ARTIST PROFILE & PRACTICE

The student research document records that Clément Layes:

was born in France in 1978;
studied contemporary circus in Lyon;
graduated from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Lyon in 2003;
worked as a dancer with artists including Odile Duboc and Boris Charmatz;
moved to Berlin in 2008;
developed his choreographic work through Public in Private and the Flutgraben context.

This information comes from student research and linked public material.

A central transition in his practice is described as:

CIRCUS

→ DANCE

→ CHOREOGRAPHY WITH OBJECTS

→ COLLECTIVE AND INSTITUTIONAL ECOLOGY.

The object remains a point of continuity.

In circus, the object defines bodily possibility.

In Clément’s later work, ordinary objects become partners in philosophical, choreographic and social investigations.

The research document identifies two broad modes of relation:

What does the object do to the body?

What bodily state appears through contact with its weight, material, balance, limitation, texture and resistance?

What definitions have already been inscribed upon the object?

How do names, uses, categories, habits, economic systems and social conventions determine how it can be perceived?

Rebaptizing the object reopens what has been socially closed.

Clément describes his working process as finding a question and addressing it through the work.

The concept is not the finished answer.

It is tested through bodies, objects, repetition, performance, institutional conditions, negotiation and filtering.

“I am obsessed by the idea of cooperation; not collaborating, but cooperating.”

Preserve the distinction:

COOPERATING

does not necessarily mean that everyone authors the same artwork together.

It can mean sharing infrastructure, supporting one another, building conditions, exchanging knowledge and coexisting through different practices.