Catalogue > List by artist

About 100 years ago, El Lissitzky (1890-1941) crafted the first avant-garde children's book, "About Two Squares." Two years prior, he vividly illustrated the Jewish Passover tale, "Chad Gadya" or "One Little Goat." This cumulative song was designed in such a way that each subsequent verse incorporated a fresh element that abolishes the one from the previous verse. This unique creation also marked Lissitzky’s final foray into Jewish illustrations before his evolution into a pivotal figure in the Soviet avant-garde movement. Fast forward to the present, the six-screen installation, Living Spaces and Imaginary Museums, blends Lissitzky’s folklore and avant-garde ideas, staged within domestic and institutional settings. A museum attendant irons red and black towels inside a Baroque museum while uttering the punk song "Red Over White" (1984) by Siouxsie and the Banshees, as a tongue-in-cheek reference to Lissitzky’s most known political poster- “Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge” (1919). Meanwhile, another character sings the Italian version of "Chad Gadya" in a moving van. On another screen he engages in a conversation with a third character, a potential lover who answers his questions about Lissitzky’s “About Two Squares”. These illusive and allusive scenes morph into a sonorous and visual canon interval that transfigures everything — folklore and the avant-garde, private and public spheres, the past and present — transforming them all into a fairytale.

Assaf Gruber (b. Jerusalem, 1980) is a sculptor and filmmaker living and working in Berlin. The dynamic relationship between individuals and institutions is at the center of his practice, which aims to explore both how the political orientation of legacy establishments impact the lives of individuals and how these organizations choose to represent and communicate facts and their attendant artifacts. The absurd biographies of the protagonists in his projects simultaneously reveal and obscure the reasons and motives that lead people to obey or rebel against their inner world or the society in which they live. His photography, sculpture, and installations place the materiality of objects in relation to narrative dimensions, which in turn create fictional spaces where movement and non-movement function as a medium. Gruber’s solo exhibitions include the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2018) and the Muzeum Sztuki, ?ód? (2015). His films have been featured in festivals including the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2023) and FID Marseille (2022). He studied at Cooper Union in New York and is a graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and of the Higher Institute of Fine Arts (HISK) in Ghent. Gruber was one of the fellows of the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme 2022/23 (gkfd).

Museum depots are places where things are kept out of sight, but also protected from all-too-schematic historical judgments. In his new film, Assaf Gruber continues his ongoing investigation of the backstage areas of art institutions to engage with Neue Galerie Graz’s holdings. In the cage-like space of the repository, we see a naked musician working intensely on a composition. He is inspired by artists who belong to a gray area between modernist aspirations and enthusiasm for Nazism, and whose works combine a taste for the exotic with local patriotism, religious fervor, and eroticism. Our mysterious protagonist tentatively plays a familiar melody. It's a song known to many of us, recognisable from dance floors across Europe - but how many of us have ever bothered to listen to its remarkably rascist and imperialistic lyrics?

Assaf Gruber (b. Jerusalem, 1980) is a sculptor and filmmaker living and working in Berlin. The dynamic relationship between individuals and institutions is at the center of his practice, which aims to explore both how the political orientation of legacy establishments impact the lives of individuals and how these organizations choose to represent and communicate facts and their attendant artifacts. Gruber’s solo exhibitions include the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2018) and the Muzeum Sztuki, ?ód? (2015). His films have been featured in festivals including the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2023) and FID Marseille (2022). He studied at Cooper Union in New York and is a graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and of the Higher Institute of Fine Arts (HISK) in Ghent. Gruber is currently one of the fellows of the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme 2022/23 (gkfd).

Animals from Eastern Europe for the Italian food/meat industry used to be transported to the towns along the state border in Northeast Italy. From those conveyor-belt spaces of death, only one animal managed to come in and out alive.

Igor Grubic (1969) has been active as a multimedia artist since the early 1990s. His work includes site-specific interventions in public spaces, photography, and film. He represented Croatia at the 58th Venice Biennale. His critical, socio-politically committed practice is characterized by long-term engagement, his work focusing on past and present political situations, from an in-depth exploration of the fate of historical monuments and the demise of industry, to the examination of the predicament of minority communities. Though grounded in documentarist tradition, his work in photography and film is characterized by an affective and empathetic approach that is deeply humane and often poetic. His work has been exhibited internationally, receiving several awards.

