Political Statement

WARNING. This video is an artistic project that contains images that may be disturbing to some viewers. This video is not made for a young public. Those images are all taken from YouTube. You can easily find it by a simple search without age restrictions. This project was built to create a reflexion about the impact of images and the brutality of reality. Entertainment? News channels? Can everything be showed to viewers? Brutality is now banality. The artist creates a reflexion between reality and fiction. Exposing images of our world, and our reality isn’t exposing ourselves? This artistic project was exposed in a Parisian gallery and now available online.

Director's Note

"Trump just got elected. I spent the night with friends in a burger joint in Paris watching CNN all night drinking coffee. The I had to go to work in the morning. I remember being really tired in a cab in the morning going to my client office and thinking "what the fuck did just happened last night". Few days later this whole nightmare was haunting me. I felt there were a before and after the elections of 2017. In the same time in France we had the first big protesting movement and a lot of police brutality. Everything kind of pilled up and I couldn't take it anymore, I felt so sad and angry. At that time I was working on a fashion film for the art brand Korine I founded with Gaetan Cerillo which later become my producer on many projects.The main theme of this campaign was Fashion as an art asylum. I shot some scene inspired by horror genre. 

I remember being stuck on the editing, I couldn't create anything cause my brain was focus on all the violence raging here in Paris but also in the US after Trump election. And the words. The words spoken were even more violent. I remember feeling constantly attacked by shocking images on social media rather it was the disturbing image of a young child cover with dust in Syria or Trump saying horrible things while smiling, Marine Le Pen here in France talking about how we should not take refugees, people drowning in the ocean running away from their home trying to survive the chaos we were responsible for. And  I started to make links in my head between all those images. And I thought: well maybe we are so used to see those images we don't even care anymore, violence is apart of our everyday life. I found interesting that we could get shocked by a horror movie scene but be indifferent in front of real terror like the war. I started looking for videos on Youtube, I did a lot research to understand what was happening in Syria, about the consequences of Irak and Afghanistan war, but also how political leaders were responsible in this mess.

I found crazy stuff on Youtube, like torture videos, cops killing people, children burry in dust in Syria, stuff I couldn't believe wasn't censored. The thing is if you dig into Youtube you can find anything, including dark stuff no one should ever see. I can tell you I spent almost two month watching and editing those footage, I was so depressed. I started making three different edited video meant to be shown side by side. The three shot are linked each time saying something, or trying to make you thing about how those videos are connected. I also used footage of things that happened in France during the protests., but also when we were passing the law of gay marriage. The golal was to question the impact of those violent images and reflect on what is truly violent, is it war? is it horror movies scene? is it two men having sex?

I opposed there fictional images in the middle of the film: one scene from a horror movie highly graphic, one scene from a gay porn movie and one scene from Call of Duty where you playing a terrorist killing innocent people. I knew those images will be the most shocking from all. And that was my point. Fictional violence is more shocking now that real images of death and chaos. 

During an exhibition event in the art gallery Le Coeur in Paris, I built a structure that could project the three square video on three different wall. The image was huge. You could go in a. small basement room be in the center of the room and you could see those images all around you. This created a true visual experience. 

One of my friend told me that day: "wow that's the way you see the world I understand now, it must be really difficult for you to be that sensitive" and she was right. I had to get all this sadness and violence out of of my heart and I did it with Political Statement."