AGATHE SIMON
Year 1

27 October 2018
Collective Performance

‘La Générale’, Paris

© Agathe Simon

For a detailed presentation of the project,
please click here.

Year 1 is a collective performance created by Agathe Simon for the international art company The Group (79 members from 25 countries). The artistic team is composed with no prerequisite: the 35 participants are aged 8 to 82, coming from 14 countries (Argentina, Canada, France, Iceland, India, Italy, Ivory Coast, Japan, Luxembourg, Morocco, Norway, Russia, Sri Lanka, and the United States of America).

In preparing Year 1, Agathe Simon has offered each team member to explore their first year of life. This exploration leads each of them to a 4min account, documented by a video, a photograph, an object or a recording. These narratives become the primary matter of a collective experience. Still other accounts about the first year of life, sent from around the world, integrate the sound creations participating, thereby, in the immersive environment of the performance.


Conception, scenography, and sound creations: Agathe Simon

Narrators: Mila, Barbara Becquiot, Martine Bertrand, Giuseppe Gavazza, Saïd Hajjioui, Simon, Jeanne Lelièvre, Nathalie Noé Adam, Irène Omélianenko, Ghislaine Parent.

Guides: Alice Fauquette, Lucile Jaeghers, Françoise, Fabienne Manet, Viviane Monel-Villa, Anne Rannou, Patrice Vandoorselaere, Paul Villa.

Sound Creation Voices: Daria Apakhonchich (Russia), Françoise de Chalonge (France), Denise Cobello (Argentina), Maxim Evstropov (Russia), Eryn Foster (Canada), Margarita Garcia Faure (Argentina), Sigurlin Bjarney Gisladottir (Iceland), Ida C. Helland-Hansen (Norway), Simonetta Montaguti (Italy), David Packer (United States), Armel Tia (Ivory Coast), Sarojini Wijerathna Ekanayake & Deneth Piumakshi Wedaarachchige (Sri Lanka).

Film Team: Agathe Simon (director, composer), H7O7 Films (Hadi Moussally, Olivier Pagny) et Sébastien Lemaire (images & sound), Saïd Hajjioui (editing), Mireille Faure (mixing), Christophe Richard (color calibration).

Photographer: Frédéric Petit.

Agathe Simon is a Paris-based artist, born in 1977. After a decade of art projects throughout the world, she starts a partenrship with the art company The Group in Paris in 2017. She is also conducting artistic creation workshops at the Sorbonne University.

Agathe Simon is currently preparing projects in partnership with ‘Les Voûtes’ (a Parisian alternative art venue), the “C.N.R.S.” (the largest governmental research organisation in France), the Paris Cergy National Graduate School of Arts, the University of Cergy-Pontoise, and the Museum of Non-conformist Art (Saint Petersburg, Russia). These projects will include performances, films, and exhibitions.