Le marquis de Sade et ses écrits (sélectionnés parmi les diatribes philosophiques imprégnant sa correspondance et ses romans), associés aux dialogues critiques d'écrivains et d'académiciens influencés par son oeuvre : tout ceci est l'origine du parfum enivrant pénétrant les pensées et teintant les actes de trois membres d'une famille aristocratique. Leur résidence secondaire est une élégante demeure provençale au milieu de champs de lavande et d'oliviers, au-dessous de la forteresse étincelante du château du marquis au sommet de la colline. Errant dans les ruines des fortifications, autrefois châteaux, chacun des personnages joue une des facettes de la philosophie du marquis de Sade : ils s'adonnent à tous les plaisirs grisants de la chair et de l'abondance, avant de s'effacer (tôt ou tard, selon les lois de la Nature) devant leur inévitable destin. Le film est à voir et à comprendre selon deux niveaux : premièrement sous un angle narratif, dans lequel chaque personnage agit et réagit en fonction des autres et de son environnement, et deuxièmement, en tant qu'analyse des différents rôles au sein de la famille (en particulier la relation de la réalisatrice/fille avec sa famille). Dans les deux cas, le marquis de Sade et son écriture deviennent le terrain et le langage par lesquels toute communication est possible, faisant disparaitre toutes les barrières pesonnelles et sociales de la condition humaine et du secret.

Sabine Gruffat, artiste visuelle, vit actuellement entre Détroit et Paris. Elle a appris à faire des films à l'Ecole de Design de Rhode Island et à la School of the Art Institute de Chicago. Ses films et vidéos ont été projetés dans des galeries et des salles d'art et d'essai dont : AS220 à Providence (Rhode Island), PDX Film Festival à Portland (Oregon), Discount Cinema et The Ice Factory à Chicago (Illinois), et plus récemment Hull screen (Royaume Uni), The Gene Siskel Film Center, The Gramercy Theater, et Anthology Film Archives à New York. Ses photographies et installations vidéos ont été exposées à la galerie Zolla Lieberman à Chicago, Art in General à New York, Rochester Art Center et le centre culturel Telemar au Brésil Quand elle n'enseigne pas à Détroit, elle part en voyage, redécouvre les évènements et monuments historiques, et se déguise.

Katharina Gruzei combines a sociopolitical issue and a precise formal concept, which is rare in experimental film. Inspired by the Lumière brothers? first film, La sortie de l?usine Lumière à Lyon, which shows a large number of workers leaving their factory?s gate, Gruzei begins in the interior, in a passageway (made to seem incredibly long by the editing) that emerges from the darkness. More and more of them walk down the dark, flickering hallway. By these scenes the weirdness of the space and the menacing quality of a mass of people who could form a resistance movement becomes increasingly evident. All relevant questions concerning the on-the-job reality experienced by these workers, most of whom are women, can be formulated by means of association: Is it nighttime when they leave the factory? What kind of work do they have to do? What do female laborers earn these days? How long does it take them to get home from this monstrous factory, and when will it be moved to a low-wage country?

born 1983 Studies of Experimental Art and Cultural Studies at the University of the Arts in Linz, Austria. Studies abroad at the Art Department of the Universtiy of California Santa Barbara and at the University of Fine Arts Berlin for Visual Cultural Studies in the class of Katharina Sieverding. Katharina Gruzei works with photography, film, video, installations, media-performances, sound and objects. Working conceptually, she experiments between these disciplines and arrives at an unique crossover language.

Un psycho-physicien met au point une expérience paranormale avec un train électrique, tandis que son fils s`adonne à sa passion pour le football. Puis, soudain, après des milliers d`essais, alors que le scientifique est absent, son installation produit un effet significatif, indiqué par une simple ampoule. Du pur hasard ?

The filmmaker and artist Romeo Grünfelder (* 1968) MA in Music, Philosophy, Media and Visual Communication. He was a fellow of Villa Aurora in Pacific Palisades and in 2008 he received a art grant from the city of Hamburg. He teaches drama and philosophy at the College of Fine Arts in Hamburg. He lives and works in Hamburg. 
Grünfelder?s work was shown in exhibition context and at international film and media festivals. His awarded shortfilms are experimental documentaries in the broadest sense, oscillating between documentary and fine art. His main focus is on paranormal topics. Grünfelder?s work is represented by the Short Film Agency Hamburg, the Berlin gallery Kunstagenten as well as by the gallery Ruzicska-Weiss, Dusseldorf.

