Fest - Stage I & II
Claude Eigan & Alizée Lenox
Special collaboration with Jake Kent

Fest is a serie of interventions which took place in Berlin with Alpina Huus on August 17th 2018 (stage I), and on September 7th 2018 at La Placette in Lausanne, Switzerland (Stage II).

Fest is inspired by the famous painting Ship of Fools by Hieronymus Bosch. Claude Eigan’s interpretation comes from a very personal experience, shared with her partner, poet Alizée Lenox. The project is articulated around a physiological fault: coincidentally, Lenox’s mother and Eigan’s grandmother both suffered at the same period from memory disorders, leaving them in a permanent fog, a wobbly reality that oscillates between flashes of perfect lucidity and complete fictions.

From the spoken stories or notes of the two women, Fest is thought as a wandering, a post-anesthesia moment in which the cold clinical reality of a hospital opposes festive aspirations and lightness.

The image of the funnel, and more specifically the funnel upside down on the head has been widely used by Bosch in many of his paintings to represent mental disorders and became in France a very strong and stereotypical symbol representing ‘the one who lost his mind’.

Fest Stage II All pictures by Julien Gremaud and Claude Eigan

Carmagnole

11.07 am
You’ve been here since Wednesday.
The room is nice, there is a TV and a replica of a famous painting.
You drink a coffee and will go out for a cigarette later.
You don’t know why you are here.

8.19 am
The cigarette had a bitter taste but you’ve met some great people.
You all went to the rooftop and had a party there.
Everything was wonderful, you felt lighter.

5.54 pm
You found your way back to the room.
To celebrate you opened a cup of jelly water and mixed it with a small bag of sugar.
You have 36 bags hidden in your upper drawer.

10 am
Last night you went back to the party.
Everybody was there and offered you many presents,
there was chocolate pouring and fruits hanging everywhere.
It was too much, you felt nauseous.

Something is dripping under your bed.

11.34 pm
You wanted to write something so you could remember later but by the tim you reached your notebook everything vanished again.
You are wearing a red sweater, you have 2 daughters and 36 bags of sugar in your upper drawer.

3.38 am

Up on the roof, people were holding hands dancing the Carmagnole.
Sometimes very daring moves, very outrageous.
You danced with them until dawn.
It was fabulous.

2.16 pm
You woke up with your arms and legs tied to your bed.
For your own safety, they say.
A strange smell is floating in the room.
The windows are locked too.

11.24 am
You only remember the face of your lover the day you met.
But when you see them entering this rat hole you think to yourself: Oh look at this stud, they gracefully aged!

6.47 am
On your floor there are only old bodies.
They wander in the hallway as if they were all looking for someone.
They move so slow you can almost hear their bones cracking.
Sometimes they come to see you and you tell them about the party.
You only talk about the party.

5.09 am
You drink beverages you never had before.
Some were sour and some extremely spicy.
Now you have this song stuck in your head ‘Ah le petit vin blanc, qu’on boit sous les tonnelles’.

But you cannot tell more.
It was so magnificent it would make everyone jealous

7.55 pm
They said it has something to do with a Vitamin B1 deficiency.
A lack of food vs an abundance of alcohol.
You have 36 bags of sugar in your upper drawer.

Text and poem by Alizée Lenox and Claude Eigan.