"Employing every means of locomotion: ships, planes, horse, camel, elephant, but above all I walked, I went on foot, rucksack on my back from China to India through Tibet. I have contemplated many countries and at the same time examined the mental landscapes, as diverse as the physical landscapes represented by the philosophical, social and religious conceptions of the human spirit. This double exploration has occupied my whole life and will, I hope, continue to occupy it until my last day."
Alexandra David-Neel

‍

MY BODY IS LIKE A MOUNTAIN
The mountain is battered by the hurricane; my body is battered by the whirlwind of external activity. Just as the mountain remains impassive, unshaken in the midst of the storm, my body, "closing the door of the senses", can refrain from reacting with reflex manifestations of activity, while perceptions and sensations assault it like a hurricane.

MY EYES ARE LIKE THE OCEAN
If the ocean drank up all the images imprinted on its surface, having absorbed them all, none could ever again disturb the purity of its clear mirror. By allowing the images reflected by the eyes to sink to the very depths of the mind, until all forms have sunk, their shadows no longer disturbing vision, we can see beyond them.

MY MIND IS LIKE THE SKY
In the empty immensity of the sky, I was told another day, clouds are forming. They come from nowhere and go nowhere. Nowhere is there an abode for clouds. They form in the emptiness of the sky and dissolve there, like thoughts in the mind."

Alexandra David-Neel in "Initiations lamaïstes, des théories des pratiques des hommes", 1930

‍

Alexandra David-Neel decided to become a Buddhist at the age of twenty, when the doors of the Guimet Museum opened. Although she was not the only one to make this choice - many Parisian intellectuals of the time were discovering Buddhism and embracing it - she was the only one to go and study the original texts, spending 14 years surveying the Himalayan solitudes as well as the vast lands of India, Korea, Japan and China. This research led her to be the first Westerner to enter Lhasa, Tibet's capital forbidden to foreigners.

Alexandra David-Neel is a unique, independent character with a strange destiny, modeling herself on no one and identifying herself only with herself. Pioneering, avant-garde, unclassifiable and a great scholar, Alexandra David-Neel is an exceptional woman.

On her return from Tibet, a feat that made her world-famous, Alexandra David-Neel temporarily set down her many travel trunks in Toulon, at the villa "Les Mazots" in Cap Brun. She left Toulon for Digne-les-Bains, where she died after living there for 41 years.

‍

A D-N double helix structure.
A D-N bears witness to transformation.
A D-N is built by deconstructing itself. Doing and undoing. Never finished, always at work, always in motion, experimenting and offering itself.
Inspired by the work and life of Alexandra David-Neel, and based on the skeleton of the DNA molecule.
Working with time and space -weaving is how we are woven-, 2 strands, wrapped around each other, appear.

A D-N activates fire and listening. Phenomena of presence and vibration. On the bare stage, you enter once and stay until the end. A walk backwards, on the edge, that gives the metronomy of time and determines the spiral-shaped space. With A D-N's words like a scansion, a pulsation with vibratory resonance.