30x30 - Follow Spot

Site-specific installation. Computerized lighting apparatus, 2006
Samuel Bianchini

Samuel Bianchini’s mechanical solo
as an extension to Paul-André Fortier’s dance solo 30 x 30
Train station city square and the Thiers tower, Nancy, on the evening of May 6th into the morning of May 7th, 2006 [10PM-6AM]
Computer programming: Sylvie Tissot and Olivier Cornet
“Light” engineering: Sky Light
In collaboration with Élise Franck, Julie Garnier, Mayumi Okura, Émilie Salquebre, Noël Varoqui (students at École Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Nancy), Coralie Barbarit, Solenne du Haÿs (students at ICN Graduate Business School).
Coproduced by École Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Nancy and Centre Chorégraphique National – Ballet de Lorraine, in partnership with Centre Culturel André Malraux – Scène Nationale de Vandœuvre-lès-Nancy.
30x30 – Follow Spot was realized in the framework of an Artem research and art workshop (Arc ElectroShop 5.0, 2005-2006) organized by École Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Nancy in partnership with Groupe ICN and École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Nancy.

Left picture: First of 30x30, parking of the train station, Nancy, April 7, 2006
To download this image in HD (Tiff), click here
Right and next pictures : 30x30 – Follow Spot, Thiers tower, Nancy, on the evening of May 6th into the morning of May 7th, 2006
To download this image in HD (Tiff), click here

To download this image in HD (Tiff), click here

lTo download this image in HD (Tiff), click here

30x30 is a solo choreographed and interpreted by Paul-André Fortier. Conceived as a 30-minute site-specific performance, the dance is presented outdoors, everyday, same place, same time, for 30 days. The performance varies from one day to the next depending on weather conditions, interactions with the surroundings, and with the public. Presented in five cities throughout the world—New Castle, Nancy, Ottawa, Yamaguchi, and Montréal—in Nancy, the chosen site is the rooftop of a construction shelter on the SNCF train station parking lot. The performance takes the urban landscape as its set, which predominantly features the Thiers tower, a building some one hundred meters tall, erected in the city center during the 1970s. Omnipresent in the Nancy cityscape, this is the building where Paul-André Fortier and Didier Deschamps, director of the Centre Chorégraphique National – Ballet de Lorraine, invited Samuel Bianchini to intervene with his students to create an extension to the dance solo 30x30 in the form of an original visual piece.

30x30 - Follow Spot is a site-specific installation that is a sequel to Paul-André Fortier’s choreography 30x30. Opposite the Thiers tower, a big white light projector was set up in the Nancy train station city square: a “follow spot.” This projector is commonly used in the performing arts to highlight and follow a performer doing a solo. The same kind of projector is used by the police to light a building when it is the theater of law enforcement. Following the final performance of the dance solo 30x30 in Nancy, alone in the middle of the city square, the follow spot comes to life and projects its beam onto the top of the Thiers tower, the whole night long. Far from being decorative, the movements of the projector and its beam—which were inspired by the dance solo and computer-generated—unceasingly vary and seem hesitant, they scope as much as they are being scoped out: sweeping movements, skittering, stops and starts, and incertitudes tend to give the machine a human quality. We don’t really know if these movements are conditioned by an absent operator or by the subject, who is equally absent and looked for by the search beam. Conceived specifically for the scale of the city, first seen from afar, this lighting of the tower begs the question: what’s going on? Upon arriving at the source of the event, the public is faced with a mechanical solo. This is a solo that refers to itself in the present time of a live performance wherein the machine is simultaneously the equipment and the main protagonist. Like the hollow of something, this solo also recalls presences that seem to motivate its movement, starting with the presence of Paul-André Fortier.

30x30 - Follow Spot
In situ installation, Samuel Bianchini, 2006
Video - 3mn46s - High band request
documentary directed by Samuel Bianchini
in collaboration with
Élise Franck, Julie Garnier, Mayumi Okura, Émilie Salquebre, Noël Varoqui (students at École nationale supérieure d'art de Nancy),
Coralie Barbarit, Solenne du Haÿs (students in Diplôme ICN Grande École)

To download the image series in HD (Tiff), click here

First serie of pictures: First of 30x30, parking of the train station, Nancy, April 7, 2006
Next pictures: 30x30 – Follow Spot, Thiers tower, Nancy, on the evening of May 6th into the morning of May 7th, 2006

To download the image series in HD (Tiff), click here

30x30 - Follow Spot, Thiers tower, Nancy, on the evening of May 6th into the morning of May 7th, 2006

Poursuite de Poursuite / Following Follow Spot
DVD, 12mn, 2008
Samuel Bianchini

Music and sound design: Johnathan F. Lee
Atelier ElectroShop, École nationale supérieur d'art de Nancy
Limited edition of 500 copies (fr/eng)
Produced and published in 2008 by IMPORT (mfc-michèle didier & Les Presses du Réel) and Ensa Nancy - Les Éditions du Parc
©2008 Samuel Bianchini, Johnathan F. Lee and the producers: IMPORT (mfc-michèle didier & Les Presses du Réel) and Ensa Nancy - Les Éditions du Parc

To purchase the DVD: mfc-michèle didier