The Naked Eye Aloud

The project The Naked Eye Aloud is based on a text published by Alice Roland with Editions P.O.L in October 2014: À l'Œil Nu, a fictional work that presents itself as a collection of testimonies. In it, various strippers recount in the first person a part of their experience in the place where they practiced this activity (a sex-show named "À l'Œil Nu").

The reading presented here is unusual in that Alice Roland and Gaspard Delanoë read extracts from this text together. Together, in other words, with the same breath, the same rhythm, the same intonations, the same gestures, literally in unison. The result is a melodic work, akin to singing, but based on the spoken word. The first-person texts, written by women who aren't always sure they are, or who play at being sure, are spoken by two voices of varying depths of tone, introducing an extra dimension of doubt into the shifting identity of the stripper-heroines ofÀ l'Œil Nu.

What's more, it's not a still reading at the table, but an occupation of space by bodies as much as by voices.
The space of the protagonists inÀ l'Œil Nu is that of a sex show, mysterious for novices, familiar for regulars, but always exciting for all, a space that involves bodies; the space of the book is that of distance, of reflection on a profession and on sexual and professional practices, a space that explains bodies (or at least keeps starting the explanation over again, as bodies always slip away), extracts them to better observe their life.
What use of stage space can we make of these two primary spaces, that of the sex show and that of writing? What other space can the reading unfold - or tighten - after this double movement of involving bodies and then explaining them in an unnatural way? The movement is no longer one of implication or explanation, but at least of duplication: two bodies sharing the same reading, redoubling each other, exercising resemblance.
What new fiction will come about if we increase À l'Œil Nu, a fiction about bodies, other bodies on another plane - those of performance?