A tercentennial institution established to stimulate artistic creativity, today cracks are appearing in the notion of royalties due to the repressive apparatus implemented by their beneficiaries and numerous intermediaries who are their de facto beneficiaries. Royalties are also crumbling under the clicks of a hoard of counterfeiters operating from the peace and quiet of their sofa.

'Un Faible Degré d'Originalité' is both a conference and a show.

A conference in that an hour and a quarter is spent retracing the extraordinary history of royalties, from the 15th century to today. Denis Diderot will, in person, explain the context of the Enlightenment; we will hear about the incredible saga of the creative estate of Maurice Ravel and we will learn about the concept of 'competition for resources' through the distribution of Pépito® sweets to the audience.

A show in that there will be jokes and sleights of hand to make the topic digestible, as well as onstage strategies whose simplicity/effectiveness ratio has been painstakingly tested. We will make a model of royalties with cardboard boxes; there will be a little cartoon made for A3 paper and we will sing a song to highlight what is so truly terrible about the film 'Les Parapluies de Cherbourg' (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg).

Source : L'amicale de production

Antoine Defoort was born in Lille. Trained as a plastic artist, he has an unfettered and quirky humour. If this guy from Lille, who began by studying maths and performance arts before turning to fine arts, started to take an interest in the performance of the installation, it is because he can store everything that interests him there: sounds, texts, videos, bodies. A surprising piece of work, bordering on digital art, contemporary art and schoolboy jokes.

“After a chaotic mini university experience, I began studying art via a variety of French institutions and I am now the owner of the prestigious Diplôme National Supérieur d'Expression Plastique (Higher Diploma in Plastic Arts), approved by the French Minister of Culture and Communication, the famous DNSEP diploma, that I obtained in 2004 in my school, called ERSEP in Tourcoing, which, for a laugh, my mates and I called ERPES. During these studies I gradually realized that contemporary art performance was the perfect container for storing all types of miscellaneous contents, and that was just brilliant because miscellany was one of my pet subjects (dada in French), and was, moreover, my references. The purpose of this piece of work is to establish connections. Connections between forms, senses, media, materials. We could say that this is really collections of connections. Or, if you prefer, “collexions”. Failures and approximations are adjusted with care and create a unique line of beauty. Even though I create shows and am invited to dance festivals, I still declare that I am a plastic artist, that I have an approach and I propose a framework that is based on visual art. I have a plan B just in case I fail in my artistic career, but I'm not going to tell you what it is, because if that fails too, then it's lousy. » (Antoine Defoort)

Source: Antoine Defoort 's website