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Marcelline Delbecq et Benoît Delbecq, Vert Pâle, Auditorium Saint-Pierre des Cuisines, 2008, © Le Printemps de septembre, photo Frédéric Sheiber
Marcelline Delbecq : texts, installation, reading, singing
Benoît Delbecq : piano and prepared piano, electronics, samplers, voice
As a live acoustic and visual duo installation, involving literature, music, live sound manipulation and silent film, Vert Pâle pays tribute to the Russian actress Alla Nazimova. A charismatic icon of the golden age of Hollywood silent movies, she has today sunk into oblivion, as has the colour of her eyes—pale green—which cannot be restored by black-and-white. On a screen set up behind the performers , excerpts from texts follow one another like the subtitles of an invisible film, along with the fascinating image of Nazimova in a short extract from Camille (1921) by Ray C. Smallwood. So it is around a minimal set that Marcelline Delbecq and Benoît Delbecq unfurl a fragmented narrative made up of vocals, notes and sounds whose endless variations echo one another.