This July the TOPIC has had a new tenant in its creation residence, the French artist Mathieu Enderlin, who develops in the field of puppet/object theater a new scenic language, the result of the encounter of new technologies, theater, and the arts of puppetry.

It was while studying film that Mathieu Enderlin became interested in puppet theater. Discover a free and decidedly modern form of artistic expression. Think of the puppet as a support for the projection of the imagination, the starting point of a common dream shared by the actor and the spectator.

“It is the first time I have visited TOPIC and the first time I have faced a project alone, which is positive for me since it allows me to completely control my rhythm and concentrate better”, says Mathieu, who is doing this residency with a second part of the project called Source Code.

Source Code brings together three creations inspired by the same question that speaks to our daily lives. How do new technologies modify our relationship with the world, others, and ourselves? On the one hand, it is a societal issue that involves our collective choices for the future, and on the other hand, it is a more individual issue: what specifically do we do with technology in our lives?

In this second part of the project, the French artist continues, “we focus on that object from which we do not part under any circumstances and that increasingly occupies more space in our lives: the mobile phone”.

In ‘Smart’, the name of the show with which it is in residence, the smartphone becomes the main protagonist of fables staged in a puppet theater. The Guignol castle is transformed into a digital theater in which the organic and the digital are organized, intersected, and responded to. Telephones take the place of traditional puppets, and a surprising hybridization develops before our eyes. The actor-puppeteer, alone on stage, multiplies and tries to organize the lives of all his avatars. The humorous scenes that make up the show highlight our strange behaviors induced using our technological tools and show all the humanity that machines help reveal.

This playful and moving reflection on the way technology affects our lives is aimed at a family audience. With the screen in our hand or in our pocket, permanently connected, we live two lives: a biological life and a digital life. And the second seems to be much easier. The smartphone is “smart.” Lightens our day to day. We can move in an instant, chat in any corner of the world, discover incredible landscapes, share experiences… We can reinvent ourselves, shape our image as we wish.

How do we manage the coexistence of these two worlds? During these images that constantly return our own to us in a different way, through virtual relationships that open so many interfaces between us and ourselves, who are we really?

The idea of ​​a “smartphone theater” arises from these questions. By combining puppet techniques and new phones, we can stage viewers’ digital avatars live. The experience consists of seeing what happens with these artifacts in the virtual space of the theater. How do they interact with each other? What stories do they tell? What affects does the audience project onto these doubles of themselves?

“Puppet theater can be, perhaps better than any other art, a means of exploring these questions. Since its origin, it has strived to develop and stage complex forms that combine humans and artificial bodies. That these bodies now bear the mark of the techniques that are ours, digital and numerical, is a natural continuation of their development. It is these resources inherent to puppet techniques that I want to put at the service of current challenges”, concludes Enderlin, who estimates that the preparation of this work will take him a year of work until he presents it.