La Quadrature presents a performance exploring the artist’s daily struggles, reacting to the pressures of productivity.

Under the weight of an infinite to-do list and the mechanics of the performance, a series of narrations unfold, ranging from fragmented stories to administrative manifestos, and revealing the pitfalls of the working world. Though eclectic, their objections converge particularly around a demand for the right to time for dreaming, to make a living from one's work, and even to exist fully.

Continuing their work on the link between storytelling and contemporary art, La Quadrature explores an expression that describes the art of storytelling as “cinema of the poor”: an art that produces images, conceived not by the artist but rather by the listener. In a socio-economic context characterized by the alienation caused by systems prioritizing productivity, this reversal is an act of resistance. It is impossible for demonstration, as a praxis of protest, to generate viable alternative systems without the prior emergence of an emancipatory imaginary. Rather than imposing a preconceived iconography for potential utopias, La Quadrature favors a non-hegemonic approach to the collective imagination. Storytelling thus becomes a device for cognitive activation that catalyzes an autonomous production of mental images by listeners, giving them sovereignty over their own dreamscape. 

La Quadrature is a contemporary storytelling research and creation collective that explores today’s social issues. The performance presented at Dazibao marks an important stage in Perpétuelle manifestation, an ongoing project that is being publicly presented for the first time.