Oliver De Sagazan
Well known for his performance of transfiguration in film of Ron Fricke (Samsara) and various collaborations such as, Gareth Pugh and Nick Kinght for S/S 2018 collection, Myléne Farmer for À l'ombre and FKA twigs for her performance piece, Rooms, to name a few. Oliver de Sagazan, born 1959 in Republic of Congo, is a french artist, painter, sculptor and a performer whose work often leave audience stunned and provoked. His background in biology initiating curiosity for phylogeny reflects the expression of other worldly and ancestral life forms.
What's spirituality for you?
Je ne crois pas en un arrière monde. Le monde dans sa totalité est peut être quelque chose de sensible, comme un organisme vivant , c’est juste une intuition .
English : I don't believe in a back world. The world as a whole may be something sensitive, like a living organism, it's just an intuition.
The irony of the Human body as both a vessel and medium to transcend, You have expressed the dichotomy of the emotions through your varied art forms. Can I ask how performing your concepts makes you feel letting out the emotions yet having the residues of them?
Je ne crois pas que mon corps soit un bateau et moi dedans comme le capitaine. Il y a une intrication entre les deux qui fait que c’est le bateau qui dit « moi". Et le moi qui parle est dans l’illusion d’une forme d’indépendance et de liberté. Ainsi durant ma performance je sent bien à quel point quelque chose me dépasse , et cela est apparaît sous forme de visages multiple qui ce succède et que je ne contrôle pas, car je ne les vois pas et je n’en suit pas l’auteur. De même que je ne suis pas l’auteur de mes émotions.
English : I don't believe my body is a boat and I'm in it like the captain. There is an intricacy between the two which makes it the boat that says "me". And the me who speaks is in the illusion of a form of independence and freedom. So during my performance I feel good how much something is beyond me, and it appears in the form of multiple faces that follow and that I do not control, because I do not see them and I do not follow the author. not the author of my emotions.
Your biology background did something to you in the way you are working with soil and water elements. The very memory of the earth (phylogeny) is something you tap into. Can we call your performance a mediumistic artwork since your transformations are talking about metamorphosis? The incarnation cycle is almost like the circle of life. How does performing the memories of the element work for you cause it feels like invocation through a ritualistic medium that seems to hold a major awakening intention?
Oui vous avez parfaitement résumé ma performance. Je n’ai pas votre culture et donc je ne parlerais pas de réincarnation, bien que je trouve le mot très poétique et inspirant, ces transformations de mon visage sont pour moi le fruit de sensation et perception que j’ai dans l’instant et qui nécessairement aussi traduise ma personne et son histoire. Effectivement il y a toujours cette impression que mes masques sont comme une façon de creuser à l’intérieur de moi pour essayé de voir et sentir qui je suis. C’est donc bien pour moi une façon de tenté de sortir d’une sorte de rêve ou d’auto-hypnose.
English : Yes you summed up my performance perfectly. I do not have your culture and therefore I would not speak of reincarnation, although I find the word very poetic and inspiring, these transformations of my face are for me the fruit of sensation and perception that I have in the moment and which necessarily also translates my person and his story. Indeed there is always this impression that my masks are like a way of digging inside me to try to see and feel who I am. It is therefore for me a way of trying to get out of a kind of dream or self-hypnosis.
Philosophy, sensory experiences, life, and the meaning of life along with its duality are fluid with your work. Tell us about the altered states of emotions and mind you might/ must have gone through. This bureaucracy of language might fall short to comprehend the experiences in words but id like to know about the possibility of the multidimensionality of human consciousness in your language.
J’ai souvent le sentiment d’être comme un chien de chasse qui a senti une odeur de gibier et qui creuse dans son visage pour déterrer quelque chose. Je sais que mes mains vont plus vite que ma pensée, les images mentales défile dans ma tête mais je ne sais trop qui les envoi, est ce les déformations de mon visage qui incitent ces pensées, ou l’inverse, ou cela est il un tout ???
