"There will be a generalization of the worst", anticipates Ugo Bienvenu

Hugo Bienvenu on January 30, 2020 in Angoulême.

-

• Artists talk about the future.

  Regularly, in its Interview Futur, 

  20 Minutes

  interviews artists to gather their visions of the future.

• For four volumes, the cartoonist Ugo Bienvenu has been traveling to the future.

• For him, it is a way of analyzing the present by taking a step back.

A sex worker robot that travels the universe to satisfy women.

This is the pitch of

BO comme un Dieu, the new comic book by Ugo Bienvenu.

Artificial intelligence, sex robot, intergalactic journey… This futuristic-and pornographic- album, published in early September in the BD Cul collection of Les Requins marteaux editions, takes us into the imagination of the designer, winner of the 2019 ACBD Grand Prix

A great witness to the Turfu Festival, which begins on October 5, it invites us to reflect on the present of humanity by placing ourselves in the world of tomorrow.

How, from "System Preference", did you come to create a futuristic pornographic comic like "BO comme un Dieu"?

The publishing house suggested that I do an erotic comic.

It's a genre that I had never tried and that interested me.

I wondered how to make ass that is not only ass.

What interests me is the philosophical question, the question that men ask themselves about existence.

I got the idea to mix existentialism and sex because I realized that I didn't have a crazy libidinal imagination.

I decided to take the point of view of a robot to analyze the deviations, in a somewhat surgical way.

It is never observed like that, it is always taken as an outpouring.

"We are moving towards less and less human capacity to change his destiny, less and less nature, less and less beauty"

Today, the most advanced sex robots are more aimed at a male audience.

Why did you decide to reverse the roles by taking a sex robot intended for women?

When we draw, when we write, we talk about the world as we see it.

I happen to like women and what I can talk about best is the relationship between men and women.

I preferred that the only male character in the comics was a robot.

And I find that a metal cock is prettier.

Weren't you afraid of being criticized for showing naked women exclusively, for objectifying them?

The object in the story is man.

Sexuality is the moment when you decide to be an object and that is what is beautiful.

It is the moment of surrender.

Usually, in life we ​​are more of a subject.

This is the moment when we can become the object of the other, but it goes both ways.

I say it in the comics: as a man, there are times when I like being the object of the other.

Whether it is "System Preference" which describes the destruction of a part of the collective memory, or "BO like a God" which recounts the adventures of the last sex robot, it is about the annihilation of things of the past linked to the limitations. of technology.

How do you see technology?

Technology is a must and it would be a shame to deny it.

The beginning of technology, we will say that it is the stick, for example.

Etymologically, the word "imbecile" designates one who has no stick to support his failing forces.

We would be fools not to go towards technology, we just have to use it wisely.

If we want to understand what we are generating, we would need as many technicians as philosophers to support it and, clearly, there are many more technicians.

At my humble level, with my little stories, I ask questions in a lively and cathartic way.

What is your idea of ​​the world that awaits us?

Complex things will disappear in favor of simple things.

In my future, there is still nature and the possibility for man to change things.

In reality, I think that as the period evolves, we are moving towards less and less ability of man to change his destiny, less and less nature, less and less beauty and less and less happiness.

The more I look at reality, the more I analyze it, the more I tell myself that these potentials are less and less viable.

I am much more positive in my comics than in life.

“It's pretentious to say that we have the privilege of being the worst.

It goes in the direction of general victimization ”

For you, the future will be a collapsology or a transhumanist atmosphere?

I don't like both.

There will be a form of transhumanism, there will be a form of collapsology, but it will all happen very slowly and in a very boring way.

I have the impression that these two stories are mainly addressed to rich countries.

I lived in Chad during the civil war, in Guatemala, in Mexico… My vision of the world is that the worst is already happening in the world and there will be a generalization of the worst.

Everything already exists and we are going slowly.

I'm trying to make a version that mixes up all the questions we're asking ourselves today, but sometimes taking them backwards.

In

, it is the robot that saves humanity from itself.

Can you react to this quote from Elon Musk: "With artificial intelligence, we invoke the demon".

It's simplistic.

We need artificial intelligence because, in a few billion years, the sun will go out and we will have to leave the solar system.

If we want to survive in the very long term, we have to invent ways to get out.

There are dangers in artificial intelligence, we must study them, anticipate them.

I believe in humans, a little less in humanity.

As an individual, we can have a hindsight, and this retreat is torn from us as soon as we are a whole.

Jean-Pierre Andrevon says: "Science fiction writers interested in dystopias have often been right ... Science fiction writers are whistleblowers".

What do you think ?

That's why I try to write stories where happiness is possible.

In the 1970s, dystopian and science fiction writers predicted the worst, and the worst is happening.

Perhaps it is our generation to predict something viable for our humanity to take place.

I am not talking about Eden, but of a story where Humanity can continue to exist in a livable world.

Science fiction writers see embryos of the future in the real world.

We say to ourselves "If we pull the string further, this will lead to this".

The danger is to simplify.

“Love for me is the alpha and the omega.

This is what allows us to stay in this kind of mud that is life ”

The philosopher Dominique Bourg says: "We have already entered a cultural dynamic where people have begun to understand that the world as they have known it will disappear".

Do you agree ?

We are all witnessing in our life the end of a world, ours.

All of humanity is always born in one era and died in the next.

When we want to be parents, we wonder if we want to give birth to a child today.

I think we were asking ourselves the same question from the time of the caves: do we want to give birth to a child when a tiger is going to eat it?

Likewise when the pyramids were built in Egypt or in the Middle Ages.

It's pretentious to say that we have the privilege of being the worst.

It goes in the direction of general victimization.

Can you react to this image from "BO comme un Dieu"?

Image taken from - U. WELCOME / THE HAMMER SHARKS

It's a thunderbolt.

I tried to create electricity between two beings, with the idea that ultimately, we like what is made of the same wood as us.

In this image, there is something human about seeing each other for the first time and knowing that we are meant to be together.

I built this character by watching my friends who had lots of adventures and who said to themselves: “The meaning of my life is never to go deeper”.

For my part, I experienced the opposite, I met my wife at 19 and I started to know who I was when I met her.

Love for me is the alpha and the omega.

This is what allows us to stay in this kind of muck that is life.

Culture

Brush-paper or graphic tablet, what is a comic book artist's best friend?

Culture

"Science fiction authors are whistleblowers", explains Jean-Pierre Andrevon

• Interview

• What the future?

• Future (s)

• BD

• Culture