Holland Festival – Sisyphe – Victor Pilon, 4D Art

Performance marathon about grief

With nothing more than a simple shovel in his hands, Canadian artist Victor Pilon moves tons of sand for 12 days, 6 days a week, 6 hours a day. The performance generates its own location-specific soundscape, with songs from the Montreal band Dear Criminals.

This performance marathon is inspired by the famous essay The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus, the French 'philosopher of the absurd'. Camus sees the punishment of Sisyphus, who is sentenced by the gods to push a heavy stone up a steep mountain for eternity, as a metaphor for human existence. In order to continue living, you must accept that existence is absurd. In a physical, emotional and mental tour de force, Pilon invites the viewer to witness his monotonous physical struggle and to reflect together on the essence of existence. Pilon, influenced by important figures in performance art such as Marina Abramović, makes his presence the central subject of the action: enduring fatigue and pain while remaining vulnerable.

Victor Pilon about his performance:

'The tragic death of my partner Sylvain brought me to this project. We all have to mourn the absurdity of life in order to achieve some form of freedom, even happiness. As in the popular expression 'work work work', Sisyphus pushes his boulder day after day to the top of a mountain, from where it always comes back down. This project attempts to understand the eternal restart, to grasp the absurdity of existence, a desire for clarity, a search for the why that resides in all of us.'