Bundanon

Chloé Déchery is French performance-maker and writer whose works span across experimental performance, autobiographical theatre, Live Art and conceptual dance.

While developing and presenting works that combine the personal and the political, Chloé favours a creative approach that is collaborative, interrelational and experimental. As an artist, she is interested in developing works that aim to develop an anthropology of the everyday, and are deeply rooted in an understanding of the world both that is sensuous and open to other forms of living. The performances Chloé crafts combine storytelling and fragmented narrative, task-based choreography, documentary video and found objects, blurring the distinctions between fact and fiction and playfully deconstructing the mechanics of representation. As a pedagogue and researcher, Chloé Déchery has a particular interest in Practice (as) Research and actively seeks areas of intersection and cross-pollination between performance practice, self-reflexivity and scholarly enquiry.

Over the last 15 years, Chloé Déchery has developed performances across the UK, France and now Australia (where she has moved in early 2022). Previous works include the two-handler site-specific performance Bardane et moi (2021) and the lecture-performance Créer sous d’autres noms que le sien (2023), part 1 and part 2 of the Première trilogy, developed with support from CentQuatre, Studio-théâtre de Vitry, pad/Nathalie Béasse, Centre National de la Danse and Critical Path; On The Horizon, a site-specific choreographic audio-piece developed in collaboration with Australian choreographer Jane McKernan and Lewis Gibson, with support from Critical Path, Dance4 and Theatre Amandiers Nanterre, and the collaborative solo A Duet Without You which toured in the UK in 2015-2016.

Recent publications include Performing Collaboration in Solo Performance: ‘A Duet Without You’ and Practice as Research (Intellect, Bristol, 2023) and Artistes-Chercheur.es, Chercheur.es-Artistes, Performer Les Savoirs (les presses du reel, , Dijon, 2022).

In Residence at Bundanon

The residency will be dedicated to the developmend of a new scenography-based and performance project entitled Round-Table.

Round-table inhabits the public space in ways that are hospitable and sustainable.

Round-Table is an installation and a performance, a public event and a curated talk.

Round-Table is a space that brings people together.

Round-Table is a stage design that needs to be assembled by several people at once.

Round-Table is a device that requires to be activated to provide multiple activities; allowing participants to talk, and share knowledge while keeping their hands busy gardening, cooking, sewing, drawing…

Round-Table is a kit and a toolbox.

Round-Table is round in the sense that there is no hierarchy, no pecking order: everyone can sit at the table.

Round-Table is inclusive, accessible, intergenerational, multilingual: everyone can lie on it or underneath it, perch on it, hide behind it.

There is no right or wrong way to sit at the table.

Round-Table is a table that is made out of different components; it has parts, multiple parts.

Round-Table holds many different space in one space: there are different layers, nooks and crannies, secret drawers, unopened boxes.

Round-Table is an architecture that will disappear, rot, decompose and feed the participants in many ways – like kompost

Like plants, the Round-Table evolves, grows, changes shapes – thanks to water, light and air.

At some point, will disappear, leaving nothing but barely a trace, an imprint, a thin structure that will then be re-purposed.