Bruno Latour & Frédérique Aït-Touati

A conference-performance by Bruno Latour and Frédérique Aït-Touati with Patrick Laffont de Lojo.

Inside (2016) is the first performance conference of the Earth Trilogyfollowed in 2019 by Moving Earths, then by the third part, Viral. The whole project is a reflection on the need for a profound renewal of our representations of the terrestrial, biotic and abiotic world. Insideexplores visual alternatives to the haunting and deceptive image of the “globe”. The three lecture-performances are the result of a singular process of creation where the philosopher Bruno Latour and the director Frédérique Aït Touati make the stage a place for “stage tests” and philosophical experimentation.

For a long time we thought we were walking on a globe, on the Globe. But in recent years, geochemists have been showing us a completely different planet. They are looking at the “critical zone”, the thin surface film of the Earth where water, soil, subsoil and the living world interact. The critical zone is where life, human activities and resources are concentrated. Can we change the way we see the Earth? Not from a distance, a blue marble lost in the cosmos, but in section. Our way of walking on Earth? No longer on, but with. It is a matter of perception, sensation and modelling. There is nothing like the stage to attempt a thought experiment: to stand not on the Globe, but in this “critical zone” that scientists talk about. To try to understand what it means to “live in it”, we will carry out a series oftests by combining the tools of modelling and simulation -by combining two ways of making ourselves sensitive: through science and through the stage. “Inside” unfolds like a muzzle installation, a guided tour through images of the Earth as a globe. The audience is invited to move literally: to change their view of the Earth’s space, its making, its consistency, its composition, and to test new kinds of representations, more fragile and unstable.