Set design and graphics Ali Cherri. With Lina Majdalanie. Translation Catherine Cattaruzza. Listen on France Culture. These two one-person shows, Biokhraphia et Riding on a cloud , are an investigation into the self-portrait. In Riding on a Cloud, a man called Yasser speaks into a dictaphone, projects videos and broadcasts recordings, whilst expressing reservations about the extent to which these documents coincide with his true self.
In Biokhraphia, it is Lina Majdalanie who becomes the subject of a very unusual interview. Pushing the artist to her very limits, the interviewer, who manifests herself via a recording of Lina Majdalanie's own voice, forces the latter to answer for her intimate, family, political and above all artistic choices.
What emerges from out of this grating, offbeat mise en abyme of the self-narrative is none other than a political and aesthetic manifesto. He does so by imitating the mechanisms at work within the conference format. He does not set out to make fun of the principle of the conference itself, but rather to exploit the power of the exercise as a form of public address. This is achieved by operating a shift of a voluntarily ambiguous nature, passing from presentation to representation and from reality to the imagination.
The illusion it sets up is a disturbing one: the tone is neutral, the expertise seems well proven, and the documents supporting the speech suggest authenticity. This, of course, is precisely the aim of the whole mischievous, moving and intellectually stimulating operation. In parallel with this runs the true story of a killing spree carried out by a Lebanese office at his workplace, and the fluctuating motivations for his acts.
Set to a complex score of sound and light, a trio sets about uttering phrases of a visceral nature, creating an outlandish, chorus-like effect. Each sequence emerges, bouncing off an impromptu connection, thereby developing a new theme - ranging from distraught observations, memories, tributes, apocalyptic visions, and intimate observations, to unspeakable experiences.