English : I often feel like a hunting dog that has smelled game and is digging in its face to dig something up. I know that my hands are going faster than my thoughts, the mental images scroll through my head but I don't really know who sends them, is it the deformations of my face that incite these thoughts, or the reverse, or is it a All ???
Your work looks grotesque to many, I have tried to understand you beneath the surface just through your work but I see that you have quite a meditative tangent to your expression.. Almost like what happens when dancers dance. Where do you go when you are in the act? Of course, I mean not physically. Can you explain the dynamics?
Au fur et à mesure que je me recouvre de terre sur le visage , j’ai le sentiment de m’enfoncer à l’intérieur de moi même, tout à fait comme durant l’embryogenèse où vous avez à un moment (stade Gastrula) une invagination du corps sur lui même. Mais cette invagination semble plus comme une remontée temporelle, une remontée dans les souvenirs , mais aussi des mémoires du corps , des mémoires qui n’appartiennent pas seulement à ma propre individualité. Mais au fond je ne sais pas car je ne sais même pas où commence et où fini mon individualité, je pense même qu’elle est quelque chose de fondamentalement dynamique et mouvante.
English : As I cover myself with earth on my face, I have the feeling of sinking inside myself, just like during embryogenesis where you have at one point (Gatrula stage) an invagination of the body on itself. But this invagination seems more like a rewind in time, a rewind in memories, but also memories of the body, memories that do not only belong to my own individuality. But deep down I don't know because I don't even know where my individuality begins and where it ends, I even think that it is something fundamentally dynamic and moving.
“I often feel like a hunting dog that has smelled game and is digging in its face to dig something up. I know that my hands are going faster than my thoughts, the mental images scroll through my head but I don’t really know who sends them, is it the deformations of my face that incite these thoughts, or the reverse, or is it a All?”
Philosophy has shaped you in many ways, with the matrix so to speak in which we are have you become pessimistic? What is beauty for you besides dismantling the prejudices and ideas around it?
La beauté est le moment où des choses profondes enfouies en nous même soudain ressortent au plein jour sur la toile du peintre ou sur son visage quand son corps devient son tableau comme c’est le cas dans Transfiguration. La beauté en art pour moi c’est le vrai, sortir de la tromperie intime où nous sommes enfermé.
English : Beauty is the moment when deep things buried within ourselves suddenly come out in broad daylight on the painter's canvas or on his face when his body becomes his painting as is the case in Transfiguration. Beauty in art for me is the truth, getting out of the intimate deception in which we are locked up.
Being born in congo it's evident that you have a deep connection with nature as it is. What do you think about plant medicine (psychedelics substance) such as ayahuasca and DMT that hold healing properties and are now being fought for to be legalized for therapeutic and recreational practices? I am asking this because your workflows through an intuitive channel reflecting upon the other side of life, almost implying that death is a death of identity but life remains and continues to find identities.
Les drogues ne m’intéressent pas et elles me font peur de perdre le lien avec moi même et ne devenir qu’un sac de molécule . En prenant des drogues vous n’avez rien à faire, vous n’avez qu’à attendre que des processus biochimique se mettent en place et vous fassent voyager. A l’illusion de la réalité se surajoute une autre illusion qui est celle des filtres que produisent les drogues. En plus nous savons que ces filtre dénaturent le réel et vont altérer en profondeur votre corps. Ce qui m’intéresse c’est de comprendre qui je suis, ce n’est pas d’altérer mon corps et ma perception de lui même.
English : Drugs do not interest me and they scare me of losing the link with myself and becoming only a bag of molecules. By taking drugs you don't have to do anything, you just have to wait for biochemical processes to take place and make you travel. Added to the illusion of reality is another illusion, which is that of the filters produced by drugs. In addition, we know that these filters distort reality and will profoundly alter your body. What interests me is to understand who I am, it is not to alter my body and my perception of itself
I wonder how many challenges you must have gone through initially when people couldn't understand you and your art. Because it looks provocative and looks like a danger to the norms of society and especially the people who are very dualistic in their nature and are scared to know various deeper truths about life as a whole.