"Lots" est une vidéo en 24 scènes. L'artiste développe son alter ego à travers une série d'esquisses reliées les unes aux autres, qui sont montrées tour à tour pour former la base d'une exposition. Les vidéos sont comme de petites capsules, traitant de sujets tels que les relations familiales, l'identité, la mythologie du soi, la maladie, la mort et la nature de l'effort créatif. Ses grandes réflexions sur la vie sont traversées d'anecdotes comiques et personnelles.

Milutin Gubash est né à Novi Sad, en Yougoslavie. Il vit à Montréal, au Québec, depuis 2006. Il a monté de nombreuses expositions au Canada, aux Etats-Unis et en Europe. Il utilise la photographie, la vidéo et la représentation, en faisant souvent participer des membres de sa famille ou des amis. Le fait d'être loin de sa propre culture l'oblige à questionner et à réinventer sa propre cosmologie. Les anecdotes autobiographiques, les potins et les insinuations forment le matériau réel et fantasmé qu'il utilise pour représenter les caprices de la vie d'artiste.

Language Lesson (2016) intercuts two tracking shots -- a shaky handheld approach to the Yugoslav dictator’s mausoleum, with a smooth following shot of my Yugoslav mother walking through her Canadian apartment corridor, and entering the small living quarters in which she will almost certainly pass the remainder of her days. If she’s not exactly an exile, she’s certainly cut off from her past, her friends, the sites where she grew up and feels most familiar, or so we may imagine just upon hearing her accent, which comes in the form of voiceover, where she gives us a little lesson in speaking Serbian. She says things like, “This is here, this is mine, this is shit, I don’t like this…”, alternating in English, then Serbian (subtitled in French). The thoughts expressed range from neutral, to (perhaps) happy, to disappointed or displeased. As she walks, her thoughts seem to change. Similarly, a change happens on the approach to the mausoleum, which at first appears lavish, in sparkling marble. We don’t know at first where we are, other than in a cemetery, the burial site of someone very esteemed, wealthy, important. After short bursts of the approach, we eventually see the name of Tito, which perhaps causes us to reflect on opulence in a land where there was seldom plenty. The camera drops quickly to the ground, where we apprehend a struggle between a colony of ants, which crawl in and out of the cracks in the marble base of the crypt, each fighting for the corpse of a fly. Notions of sacrifice and fellowship in the common pursuit of attaining a progressive, egalitarian social order, rapidly give way to an each-for-their-own, eat-or-be-eaten state of affairs.

Milutin Gubash est né à Novi Sad (Serbie) et vit à Montréal (Canada) depuis 2005. Il a présenté des expositions au Québec, au Canada, aux États-Unis et en Europe y compris au Musée d’art contemporain (2007) et une rétrospective coproduites par six institutions au travers le Canada (Rodman Hall Art Centre 2011, Carleton University Art Gallery 2012, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery 2012, Southern Alberta Art Gallery 2012, Musée d’art de Joliette 2012 et Fonderie Darling 2013). Sa pratique englobe la photographie, la vidéo et la performance et inclut souvent la participation de sa famille et amis qui incarnent une version d’eux-mêmes dans des feuilletons maison, des réinterprétations historiques et de pièces de théâtre improvisées. Par des moyens simples et des gestes souvent absurdes, Gubash questionne nos suppositions au sujet des récits de nos propres identités, histoires et environnements.

In Vesna At the Monument (2016), a humble middle aged woman appears on the site of a dilapidated, in-the-middle-of-nowhere monument, erected likely in the time when she was youthful and at her most optimistic. The monument was commissioned in order to commemorate the heroic actions of common citizens in their struggle against fascism, and desire to promote and participate in a progressive, utopic state. She shuffles past the monument, and sits to smoke a cigarette. Off screen, a voice is heard, asking her questions such as what is the meaning of this place, this monument, this moment. She does not answer, as though she does not hear the question, even while acknowledging the camera, and the voice itself. It could, one supposes, be the voice of the cameraman or director, a voice in the subject’s own head, perhaps the voice of the monument itself, trying to ascertain the meaning of itself in this day and age. It gets no reply, and eventually (perhaps fed up with the question), she simply leaves, with the interlocutor left in his own uncertainty. The video seems to reject or deny a past, while expressing grave uncertainty to the future.

