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Does it tempt you to test the drug of love? This is happening in Tourcoing, in the north of France, in Fresnoy, pole of excellence at the international level. Here, everything is drawn to the future by digital arts and technological innovation. The exhibition "Panorama 21 - The Revenants" offers us an incredibly rich and delightful dive into the world of the new generation of digital arts of the 21st century, not forgetting Africa.
His body is naked, splits and doubles. Thus, she makes us turn her head between her multi-screen images. With her dance-installation, oscillating between choreography, sculpture and digital transformation, the Taiwanese dancer Hai Wen Hsu sows disorder and beauty. " With technology, I can bring about duplication in a very human way, in a more visible way. Here at Fresnoy, the environment inspires me a lot. "
This experience, both intimate and public, is among the fifty or so unpublished works produced by the young artists of the promotion 21 du Fresnoy, the "villa Médicis" of digital arts. Creators from all over the world, selected to learn and produce for two years under the roof of the large hall Fresnoy, in studios, laboratories, workshops, theaters and exhibitions available to them. Nowhere else do the disciplines intersect as much and with such intensity as here: the cinema, the video, the multimedia or the audio-visual are fundamental, but often combined in an unprecedented way with the architecture, the music, the science, the dance…
" The Fresnoy is unique, because we have a culture of reference that is cinema and a very strong tropism that is that of digital arts and technological innovation," says Alain Fleischer, founder and director of Fresnoy and himself an artist. renowned. So, that's important. And also the fact that we are a place of production. We teach by producing. And we produce as a teacher. "
The Fresnoy, nominations from around the world
The miscegenation is part of the genetic heritage of this institution created in 1997 in Tourcoing, a city of 96,000 inhabitants in the Nord department, in the Hauts-de-France. At the time, it was a strong sign of decentralization. Today, the Fresnoy has become the center and shines around the world. For the last promotion, there were nominations from 45 countries.
The installation of Colombian artist Camila Rodriguez Triana resembles a healing ritual for Amerindians dispossessed of their culture and identity. In Resilience , she embroidered the names of her ancestors on books written by the settlers. The golden thread becomes the tool of a symbolic cure. The Belgian Thomas Depas manipulates us by his transcodings. Princess of Parallelograms confronts us with a young woman whose facial expressions are generated by artificial intelligence, a future generative machine of reality. Vitamorphosis , from the Iranian Yosra Mojtahedi, looks like a soft and inert ball. But, be careful, the installation is trying to mislead us. In fact, this robotic sculpture is actively looking for other living beings ...
For Jonathan Paquet, born in Poitiers, it was " obvious " to apply to Fresnoy to experience his vision of a 21st century Matisse utopian: " One of Matisse's major questions was the question of flatness. As his work progresses, he will move from 3D to 2D. And this question of realism, of windows, of spaces in space, concerns us until today in painting, photography, video ... "
[Video] "A word, a gesture, a silence": Alain Fleischer, director of Fresnoy
[Video] "A word, a gesture, a silence": Alain Fleischer, director of Fresnoy
Experiencing the " drugs " of love
Would you like a Please Love Party to test the drug of love? With a glittering installation with three screens, techno music guns and helmets suspended from the ceiling, Pierre Pauze, a 29-year-old French artist, turns us into a guinea pig for his ambitious project and even scared the researchers.
" The memory of water is truly a very taboo subject in scientific communities. I had a lot of trouble accepting this artistic project. The problem was really working on the memory of the water. Working with drugs would not have been a problem. Many scientists have insulted me in this adventure. And the scientists who agreed to work with me had to defend themselves to the CNRS saying that it is an artistic project and that there was no scientific goal behind ... "
According to the artist, biochemists define love as the action of the two molecules oxytocin and phenylethylamine. Pierre Pauze then tried a double experiment "forbidden": first he synthesized in the laboratory a "drug" of love, then extract a homeopathic amount, injected into water. According to some researchers, water has the ability to store molecular information through waves. The culmination of the experiment came when this drug of love will be drunk by twenty guinea pigs on the occasion of a very lively evening and especially filmed according to a very rigorous scientific protocol. An attractive adventure. Between science and science fiction, it takes us to countries as poetic as unknown.
The younger generation tries to " create a New World "
Since the opening of the Fresnoy in 1997, many things have changed, but not the enthusiasm of artists-students, says Pascale Pronnier, always responsible for artistic programming: " At first, there was the social and political dimension which really hit us hard. The artists questioned the question of the form of the documentary much. Today, this political question is still there, but it is more on the ethical level, like an ocean current that comes back, pops up and disappears. I feel that these artists, through their works, are trying to create a New World. "
A world map proudly displayed in the Fresnoy entrance indicates the almost worldwide distribution of the works produced at Fresnoy. With one notable exception: Africa. Alain Fleischer vowed to catch up: " It's true, Africa was absent. This worried us. We wondered whether it was for economic reasons or for reasons of bad information. So, we went to look for students in Africa. We created internships and workshops so that we could spot African artists. "
When African artists enter Fresnoy
Thanks to the entrance contest organized in Benin, visual artist Eliane Aisso managed to join the Fresnoy. It presents Ati okuku de imole (From the invisible to the visible), a moving and sonorised interpretation of the wrought-iron mobile altars of the ancient kingdom of Danhomè, transcending technology and tradition: " In the installation, we see objects that represent the deceased in West Africa. Assens are used to represent the soul of the deceased, in Benin, Togo, Nigeria ... We asked seven people what they think of reincarnation, what they think to correct in another life. They gave us their notion of reincarnation and the recordings were introduced into the assens. "
Born in 1989, Eliane Aisso is exactly the age of the Earth Wizards . And for Jean-Hubert Martin, curator of Panorama 21 and at the time co-curator of the exhibition became legendary of the Magicians of the Earth, the latter has not only greatly opened the doors to non-Western cultures for art contemporary, but also for the digital arts: " Yes, because there is still an important phenomenon to observe, with artists from Africa, South America, Asia ... It can give something of everything in fact, new, compared to our old idea of Western civilization. Eliane Aisso rebuilds today's assertions, with a more universal character instead of representations of ancestors. But she uses what is absolutely inherent in her cultural heritage. And that was the message of the Earth Wizards. "
► Panorama 21 - The ghosts, the annual meeting of the creation at Fresnoy , until December 29, 2019.
► The registration deadline for the 2020 Competition is 22 April 2020 at 14h at www.lefresnoy.net.