Three questions for Emmanuel Biard, scenographer for the performances of Aisha Devi, Cuerpos, and Evian Christ

A scenographer is a professional who designs and organizes the stage space for performances and artistic installations. This includes creating the visual and spatial environment where the events take place, considering the interaction between the audience, the artists, and the works on display. The scenographer often collaborates with artists and technicians to develop concepts that enhance the immersive and audiovisual experience, integrating elements such as lighting, video projection, and physical structures.

This year, MUTEK is hosting three performances for which Biard designed the stage: No Plexus (Nocturne 2 at the SAT), Aïsha Devi (Nocturne 6 at the SAT), and Evian Christ (Métropolis 1 at MTELUS).

How did you come to pursue this profession, and what does it involve?

Emmanuel Biard: It’s a strange thing to have come to in many ways. As I never knew what it was that I was working on in a formal sense. I studied Visual Art and Graphic Design - working with local bands and nightclubs in Manchester - while still a teenager with no knowledge of Scenography as a distinct art form. As such, my practice has evolved entirely autodidactically in conversation with the Music Scenes and Artists that surrounded me.

My family are all very musical but I lacked the patience and dexterity required for mastery of acoustic instruments, and my singing voice was and still is objectionable. My parents, in the troubadour tradition of Chanson Française, sang and performed in bars and restaurants as a duo and the enchantment struck. I had no interest in the view from stage, I wanted to watch the magic be woven from the audience side of the “crowd barrier”.

Live performance was my whole initiation into music, as opposed to the recorded form, which only came to me in my teens. I always had a strong sense of visual signifiers and sensitivity to context, so when the call came to join the circus of Live music, that is what I had to offer in response.

The scenographies are, for certain performances and festivals, a defining element. You maintain a relatively low profile in the public sphere as an artist. Is this a deliberate personal choice or a reflection of systemic industry dynamics?

This is a complicated question to answer for me probably more than others. but I’ll try to explain in words what is, in its essence, a feeling more than a thought.

Early on in the life of what has now become the “AV performance” it became standard for visual artists (me and my peers) to be named alongside musicians in the (X+Y live AV) formulation. I found this format cluttered and clumsy.

Consider the power of “DOOM” in relation to: “John Romero’s DOOM”. The suspicion of narcissism dilutes the message.

With the shows I design I consider all non-sonic aspects of the presentation, from the precise logistics of touring to the marketing and everything in between, as being involved in the experience for the erstwhile 17-year old me, from the lights dimming as we begin, to the lingering image as the ceiling returns heralded by house lights.

For the imagined lone observer that is encountering the divine hyperobject of the Live experience, possibly for the first time, it felt important to allow for the illusion that the Being on stage is a DemiGod, not just an upright ape propped up as one. The magic of presence appears where the entirety of experience that surrounds is the product of a single point of focus: the entire cathedral is lensed through the body and face of the priest. It’s an awesome alchemy that is not necessarily better served by having the stained glass fabricator jostle for equal recognition.

I see my role as that of a costume designer or mediæval armourer. My work is tailored to help my champions feel protected from a stage that can reveal a gallows at any moment. For them to be seen instead of perceived, allowing the audience’s gaze to pass through them into the great behind, without that arrow stopping at the limit of their body.

Unfortunately as the music “industry” changed with the collapse of Recorded Music as the primary product, Live Performance returning to its central and essential position, and social media taking over the world; with Myspace’s “Top 8” mutating to become the foundation stone of postmodern identity - we are all the children of Andy Warhol now. The incentive to sincerely share profile and credit diminished, and the survival need to accumulate disciples into the pyramid scheme of the self became an unassailable fact. I was an early un-adopter of this emergent aspect of our hyperlinked culture. I never insisted on taking credit, expecting instead for it to be given where appropriate. I expected that people who needed to know who I was would find out while those who didn’t could purely enjoy the show.

As such I fell out of step with the world as it was becoming, and has now become.

So it is both: a personal choice made when I was young and there was little currency beyond the experience itself, and an industry oversight as I got older where self-accreditation became the gold standard. I’ve belatedly accepted that I must make myself visible if my work as a whole is to be read in context.

In order for reluctance to not become regret I can now be found }in §pirit{ on instagram at @alllowercasealloneword

Can you share some experiences, good or bad, which illustrate your practice well?

There are too many. Trite as it is, a life in Live music is a Sysiphean blessing and curse. The work is ephemeral in nature and the workshop is liminal in fact. We are forever trying to punch the Sun and instead smashing headlong into the Moon. Perfectionism and doubt are constant companions, collapse and rebuild exist simultaneously. Whether the performance is as tightly scripted as theatre or as loosely thematic as a 5 hour DJ set, it is a cyclical process of collapse and rebuild.

But I’ve caught glimpses of meaning within the work so profound that it will never cease to be an honour - those glimpses have always been clearest and brightest when I have developed a personal understanding of my collaborators, when I get to make armour that fits perfectly and the show ceases to be on the Stage or at FOH but reveals itself in the space between us. And you can feel it. It’s a real thing. When we get it right, there is nothing more immaterially Real in this material world.

From my first touring design “Archimedes” for Daedelus to my latest build for my partner plus44Kaligula, everything has been passion and magic: Black -and- White.

Join us this week to explore the work of Emmanuel Biard!

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