Milutin Gubash est né à Novi Sad (Serbie) et vit à Montréal (Canada) depuis 2005. Il a présenté des expositions au Québec, au Canada, aux États-Unis et en Europe y compris au Musée d’art contemporain (2007) et une rétrospective coproduites par six institutions au travers le Canada (Rodman Hall Art Centre 2011, Carleton University Art Gallery 2012, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery 2012, Southern Alberta Art Gallery 2012, Musée d’art de Joliette 2012 et Fonderie Darling 2013). Sa pratique englobe la photographie, la vidéo et la performance et inclut souvent la participation de sa famille et amis qui incarnent une version d’eux-mêmes dans des feuilletons maison, des réinterprétations historiques et de pièces de théâtre improvisées. Par des moyens simples et des gestes souvent absurdes, Gubash questionne nos suppositions au sujet des récits de nos propres identités, histoires et environnements.

La vidéo « The Death of Peter Fechter » est un documentaire sur une performance live unique, une reconstitution de l'assassinat de Peter Fechter, un citoyen de la RDA âgé de 18 ans, touché par balle et mortellement blessé lors d?une tentative d'évasion au dessus du mur de Berlin le 17 août 1962. Même si Peter n'a été ni le premier, ni le dernier à mourir dans une telle tentative d?échappement, il s?agit là d?un moment important dans l'histoire du mur. Son histoire a fait la une de la presse mondiale, car, après avoir été la cible de nombreux tirs et frappes, il est retombé dans le no man?s land, où il est resté étendu pendant une heure en appelant à l'aide et en perdant lentement son sang jusqu?à la mort, tandis que la foule de Berlin-Ouest réunie contre le mur tentait de convaincre les gardes de l'aider. Des deux côtés du mur, les gardiens ne se sont pas déplacés pour lui porter secours.

Mark Gubb est né en 1974, il vit et travaille actuellement à Nottingham (Royaume-Uni). Il travaille avec toute une gamme de médias, notamment la sculpture, la vidéo, le son, les installations et la performance. Parmi ses récents projets et ses expositions, citons notamment « Out of Bounds: The 5 Codes Tours » ? une nouvelle commission pour la Cornerhouse de Manchester (Royaume-Uni) dans le cadre du lancement de l?Olympiade culturelle ?, « Here Today », « Gone Tomorrow », « The City Gallery », « Leicester » et « The Death of Peter Fechter » ? pour l?Institute of Contemporary Arts de Londres (Royaume-Uni). Il a été invité dans de nombreuses résidences artistiques, notamment par la Cove Park Production Residency de Cove Park (Écosse) en 2008, l?Arts Council England International Fellow, le Bunkier Sztuki de Cracovie (Pologne) en 2005, le Wheatley Fellowship du BIAD de Birmingham (Royaume-Uni) en 2004, et le Romantic Detachment du PS1 Contemporary Art Center du MoMA de New York (USA) en 2004.

The Guajira is a borderland peninsula between Colombia and Venezuela of resolute natives as well as disinherited adventurers. Some there take advantage of the peripheral territory to smuggle through isolated ports and over rugged landscape. They write their rebellious proclamation in the sands of crisscrossing desert paths and their rusted motors accompany their solitary voices with an unorthodox music, animating their indiscipline and adhesion to pure movement.

Chris Gude (1985, New York) studied geography and anthropology at Middlebury College. His first film, MAMBO COOL (2013), exhibited at FIDMarseille, Viennale, Punto de Vista, Mar del Plata, Cartagena, among others. His second film, MARIANA (2017), also premiered at FIDMarseille and won Best Director at the Ourense International Film Festival.

Portrait expérimental de la ville comme expérience d`elle-même : les images sont trop intenses et parfois le bruit infernal. Indie Lisboa. Festival de Cinema Indépendant de Lisbonne, 2004.

The images of a virgin Argentina, out from a private photographic archive, become present landscape: the river, the forest, the road: everything seems unchanged... except a ruined cotton factory, ghost of the collapse of a model of development imported from Europe, which is now a few teenager`s playground.

Caterina Gueli an italo-argentinean director/editor based in Paris. ?La Fabril? is a work in progress, through which she deepens the research engaged in her precedent two short films : Resistencia (Premio Avanti! Torino Film Festival 2007, Best Soundtrack Genova Film Festival 2008, etc.) and Somewhere (2009). She has participated to the realization of Il Canto dei Nuovi Emigranti (Best Documentary Torino Film Festival 2005) and In Attesa dell`Avvento (Best Short Film - Mostra del Cinema di Venezia 2011 ? Orizzonti) of Felice D`Agostino and Arturo Lavorato.

Man: Sometimes in the night I lose my mind (2011) This work was part of the project ?Between Iloca and Dichato.? It tried to capture, by means of a trip, the marginal and unmediated consequences of the Chilean Tsunami, one year later. It´s a choral story of the experience from interviews with people who witnessed the wave. The video shows ideas, abstractions and derivations of what happened that night, putting the emphasis on the paradoxical perception of the people; between humor and tragedy. A fragmented narrative emerges naturally from the memory pieces of the people.

