The Melody of Speech
Nuit Blanche
Saint-Eustache church, Paris
2022
Benjamin Loyauté
To mark the 20th anniversary of the Nuit Blanche event on Saturday 1 October 2022, Rubis Mécénat invited artist Benjamin Loyauté to take to the Saint-Eustache church in Paris for a very special performance. The Melody of Speech unfolds like a contemporary fable, rooted in the UN’s World Charter for Nature, which is celebrating 40 years of existence in 2022.
Defined by the poetry of the ordinary, the work of Benjamin Loyauté depends on the activation of his works, the mutual coupling of sculpture and performance in order to exist. Here, the performance potential is marked by the physical presence of a sculptural circular base, which itself can only be read as such through the implicit presence of the objects that complete it or of an interpreter performer who could stand on it. Rather than thinking of sculpture and performance as diametrically opposed, Loyauté imagines them as “actants” that come together to form a living and dynamic whole that invites experience and engagement. The Melody of Speech relocates our aention and imagines a dubplate, a psalm that is both frank and poetic sometimes delivered at light speed, oen mixed with punk surrealism and invisible street music, chiseled like his sculptures of meditations composed of signs, traces of birds or sacred germinations.
