Is it possible to meet an animal - that with its three hearts and eight arms seems almost extraterrestrial - at eye level without depriving it of its fascinatingly different intelligence, without breaking it down into something that is, in the minds of humans, comprehensible and ordinary? In Temple du présent – Solo pour octopus: Film (Solo for an Octopus), which was created in collaboration with the nature and art researchers of ShanjuLab - a laboratory for interspecies performance at the Théâtre Vidy, Lausanne – Stefan Kaegi (Rimini Protokoll) allow the octopus to be the protagonist instead of a mere object of observation and thus radically rethink the hierarchy of the conventional research situation. After the film, dance, theatre and literature scholar Gabriele Brandstetter talks with Stefan Kaegi (Rimini Protokoll), Judith Zagury and Nathalie Küttel (ShanjuLab) and the audience, with translation by Marie-Christine Baratta-Dragono.
Concept and direction: Stefan Kaegi
In collaboration with: an octopus, as well as Judith Zagury and Nathalie Küttel (ShanjuLab)
Scientific support: Prof. Graziano Fiorito (Dept. of Biology and Marine Organisms, Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Naples), Marcel Gyger
Dramaturgy: Katja Hagedorn
Live music: Stéphane Vecchione (in collaboration with Brice Catherin)
Technical equipment: Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne
Lighting: Pierre Nicolas Moulin
Video: Oliver Vuillamy
Production: Anouk Luthier
A production of: Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne, ShanjuLab Gimel (Laboratoire de recherche théâtrale sur la présence animale), République Éphémère *et Théâtre Saint-Gervais, Genève.
In co-production with: Berliner Festspiele, Centre Pompidou - Paris, Rimini Apparat
