More Than Nude
2023. Duration: 25 mins. Text and drawings: Clotilde Salmon. Masks: Camille Fuger, Clotilde Salmon. technical inquirements : 2 microphones, 1 amp.
Who are the 5 most beautiful women in the world ?
To address this important question, a group of sworn conceptual researchers convened at the Public University of Bingo (PUB) in 2022. By calling out on science and technology, specifically by applying the symmetry of the golden ratio to a female face, the PUB group was able to establish a universal standard of feminine beauty and thereby a quality control.
I attempted to pay homage to this improbable discovery by seizing these faces, which I reinterpreted into images, themselves projected onto one of the cultural nudity costumes that I use with the Performative Group Famapoil.
To substantiate my argument, I drew inspiration from what in my personal memory and the collective un- conscious of my generation, (children of the 1980s) is remembered as the emergence of the first salon woman, decorative, interchangeable, and portable. This refers to the «playmate from the Collaro Show,» a French TV show where a woman, as «the playmate,» was often portrayed as a «seductive and humorous character» whom we watched undress with our family on Saturday nights.
In order to create a time loop, I superimposed the slowed down music (J. Shultheiss, 1982) to “faces striptease”. For our first Scottish show, my partner and assistant Yoko de Rochechoir will also be my live translator.
More than nude, text
It’s beautiful a woman who cries
It’s beautiful an angry woman
It’s beautiful a woman who sleeps, abandoned, offered
Is it very, very, very beautiful a woman who cries with anger in her sleep?
Yes.
It’s ugly a woman who smokes
It’s ugly a woman who swears
It’s ugly a woman who drinks
Does a woman who smokes while crying get away with it? Yes
But if she says “you rotten son of a shitbag, I’ll make you eat your coward’s teeth by your ass? While smoking a cigar?
No, the cigar cancels everything, the beauty of feminine anger and the innocence of woman’s tears, the cigar is for bears.
I want a perfect soul
I want a perfect body
It’s good. Perfection is necessary for women, while the rest of the world functions easily with charm.
A naked woman is beautiful. Show yourself naked as soon as the weather permits, whenever you want to make a good impression and charm an audience.
It’s beautiful a submissive woman. Not necessarily. But it’s more pleasant that’s for sure.
A woman with a symmetrical face is beautiful because it is inhabited by the golden ratio and gold is expensive, therefore beautiful, everything that is beautiful is expensive, that’s how it is. A woman with a symmetrical face is beautiful and will tend to look like many other women with symmetrical faces. There are about 3 models of facial symmetry in the Caucasian sub-oceanic world, it’s not many but this approval of beauty allows us to standardize it and thus free up time spent on unnecessary procrastination.
Is this woman beautiful? Yes ? No ? We measure her face and she has the answer. Immediately, she can leave with her head held high, proud of her beauty, perhaps showing herself naked to be friendly and sympathetic in order to celebrate this good news.
If she is not beautiful, she also knows it and has the possibility to adapt her behavior accordingly, standing back, tilting her head slightly as a sign of listening, of availability, eventually, showing herself naked as a demonstration of good will and smile as often as possible.
It’s beautiful a woman who smiles, it shows that she is always in a good mood. In any circumstance. Be careful ! In the event of the death of a loved one or a hostage situation, the smile must be internal and visible in the eyes or cheekbones, for example.
She can show herself naked to nuance her inner smile while relaxing the atmosphere in order to facilitate the fluidity of social relationships.
It’s ugly a woman who blocks a former friend on her phone or social networks, she lets herself be guided by resentment, grudge, fear… these are feelings that unbalance the symmetry of the face, not to mention that of the soul.
A woman filled with self-sacrifice and who forgives in all circumstances is beautiful.
Not everyone has her wisdom or her greatness of soul, she understands this perfectly and does not make a cheese or jam about it, she forgives, smiles and moves on.
It’s ugly a woman who abase herself by making derogatory or sarcastic comments in the aime of blaming, or worse, ridiculise, a former friend or partner, a colleague, a superior or a sworn agent.
It is beautiful a woman who dances, lasciviously, because she communicates with superior beings. Thanks to the rotations of her uterus.
If she’s naked, it’s even better, for all the reasons mentioned above.
She can also smile, while closing her eyes, sleeping, offered, abandoned.
Careful not to hurt herself, many in line but few women elected for this exceptional aesthetic performance. A few extra tears will also be welcome, as well as a furtive clenching of the fists, as a sign of suppressed anger.
Bringing you news from the cosmos
2023. Duration : 30 mn. Text, drawings, art performance : Clotilde Salmon.
We invented ceremonies. A spark, someone set ablaze for real for fake, wordlessly, noiselessly, a collective brush organized the space. We celebrated Purple’s vulva, light, dismemberment. Some and others offered their scattered limbs to the Cosmos, we, the squirrel, Mary and I hummed invocations, calls to coitus, inspiring combinations of penetration with eyes closed. Ceremonies made of wetness, tears, eyelash hair and dreamy cum, that’s what we’d make together in the afternoon. We abjured death and a certain renunciation that we had to keep putting off, at the risk of being buried, perhaps. (#3 extract)
This performance is designed to be renewed, discovered and/or reinvented according to the music associated with it, so it is constructed with different musicians. The erotic, mystical text is carried by toys linked together by the carnal desire that animates them and gives them body. They stand on the border between two worlds, on the edge of the cosmos. Clotilde Salmon embodies the voice of one of these probable ghosts, unrolling the memories of this society of erotic objects. Pared-down drawings of toys, filmed in motion, are projected onto a wall or white screen. The performer, herself wearing a screen garment, is immersed, submerged, by these cartoons into which she melts, traversed by this inner journey that plunges the audience into total art.
Clotilde Salmon 