Anna & The Jester in Window of Opportunity

2019
3D video, colour, sound, 17 min

Co-produced by Jeu de Paume, Capc Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux and Museo Amparo, Puebla (Mexico).

The first of Julie Béna’s three animated films shown here was commissioned as part of the twelfth edition of the Jeu de Paume’s ‘Satellite’ programme, curated by Laura Herman. It takes the shape of an architectural tale on the concept of transparency that critically explores the systems and architectures regulating and governing (in)visible bodies. The main ‘character’ in this fictional narrative is a huge tubular steel and glass table (called Opportunity). It determines the movements and interactions of ‘the Jester’, the artist’s avatar, who travels through a virtual environment with indistinct outlines. On his journey,he crosses strange-looking creatures inspired by foetuses with congenital malformations and wax models made by the eighteenth-century anatomist Anna Morandi, whose work the artist discovered at Palazzo Poggi in Bologna. The baby-like figures punctuate the Jester’s journey on the table, which successively transforms into a building, a skyline of skyscrapers and a landscape. Each encounter provokes a (mostly one-sided) conversation and its share of questions related to the myth of transparency and its ideological implications in various realms of social life, from architecture to intimacy and politics.In Anna & the Jester in ‘Window of Opportunity’, the human body measures itself up against
the architectural body. Questions of conformity, normativity, accessibility and visibility (transparency and surveillance being intrinsically linked) are addressed through a wide range of theoretical sources (cited in the film’s end credits). Paradoxically, while they enable viewers to work their way through the spatial and temporal layers of the work, they also generate increasing opacity and complexity.

Art direction: Sybil Montet
Sound design: Simon Kounovsky

Anna & The Jester in Window of Opportunity

2019
3D video, colour, sound, 17 min

Co-produced by Jeu de Paume, Capc Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux and Museo Amparo, Puebla (Mexico).

The first of Julie Béna’s three animated films shown here was commissioned as part of the twelfth edition of the Jeu de Paume’s ‘Satellite’ programme, curated by Laura Herman. It takes the shape of an architectural tale on the concept of transparency that critically explores the systems and architectures regulating and governing (in)visible bodies. The main ‘character’ in this fictional narrative is a huge tubular steel and glass table (called Opportunity). It determines the movements and interactions of ‘the Jester’, the artist’s avatar, who travels through a virtual environment with indistinct outlines. On his journey,he crosses strange-looking creatures inspired by foetuses with congenital malformations and wax models made by the eighteenth-century anatomist Anna Morandi, whose work the artist discovered at Palazzo Poggi in Bologna. The baby-like figures punctuate the Jester’s journey on the table, which successively transforms into a building, a skyline of skyscrapers and a landscape. Each encounter provokes a (mostly one-sided) conversation and its share of questions related to the myth of transparency and its ideological implications in various realms of social life, from architecture to intimacy and politics.In Anna & the Jester in ‘Window of Opportunity’, the human body measures itself up against
the architectural body. Questions of conformity, normativity, accessibility and visibility (transparency and surveillance being intrinsically linked) are addressed through a wide range of theoretical sources (cited in the film’s end credits). Paradoxically, while they enable viewers to work their way through the spatial and temporal layers of the work, they also generate increasing opacity and complexity.

Art direction: Sybil Montet
Sound design: Simon Kounovsky