GHOSTBUSTERS

GHOSTBUSTERS is a performance that explores our spectral relationship to memory, time and reality. Conceived with five physical, musical and/or vocal performers, the performance is inspired by the notion of hauntology (imagined by philosopher Jacques Derrida and later developed by music critic Mark Fisher), which describes, among other things, the accumulation of ghostly traces of the past as we move into the future. Stevens aim is to translate, choreographically and musically, the idea of survival and erasure, embodiment and disappearance, delay and anticipation.

To haunt is somehow to survive, and also to return. Hence Stevens desire to work with vocal recordings, sound samples, visual loops and iterations of movement.
Questioning the idea of the ghost. Not in its figurative aspect, but in its metaphorical use. A ghost can be a trace, something perceived, a feeling of unease. Not necessarily visible, but a presence, an atmosphere. A memory that lingers, a mantra that resists.

What do these ghosts say about us? Our spirits? Our beliefs? Our fears? Our rituals?
A hybrid form combining recording sessions, dance mania and vocal mantra, the performance GHOSTBUSTERS is a ghost in itself. It seeks to take shape in the bodies and voices of the performers, in the theatrical space and in the lived or unlived memory of the audience. It seeks hosts in order to express itself.

Our ‘present’ moment is constantly being amused, disturbed, mocked and terrorized by memories, impressions and feelings of past events. Our ‘present’ moment is also being altered, assaulted, preoccupied,distorted and affected by future events or moments. We project the present into the past and hallucinate the future while believing we are looking at the present. We are never where we appear to be.

Immersed in belief systems, we are led to question our own experience of memory, time and reality, outside any social construct. How can we maintain our interiority and subjectivity as a force of transformation when everything pushes us to obey belief systems that normalize our bodies and psyches? Is reality a process of controlled hallucination? What are we led to remember? Isn’t memory a kind of haunting, a ghostly image of a half-remembered experience that persists inside the body and mind?

GHOSTBUSTERS calls for a transformation in the face of a condition up against the wall, on the edge of the abyss, in a borderline situation. Is reversibility a reactionary, conservative approach, or a political statement that gives rise to new possible scenarios, speculative fictions about what the future might be, about the need to be able to imagine and dream a possible future?