film The Tasmanian Tiger by Vergine Keaton, through a reading of the writings of the poet and philosopher Empedocles set to music by the group The Marquises.
Vergine Keaton's film, showing in parallel the images of a Tasmanian tiger and a melting glacier, then of its fusion with the lava of a volcano, shows nature in action, deconstructing everything on its way before recombining its different elements into another form of landscape. Here we find the principles of Empedocles' philosophy, according to which life is moved by the cyclical alternation of two sovereign principles - unite-disunity, chaos-harmony. Principles that also resonate with the music of the Marquesas, built by repetitive and metamorphic layers.
Thus, the reading of the texts of Empedocles by Adèle Haenel, the music of the Marquesas, and the images of the film by Vergine Keaton will come to light up and complement each other.”
Translated from
Location
Maison de la Poésie, Paris
Adèle’s role
Reader of the texts of Empedocles.
Who was Empedocles
Empedocles (c. 490 B.C.E. – 430 B.C.E.) was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a citizen of Agrigentum, a Greek colony in Sicily.
Empedocles conceived the ultimate reality as the unity of four permanent elements which he called “roots”: water, earth, air, and fire. Each element has its distinct characteristics. He taught that these elements are both spiritual and physical, and the principle of love and hate causes the combination and separation of these elements, thereby producing the diversity and changes of the world. His teachings portray love as the principle of unity and hate is that of destruction. Empedocles developed a cyclical cosmology that the cosmos repeats unity and destruction by alternate domination of love and hate.
Videos
The performance:
Le Tigre de Tasmanie: Lecture musicale & projection
https://vimeo.com/294832695 (31:59)
Interview with the musicians about the performance
Notes
As an Australian it seems rather bizarre that an event entitled ‘The Tasmanian Tiger’ was performed in faraway Paris. Tasmania is the island state to the south of where I am—a beautiful place that you really should visit some time! The Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, was a carnivorous marsupial; now extinct. It was the size of a medium to large dog, was striped (hence the 'tiger' in its common name), and had a pouch for its young to develop in, and a straight tail. It was an apex predator. It had lived historically in New Guinea (the huge island to the north of Australia) and in mainland Australia, but had gone extinct in those locations before European occupation of Australia. It had survived in Tasmania until European occupation, but through hunting, which was encouraged by bounties, pushed it close to extinction. Disease and the introduction of dogs also contributed to the rapid decline in numbers.The last captive thylacine was captured in 1933 and sent to the Hobart Zoo, where it lived for three years. It was during this time that the only footage of a Tasmanian tiger was filmed—62 seconds of black & white footage of it walking the perimeter of its cage, scratching, yawning and sniffing. He was not well looked after and died on 7 September 1936.
The footage of the last Tasmanian tiger in captivity pacing in its cage is familiar to me and (I think) to many Australians but, I am guessing, not to those outside Australia. It shows this poor creature walking around its miserable cage—destined to extinction… Vergine Keaton's short film (13 mins) of uses this footage of the Tasmanian tiger, along with that of a melting glacier, and of a volcano to illustrate the current parlous state of the world (at least that's my interpretation of the video...).
Images
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