Philippe Ducros
Philippe Ducros chose the world's roads as his art school. A traveller-playwright, it was during one of his journeys through the Middle East, Bosnia, China and Africa, notably, that he shaped his viewpoint and writing. Aware of the clichés that this expression can convey, he nevertheless readily defines himself as a “world citizen”, an artist engaged in the depiction of the invisible, of the camouflaged. Returning from three trips to Palestine, he wrote and staged The Poster, a show on the impact of the occupation of both sides of the wall. Nourished by the reality he observed in the field, which his travel logs and photos give an account of, his work distinguishes itself however from the documentary in that it lays claim to a subjective and poetic part. Sworn enemy of what he calls the “tele-romance”, the Western inclination to anchor all fiction in the psychological and the intimate aspects of daily life, Philippe Ducros plans to reopen the focal distance of our lenses, to rethink the world as a whole and in its links. Links that connect, among others, Canada, where he lives, and Africa, where his peregrinations have taken him, through the mining industry that enriches one continent while subjugating another. Philippe Ducros has been artistic director of Hôtel-Môtel productions since 2000, as well as of Espace Libre, a creation and dissemination venue in Montreal, since 2010.
RB, April 2013.