Johann Le Guillerm trained on the tightrope and circus arts at the Centre National des Arts du Cirque (CNAC). He graduated from the school in 1989 with honours. He subsequently toured with Archaos, then took part in the creation of La Volière Dromesko, co-founded the O circus with CNAC alumni and created his own circus, Cirque Ici in 1994. A year later, Où ça (Where's That), his first solo, came into being. In 1996, he was awarded the National Grand Prix of the Circus. In 1999, he started out on an 18-month journey that took him to every continent where he brought his uncertainties face to face with the imbalances of marginalized populations. When he returned in 2001, he laid the first bases of ATTRACTION, a step in his quest to understand the world. A vast project that includes, as of this date: Secret, the show, La Motte (The Lump), circus phenomenon, Monstration, the installation. These artistic objects form points of reference in a universe of an artist who wants to have a 360° view of the world around him.
Johann Le Guillerm presented Secret at the Festival d'Avignon in 2004.
At the heart of the ATTRACTION system, Monstration is the “laboratory” where Johann Le Guillerm has given form for the last seven years to his poetic research based on the point: the attraction point of the circus, the balance point, but also, as the smallest identifiable element, a point common to all of us… In his workshop, the artist became fascinated with spheres, turned around them, minutely noted every viewpoint, then observed the metamorphoses that these spheres underwent when they entered in contact with each other and the combinations offered. Families of object-machines and other strange structures were born after this long gestation, translations of his observations. He called them “work sites” to describe their perpetual evolution. The public is invited to handle some of these machines in which the point is highlighted to penetrate the circus universe and to appropriate its discoveries. Other, more plastic machines are exhibited. La Motte (The Lump), prototype IV, a mineral and vegetal circus phenomenon in perpetual motion, comes directly from the “circumambulations” workshop. This spectacular planet visible to the naked eye sends man back to his own planet earth. Currently a prototype, La Motte (The Lump) should be 12 m high in its final version… We are in an experimental field in which Johann Le Guillerm shares the poetry of his “science of the idiot”, as he calls it, a science that borrows a kind of very personal grammar with a brand-new vocabulary from its totally intuitive cosmogony. Here, Johann Le Guillerm signs a manifesto, the stance of an artist who is not satisfied with any viewpoint that he has not tested beforehand. And in this dream of a 360° view of the world, the entire circus is summoned, this “circular architecture of viewpoints”.
Distribution
Création: Johann Le Guillerm
Création sonore: Mathieu Werchowski, Guy Ajaguin
Création lumière: Hervé Gary
Réalisation vidéos: Stéphane Metge
Régie: Loeiz Le Guillerm
MONSTRATION
Conception technique: Silvain Ohl, Maryse Jaffrain
Fabrication et construction: Silvain Ohl, Maryse Jaffrain, Georges Matichard, Elvis Dagier, Myriam Prijent, Didier Deret, LOUXOR Spectacle, Catherine Teilhet, Franck Bonnot
LA MOTTE
Conception technique et réalisation: Mario Goffe
Etudes: Philippe Gaudin – SUPMECA Paris, LATecis, École Centrale de Nantes, Bernard Chaperon
Constructions: Mario Goffe / Ateliers SUD SIDE / Silvain Ohl, Maryse Jaffrain / DBI
Suivi végétal: Mathieu Jacobs –Vertiligne
Régie: Alexandre Ramdani
collaboration avec le lycée professionnel agricole de la Ricarde – Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, le lycée horticole et agricole François Pétrarque –Avignon
Production
productions: ATTRACTION
producteur: Cirque ici –Johann Le Guillerm
producteurs associés: le Parc de la Villette, Le Channel–Scène
nationale de Calais, Agora–Scène conventionnée de Boulazac, Le Carré magique–scène conventionnée de Lannion, Cirque-Théâtre d'Elbeuf–Centre des arts du cirque de Haute Normandie
Coproductions: Circuits–Scène conventionnée Auch Gers Midi-
Pyrénées, Scène nationale de Sénart, Équinoxe–Scène nationale de Châteauroux, Maison de la Culture de Bourges, Le Granit–Scène nationale de Belfort, Théâtre national de Bordeaux en Aquitaine, Les Subsistances de Lyon, Théâtre national de Toulouse, Excentrique festival de la Région Centre, Théâtre de Grasse–Scène conventionnée pour la danse et le cirque, Le lieu unique–Scène nationale de Nantes
Cirque ici–Johann Le Guillerm est artiste associé du Parc de La Villette et “Parrain” du Cirque-Théâtre d'Elbeuf
avec le soutien: du ministère de la Culture (DMDTS et DRAC Îlede-France), du ministère des Affaires étrangères (CULTURESFRANCE), du Conseil régional d'Île-de-France, de l'association Beaumarchais / Sacd, de la Sacd, du CRITTMECA (Île-de-France), de la Ville de Paris, de CULTURESFRANCE / Ville de Paris et du Groupe des Musiques Vivantes de Lyon
La Fondation BNP Paribas accompagne les projets du Cirque ici –Johann Le Guillerm depuis 1999
Secret créé en décembre 2003 au Channel-Scène nationale de Calais. Monstration créée en juin 2006 aux Subsistances de Lyon, La Motte, prototype IV créée en novembre 2007 au Cirque-Théâtre d'Elbeuf
avec le soutien du Festival d'Avignon