Philippe Quesne

Insomniacs

Ready-made pianos & lonely ghosts, 2025

(based on Fantasmagoria, created in 2022)

With Les insomniaques, director and visual artist Philippe Quesne presents an installation based on his play Fantasmagoria, created in 2022.

Dialoguing with the legacy of the ghostly evenings organized by E.G. Robertson at the end of the 18th century, Philippe Quesne staged a strange graveyard of mismatched mechanical pianos, a theater of objects populated by his spirits, spectral ancestors or clairvoyant poets, composed of volatile apparitions and other magic lanterns. Pierre Desprats' musical creation brought this ballet of single machines to life, haunted by multiple sound evocations. Objects and instruments came to life to the rhythm of macabre dances, unstable images and incantatory fumes, equivocal traces of an afterlife. The piece unveiled a melancholy, theatrical metamonde of memory, a fairground ritual to exorcise fate. We heard whispered fragments of Laura Vazquez's poems, Allan Kardec's questions to the spirits and Robertson's recommendations to the audience.

Production: Biennale Son - Valais, Vivarium Studio, Vidy-Lausanne, Centre Pompidou.

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Philippe Quesne

Born in 1970
Based in Paris

Trained in the plastic arts and scenography, Philippe Quesne began his career as a set designer for shows and exhibitions. In 2003, he founded Vivarium Studio, bringing together actors, visual artists, musicians and dancers to invent and stage his own pieces, focusing on visual and poetic dramaturgy and exploring human and non-human ecosystems. His plays and performances tour the world, and he regularly presents installations at biennials and festivals. Artistic Director of Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers from 2014 to 2020, then of La Ménagerie de Verre in Paris, since 2023.