With the Naked Eye, Out Loud
The project With the Naked Eye, Out Loud draws on a text published by Alice Roland P.O.L Editions in October 2014: With the Naked Eye is a work of fiction that presents itself as a gathering of witness statements. Different strippers recount a facet of their experience in the first person singular and in the place where they did their activity (a sex-show called « With the Naked Eye »).
The reading presented is unusual in that Alice Roland and Gaspard Delanoë read the extracts of this text together. Together, in the same breath, the same rhythm, the same intonation, the same gestures, in unison, literally. So, it’s a melodic work, close to singing but starting out from the spoken word, which is given to be heard. Les texts in the first person singular, signed by women not always sure of being women, or playing at being women, are uttered by two voices with more or less deep tone, introducing a dimension of supplementary doubt in the shifting of the stripper, heroines of With the Naked Eye.
In addition, it’s not about a static reading, at the table, but of bodies as much as voices occupying a space.
The space of the protagonists in With The Naked Eye is that of a sex-show, simultaneously mysterious for novices and familiar to the regulars but always exciting for everyone, it’s a space that implies bodies ; the space of the book is that of the distance, of reflection on a trade and on sexual and professional practices, a space which explains the bodies (or which at least doesn’t stop starting the explanation again, the bodies always undressing), extracts to better observe life.
What occupation of the scenic space can therefore echo those initial prime spaces – that of the sex-show and that of writing? What other space can reading deploy – or constrict – after this dual movement implicating the bodies then their infinite explanation? Le movement is no longer that of implication or explanation but at least that of duplication: two bodies sharing the same reading, copying each other, exercising resemblance.
What new fiction will occur if we increase With the Naked Eye, a fiction on bodies, other bodies on another level – that of performance?
Cover Photo: À l’oeil nu, À voix haute ©Danielle Voirin