Talk #87
Chloé Déchery
Chloé Déchery is a performance-maker, writer and academic in theatre studies. She currently works as a Lecturer in Performing Arts at the University of Paris 8 Saint-Denis, in France, after 10 years living and working in the UK.
As an artist, Chloé is interested in developing work that stem from an anthropology of the everyday through a combination of storytelling and fragmented narrative, task-based choreography, documentary film video and found objects; blurring the distinctions between fact and fiction while playfully deconstructing the mechanics of representation. Her performance works can take different forms: black-box solo performances, devised ensemble theatre pieces, in-situ works that can take place in public spaces or art galleries, audio or video works as well as lecture-performances, depending on the context and the collaborative logic at play. Her work tends to mix up autobiographical performance with a more research-led approach, borrowing methodologies from ethnography, eco-criticism, art history or feminist studies. Her most recent performance works include A Duet Without You (2015), On the Horizon (2016–18) and the Trilogie Première (2020-22) including the first two parts which are currently in progress: Bardane et moi (a performance script for a female performer and a wild plant) and Créer sous d'autres noms que le sien, a lecture-performance dedicated to the art of writing under disguise.
As an academic, her research interests include the body in performance; collaboration and co-authorship; autobiographical performance, documentation and archival performance, creative labour in the neo-liberal era as well as ecological performance and the ‘atmospheric turn’ in performance studies. She has a particular interest in Practice (as) Research and actively seeks areas of intersection and cross-pollination between performance practice, self-reflexivity and scholarly enquiry.