Oui il y a beaucoup de mauvaise interprétations de mon travail, entre autre celle qui consisterait à penser que mon travail est mortifère et morbide parce que je produis des images qui peuvent évoquer des visages au sens propre :défigurés. Donc j’aurai un gout pour la violence et l’horreur. Or c’est tout le contraire que je recherche, j’aime la vie profondément, mais je veux comprendre ce corps , cette immensité organique qui va jusqu’aux étoiles. Oui mon corps va jusqu’aux étoiles puisque il retire son énergie d’une source extraterrestre qui est le soleil. Aussi pour me comprendre ma stratégie à moi est de me masquer, le masque ici a comme première fonction n’on pas d’évoquer quelque chose mais d’abord de me couper d’une illusion , l’illusion que je serai ce visage que je vois quotidiennement dans la glace. Le masque est une belle manière de nous sortir de l’hallucination collective dans laquelle nous baignons tous. Ensuite ces masques ne sont pas l’expression d’une défiguration au sens littéral , ils sont la forme mouvante d’une tentative éperdue de se retrouver , ils sont la tentative d’exprimer ce qui à l’intérieur de moi se joue à chaque instant , ces masques n’on rien à voir avec le réel de mon visage , ils sont l’image en creux de mon intériorité.
English : Yes, there are a lot of bad interpretations of my work, among other things that would consist in thinking that my work is deadly and morbid because I produce images that can evoke faces in the literal sense: disfigured. So I will have a taste for violence and horror. But it is quite the opposite that I seek, I love life deeply, but I want to understand this body, this organic immensity that goes to the stars. Yes my body goes to the stars since it draws its energy from an extraterrestrial source which is the sun. Also to understand myself, my own strategy is to hide myself, the mask here has the primary function not of evoking something but first of all of cutting me off from an illusion, the illusion that I will be this face that I see daily in the mirror. The mask is a great way to get us out of the collective hallucination in which we all bathe. Then these masks are not the expression of a disfiguration in the literal sense, they are the moving form of a desperate attempt to find oneself, they are the attempt to express what inside me is played out at each moment, these masks have nothing to do with the reality of my face, they are the hollow image of my interiority.
With various spectrums and mediums of your work, you mixed all of them eventually after the artistic upheaval (crisis) you went through. I wonder what value and space all other mediums hold for you now?
La peinture et la sculpture restent pour moi toujours des moyens forts pour exprimer ce que je ressent , mais il est vrai que dans Transfiguration il y a cette belle idée de jeter son corps dans la bataille et donc d’un saut total dans une totalité qui me dépasse et me hante.
English : Painting and sculpture always remain strong means for me to express what I feel, but it is true that in Transfiguration there is this beautiful idea of throwing one's body into battle and therefore of a total leap into a totality that overtakes me and haunts me.
What space are you in now emotionally and mentally? What is inspiring you currently? anything that is new or fresh in your eyes?
Je suis sur la création d’un spectacle ou pour la première fois je ne joue pas sur scène je suis uniquement metteur en scène . Mais je ne veux pas en dire plus , à suivre :))
English : I'm on the creation of a show or for the first time I'm not playing on stage I'm only a director. But I don't want to say more, to be continued :))
Images
12/12/22, 21 h30 Transfiguration performance Athènes @sychronotheatro_official, photo @solvesundsbostudio
Stage performance
The mingled universes of Wim Vandekeybus, Olivier de Sagazan & Charo Calvo. 28 and 29 January MARCHE TEATRO Ancona. Italy Hands do not touch our precious Me. @ultimavezofficial
Beach side performance
In Praise of Folly , 10th march, Theater Saint Nazaire France. Musique La Follia Jordi Savall.
Theater performance visual
La Messe de l’Âne, le 17 mars @theatrechatillonclamart , Paris @cdnrouen. Photo @deskedge
Hybrid performance
Performance Hybridation with @stephaniesaint 21 th April @ildialma_sp. Musique vidéo @theunthanksband.
interview JAGRATI MAHAVER
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