Rafael Guendelman, was born in Santiago of Chile, in 1987. Bachelor in Visual Arts and degree on Theory of Cinema from Catholic University, Chile. In the same University has been Teacher Assistant in the Video Art and Workshop classes for several years. Rafael works as a visual artist and video maker. He has participated in group exhibits and video screenings in Chile, the USA, France, Israel, Palestinian territories and others. This year he has been living in/between Middle East and Europe, filming in the Palestinian territories and Israel, and participating in the international residency program of ZK/U, The ?Center for arts and Urbanistics? in Berlin.

Landscape: My feet at night, the sea on my feet (2012) This work was born as a late work from the project ?Between Iloca and Dichato? which tried to capture, by means of a trip, the marginal and unmediated consequences of the Chilean Tsunami, one year later. The space reveals the weight of time, where in the year since the Tsunami things haven´t changed radically. Compared with ?Man?, this video focuses on the landscape using steady and long shots as a strategy to capture those ?after? spaces. The silence of the field, contrasted with the government speech; the Sea goes up and down, the man is just a viewer, or another piece from the picture.

Rafael Guendelman, was born in Santiago of Chile, in 1987. Bachelor in Visual Arts and degree on Theory of Cinema from Catholic University, Chile. In the same University has been Teacher Assistant in the Video Art and Workshop classes for several years. Rafael works as a visual artist and video maker. He has participated in group exhibits and video screenings in Chile, the USA, France, Israel, Palestinian territories and others. This year he has been living in/between Middle East and Europe, filming in the Palestinian territories and Israel, and participating in the international residency program of ZK/U, the ?Center for arts and Urbanistics? in Berlin.

PARAÍSO est une évocation poétique d'un pays et de sa mémoire historique, un portrait intime de la vie contemporaine en Colombie. Le grain doux du Super 8 fait vibrer la réalité d'un pays plongé dans une guerre sans fin.

Felipe Guerrero est né en 1975 en Colombie et vit à Buenos Aires. Il a étudié le montage au Centre Expérimental de Cinématographie de Rome et travaille comme monteur en Europe et en Amérique Latine.

Through the means of a still fixed camera and the rhythmic strengtht granted by on-camera editing; Corta is a film centered upon the hypnotic extenuation generated by the body movements of sugar cane cutters. A contemplation of the frenziness and softness of the performatic gestures of hand labour while the surrounding plantations act as an omnipresent backdrop as the canes disappear. Corta is a pure cinematic experience about the natural and everyday ritual of a timeless world.

Felipe Guerrero holds a degree in Film Editing from the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, in Rome, Italy. As an editor he has worked in internationally exhibited and award-winning films. In 2006 he made his directing debut with the documentary Paraíso, which was awarded at FID Marseille. Corta is his second film. He lives in Buenos Aires.

A mission in the middle of the Colombian jungle. Time seems to have stopped. There is something sinister in the air. The ambiance is tense. Hot and humid. A man surrounded by an environment that burns himfrom the inside. Power, poetry, violence. Everything happens in an instant, leaving everyone breathless.

Director and editor Felipe Guerrero was born in Colombia in 1975. His first film Paraíso(2006) received the Mention Spécial for First Films at FIDMarseille. Corta(2012), his second film, premiered in the BrightFuture Section at the Rotterdam FF 2012, and was exhibited in Festivals around the world (FICCICartagena de Indias, BAFICI Buenos Aires, JIFF Jeonju,FIDOCS Santiago de Chile, DISTRITAL México DF, SPLITCroacia, DOKLeipzig, La Habana). As an editor, he worked in films exhibited and awardedinternationally, among them: Los Hongos(2014), La playaDC(2012), El páramo(2011), El vuelco del Cangrejo (2009). In 2011 he founded his own production company Mutokino.

Dans Untitled (Rhetoric that Preaches Revolution), je voulais faire une pièce qui se concentrerait sur la voix d’un groupe d’artistes et qui serait éclairée par les fondements structurels de leurs œuvres. L’accent est mis en partie sur ce qu’ils voudraient dire à la lumière des évènements mondiaux et régionaux. La pièce se base sur des enregistrements de journaux télévisés et des images assemblées des unes de la presse écrite relatant l’actualité, principalement de 1965 à 1968, comme Martin Luther King marchant vers Selma, Malcolm X en train de parler, des membres du Black Panther Party en confrontation avec les médias et la police, le soulèvement du Watts, des manifestants étudiants avec des revendications et des ouvriers en contestation. Lire ces images, d’un point de vue sympathisant, et les transformer en œuvres constituaient mon objectif général.

