THE ROBINSON CRUSOEING OF ABRAHAM POINCHEVAL AND LAURENT TIXADOR
THEY PERFORM PHYSICAL FEATS WITH THE THEME: ANYTHING BUT PREPARATION
Sometimes Poincheval (Abraham) and Tixador (Laurent) are a couple (of artists). In other words, from time to time they get together for projects, but otherwise each has their own endeavors.
Eloquent performances include a survival expedition on the Frioul Islands off Marseilles, where they hunkered down with a bar of chocolate and some water, and faced down the dangers of…mass tourism. The castaways made the film «Total Symbiose» from that adventure.
Two years later, they decided to connect, on foot and by compass, Nantes and Metz, in two straight lines. One from Nantes to Caen, and the other from Caen to Metz. When they say straight line, they mean straight line: imagine what that means they are forced to traverse. They made a film and a book based on that expedition, «L’Inconnu des grands horizons» published by Michel Baverey Editeur.
In similar fashion, from the mere name Fiac-a small village in the Tarn and also an acronym for the «Foire internationale d’art contemporain de Paris» (International Fair of Contemporary Art)-our heroes to decide to connect the two, by rowboat. Starting in Saint-Nazaire, our freshwater sailors in captain’s hats overcame obstacles including the city of Montauban which they crossed on foot while pulling their boats, and circumnavigating dams. A feat, without a doubt, that will also lead to a book and a film.
More plans? Of course. Right now they are investigating the feasibility of something even more outlandish: using a well to go underground and then digging horizontally as they move forward, while filling the space behind them, creating a kind of mobile cavern: one meter a day for 20 days, without daylight. They are working out the issues of supports, pumps, and air with an engineer. Without a doubt this would be their most dangerous deed. More to come in 2006.
We are amused by these Don Quixotes who boldly attack windmills wherever they are, or invent new ones. Their actions, surprising and disturbing, are certainly droll, but they are also deeply trying for two out of shape and untrained organisms. Aside from the North Pole where they didn’t want to hold back the team, the two don’t train for their adventures. They make a decision and they get at it. They don’t know how and they do it. They invent or reinvent efforts, techniques, methods, pains and even fears. They operate in their own world, without meddling. And it goes without saying that these two work for minimum wage. Which gets to the heart of what they are doing: Abraham Poincheval and Laurent Tixador aren’t athletes or adventurers, they are artists.
The proof? As I am writing this, they are in Nantes, in Laurent Tixador’s workshop, making a large oil painting of a naval landscape, whose title «The Astrolabe and the Boussole» refers to the two ships of the Comte de La Perouse. Why do this project, so old fashioned and un- «contemporary art»? Well, because the two know nothing about painting! It’s a new challenge. A new adventure. A new masterpiece.
