Xavier Le Roy: SELF-INTERVIEW
"Self Interview" is a performance set up to reflect on some critics and questions produced during and after the project "E.XT.E.N.S.I.O.N.S.#1". It was conceived as a kind of introduction to other projects presented in the frame work of the evenings titled "E.X.T.E.N.S.I.O.N.S#2.7" in Berlin at the Podewil on the 7th, 9th & 10th of December 2000.

This performance is also performed within other theatrical contexts and conference situations.

The set for the performance is made out of a square table, a chair and a ghetto-blaster put on the table. The performer seats at the table with the text (S_I) and a pile of fliers with some statements on games (see end of the text). The audience is invited to take place around the table and the performer start by seating at the table and plays the tape which is inside the tape player and asks the questions (the Y part) to the ghetto blaster which answers (the part X of the text). This continues until the change of tape before the answer X23. After this (second tape) the questions and answers are all spiked by the ghetto blaster. Shortly after X 23 the performer stand up and distributes the fliers to the audience and take place within the audience, listening to the text until the end.

Le Maître ignorant

Nous sommes réunis ici pour parler de la vertu des maîtres . J'ai écrit un ouvrage qui s'appelle Le Maître ignorant . Il me revient donc logiquement de défendre sur ce sujet la position apparemment la plus déraisonnable : la première vertu du maître est une vertu d'ignorance . Mon livre raconte l'histoire d'un professeur , Joseph Jacotot , qui fit scandale dans la Hollande et la France des années 1830 en proclamant que les ignorants pouvaient apprendre seuls sans maître pour leur expliquer , et que les maîtres , de leur côté , pouvaient enseigner ce qu'ils ignoraient eux-mêmes . Au soupçon de faire commerce de paradoxes faciles s'ajoute donc celui de se complaire dans les vieilleries et les extravagances de l'histoire de la pédagogie .

The politics of aesthetics

I shall start from a little fact borrowed from the actuality of art life . A Belgian foundation , the Evens Foundation , created a prize called Community art collaboration . The prize is aimed at supporting artistic projects encouraging " the invention of new social coherence based on diversity of identities " . Last year , the laureate project was presented by a French group of artists called Urban Campment . The project , called"I and us" proposed to create , in a poor and stigmatized suburb of Paris a special place , "extremely useless , fragile and non-productive" , a place at remove , available to all but than can be used only by one person at once .