What has continued to intrigue me in de Cointet’s work is his investigation into language and archeology, the roots of writing, glyphs, and movement. His work reconnects performance to theater, to the stage and television. I think that if he was working today he would make movies and tv shows. Or, he might drop everything as he did at the end with his final play The Bride Groom, and go out in the street with an activist mime group!

My research on Five Sisters is situated in the context of the recent arthistorical re-consideration of performance and theatrical practices, that started when Marina Abramovic re-enacted her own performances. My research is also situated in my own experience with de Cointet’s work of the past 15 years, which includes finding the pieces and props, collecting them, displaying them and playing them. This experience raised questions that have also echoed in the visual arts field in recent years.

The outcome of my research involves a staging of Five Sisters that we consider as a contemporary making of Five Sisters, not a remake or re-enactment. We’re working with a text written in 1982, whose meaning we want to make alive today. Making Five Sisters contemporary means giving it its ‘in-actuality’, as Nietzche put it. It is a process of being ‘in the making’, which is why the research period of the Performance in Residence is important.

Books and documents that are useful for the research:
- Art and Objecthood, Michael Fried, 1967.
- Catalogue Hors Limites l’art et la vie, Mnam Pompidou, 1992, Paris.
- Making Words With Things – Faire des Choses avec des Mots, 2006, Sète.
- Ne pas jouer avec des choses mortes – Not to Play with Dead Things, 2008, Villa Arson, Nice.
- Du dramaturge, Le Grand T, éd joca seria, Nantes, 2008.
- La dramaturgie de Hambourg, Lessing (French reprint waited).