Encounters of the third kind at the Mimos festival

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In Périgueux I met Henri Devier, an artistic director of the theater company "Melkior" based in Bergerac. He made me think at my old friend Alain Le Bon, another theater director died about 10 years ago : same deep cultural knowledge, same charisma... Alain was the most Italian among French artists and was playing more often in Italy than in France. He was friend with Federico Fellini, and like in the movies of Fellini he was living in a world with no real borders between dreams, hallucinations and reality. Henri is made of the same wood, but his imaginary world was inspired by "Walden, or Life in the Woods", by Henry David Thoreau. He has built his own cabin, where he makes his public performances. The wooden uprights of the cabin are covered with inscriptions a bit similar to the inscriptions on the shop of Ben now in the Beaubourg museum in Paris. The idea of his character of "Wilden", a kind of bigfoot wearing a working suit bought $5, was born during a tour that he did in the USA in 2014-2015 with 3 other artists. I don't know if he went to Concord, but he spoke of it like if he had gone there. In the morning he did an half hour long improvised conference about art. He was a bit short to last half an hour, he completed the conference with various anecdotes, and it was rather good. I was invited to participate to another performance : he was receiving people individually during the evening for 15 mn in his cabin. It was called "Exercises of Thoreaumachie" ("tauromachie" is bullfighting in French). I took it like an opportunity to chat a bit with him. And on the evening he was doing a ritual, followed by a concert, but I did not saw that. It is not all, when he tours with his cabin, he really lives and sleeps in it ! In the same troup there is somebody even more incredible, that Henri met during a tour in Turkey, Servet. Servet is a Kurd plastic artist who studied Fine Arts in Ankara. As he had not enough money, he was sleeping in a carving workshop of his college until he was caught by a professor who threatened to fire him from the college if he was sleeping inside. He asked to put a piece of art on the campus, and built a cabin with no windows, only a door with a key, and a roof like a dog house, that he installed on the campus near the college of Fine Arts, which is not far from the Turkish Ministry of Culture. Painted in black the cabin could look like a place to stock tools. He slept 9 months in his cabin, coming at night and leaving in the early morning to not be caught ! But it is not all : he graduated with a sound and video performance around his cabin, which had quite all the modern comfort : shelves, bookshelves and even electricity ! This was funny and the Turkish media spoke of it. Then the cabin was shown in an art gallery in Ankara. Nobody bought this masterpiece, and he finally gave it to someone wanting to use it as a chickenhouse. Servet was in Périgueux with the troup of Henri. Difficult to believe, but he has built the same cabin than in Ankara to live in during the festival, except that this time it is inside the garden of the old Préfecture of Dordogne ! He opened the door for me and I was authorized to take photos. He is a very simple and kind guy, like many artists. Watching him I could not not have a thought for another man born in Turkey before it was called Turkey, named Diogenes. Fascinating. The troup was in the "in" festival, so they were paid.