APPLIQUE press
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Applique was apparently born following an open proposal by Thierry Spicher (artistic director of Arsenic, 1996-2003) for its 2000 Start-Op festival. Rather than offering a basic concert in such an avant-garde place, Velma grabbed the opportunity to offer a performance of a new type, with the proclaimed intention to blend those irreconcilable audiences: the rock-club freaks and the performing arts elites.
The concept is quite simple, using the regular band line-up and setting it within a frame composed by an abstract and repetitive action performed by two actresses on one side and an empty cinema screen on the other. And indeed does it work, diluting time and projecting the audience into the cumulative abstraction of this over-repeated action - reinforced by the appearing fatigue of the soon to be exhausted performers - thus forcing the spectactor to make up his own plot with so few given elements. This thin narrative thread is eventually nourished by the apparition of a super-8 film, which reveals the "before" and the "after" of this sampled and looped unique action, and subtly shifts the center of attention of the performance, from the fundamental music to what first appeared to be a boring and uninteresting action.
Vladislav Bauer, MISCELLANEOUS WORKS, 2000