Period 10 / 2023
Antipodes
We now find ourselves accompanied by a digital profile that we cannot visualize. Our internet usage is summed up in data that is specific to us but to which we have no access. This digital profile, which follows and almost precedes us, results from calculations produced by algorithmic models developed from their digital traces, a sort of duplicate of digital behaviorism. ‘Antipodes’ refers to the fact that there is no comparison between the expression of desires expressed on a face and those collected and stimulated on the internet.
To figure this difference, I interviewed eight individuals aged 17 to 87. I asked them whether they consider physical space and digital space to be continuous or not. To visually reflect the difference in the representation of humans between these two spaces, this installation ‘Antipodes’ confronts the evocation of a digital profile and a head in the round created for each of the individuals.
Artwork
Huit têtes, 2023
Raw earth, human size
The head sculpted in the round is a mode of representation that belongs to the history of art, a memory based on physical resemblance. It brings together a multitude of details to achieve a singularity that makes a head resemble only itself, in its asymmetry, its imperfection. The representation of the face in the round invites us to turn around to examine the face and the profiles. It belongs to the space-time of physical space, of the here and now inscribed in the linear timeline.
Huit Profiles Numériques, 2023
Digital print on premium paper, 70 x 40
This series reflects the desire to show the invisible, the “imperceptible,” what is called a digital profile, resulting from the collection of our data that eludes us. To achieve this, I created the staging of ordinary material objects chosen to evoke a moment in the flow of data in an indefinite space without perspective. By photographing this installation from different angles, I was able to assign each interviewee an image based on its more or less dynamic rendering.
Interview
It was through acquaintances that I was able to meet people who were previously unknown to me—like strangers in a public space—whom I got to know through interviews. Ranging in age from 10 to 90, my goal was to observe, over eight decades, the evolution of the relationship between digital and physical spaces.
During an initial phone call, I presented the subject of my research and asked if they would allow me to take their photograph in order to sculpt their heads in clay.
Adam, 17 years old, practices kung fu with my daughter. We decided to meet after school in June 2022; he was then in the middle of revising for his baccalauréat exams.
Since the public garden was across from his high school, we sat on the grass to talk.
Anais, 28 years old, was a student at the Cervantes Institute where I take classes. It was my teacher who connected us. She was starting a new job as a communications officer for a museum in Bordeaux. We met in February 2022 at a café.
While having lunch at a restaurant in Montpellier, I approached Frédéric, 34 years old, after a brief exchange during a conversation about addiction-related issues.
At the time, he was in charge of professional training and was also undergoing training to become a coach in brief therapy. We agreed to do the interview via Skype in March 2022.
Damien, 41 years old, has been living for a few years in the village where I spend my holidays, about an hour from Bordeaux. He used to work as a host on a local radio station and had recently become a baker in our village.
The interview took place at my home in March 2022.
Muriel, 56 years old, is the mother of a friend; she has been a first-grade teacher for 25 years at the same school in my town. She came to my home for the interview after a day of teaching, in April 2022.
Jonathan, 61 years old, is an astronomer at the astrophysics laboratory at the University of Bordeaux. A friend connected me with him. We met in his office on campus in February 2022.
Gérard, 79 years old, is also a student at the Cervantes Institute. He is retired from Nathan Educational Publishing. We agreed to do the interview in April 2022 at the convalescence center where he was staying after knee surgery.
Nicole, 87 years old, is retired; she worked at the Paris City Hall in the tourism department. She divides her week between her apartment in Bordeaux and her house in Cap Ferret. She was introduced to me by friends. We conducted the interview in her apartment in Bordeaux in May 2022.