Adler Guerrier creates visual dialogue between a wunderkammer of materials and techniques. Guerrier improvises between form and function to nimbly subvert space and time in constructions of race, ethnicity, class, and culture. He calls upon the democratizing nature of collage and the authority of formal composition to designate to art history an axis of contemporary identity critique. Often chronicling the hybridity and juxtaposition in his immediate environs, Guerrier practices a contemporary flaneurie in an impending age of post-demography. Adler Guerrier was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and lives and works in Miami, FL, where he received a BFA at the New World School of the Arts. Guerrier recently had a solo exhibition at Perez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL. He has exhibited work at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, Miami, FL; The Bass Museum of Art, Miami, FL; Harn Musem of Art, Gainesville, FL; and The Whitney Biennial 2008. His works can be found in public collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY. His work has appeared in Art Forum, Art in America, The New York Times and ARTNews, among others.

Fragments d'une rencontre avec le musicien américain Loren Connors. Frôler les pulsations du temps, palper la matière, s'attarder sur l'imperceptible fragilité du geste...

Né en 1976 à Saint-Denis, France. Parallèlement à ses recherches sur la texture de l’image, les thèmes développés à travers ses films/photos sont essentiellement liés au Temps, à la mémoire et au fragment.

21 décembre 2015. Les images d’une caméra de surveillance montrent un renard à proximité de la cuve de confinement du réacteur no.2 de la centrale nucléaire de Fukushima..

Né en 1976 à Saint-Denis, France. Parallèlement à ses recherches sur la texture de l’image (qu’elle soit en pellicule, ou numérique) et le son, les thèmes développés à travers ses films sont essentiellement liés au Temps, à la mémoire et au fragment.

Mr. Jocotot, a philosophy and ethics professor, has just collected final exams from his students and, unlike most other days, decides to take a taxi home. As he turns onto Avenida Progreso, a prominent street in Mexico City, he will come up against corruption and his ignorance will teach him a lesson.

Mauricio Guillén was born in México city in 1971. He studied at Parsons School in Paris, The Cooper Union in New York City and The Royal College of Art in London England. He currently lives in Frankfurt Germany where last summer, as part of an exhibition of his work, he presented the film AVENIDA PROGRESO at MMK (Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main).

Alexis Guillier’s film looks at the deadly fire that broke out at the Beirut nightclub "Purgatoire" on the set of the 1969 Lebanese movie "Kolouna Feda'iyoun" ("We are all fedayeen") by Gary Garabedian, a take on Palestinian resistance at the time. Guillier’s project delves into the complexity of the film’s context, the precariousness of Lebanese cinema, and the investigation of the accident. The narrative of the film is built through the stories of the main protagonists: Purgatoire’s owner Sami Ghosn, TV star and Gary Garabedian's good friend Salah Tizani (aka Abu Salim), actor Samir Abu Saeed, the last living actor to have appeared in the film and who was at Purgatoire the night of the accident, actor Samir Chamas, who played in the film and who arrived on the scene just after the accident, Mirvat Kousa, sister of the actress Mona Slim, who was seriously injured in the accident, Hussein Al Sayyed, special effects expert and Christiane Mallouk, sister of the extra Gaby Mallouk who died in the accident. "Purgatoire" is part of the larger project "La réalité éclatée / A many splattered thing, conceived as an investigative history of cinema through set accidents that have caused deaths and severe injuries. The whole project is interested in the tensions between production and representation, material reality and image carried on the screen. In this respect, the exploration of the accident in "Purgatoire" is marked by these questions and inhabited by the revealing power of the accident. The film also testifies to the evolution of Alexis Guillier's image work, which is illustrated here through the increased exploration of visual associations, layered editing and opacity, which are also reflexive tools on the context, the story, and the narrative of the accident, and which nourish a play with certain formal codes of documentary.

Alexis Guillier se consacre à des performances, des films, textes ou installations, qui sont des montages narratifs, nés d’investigations (documentaires et de terrain) dans l’histoire collective et les histoires individuelles. L’entraînant de la falsification à la déformation et la disparition des œuvres, d’un accident de tournage aux vaisseaux fantômes, ou à gravir les contours de la géante Notre-Dame de France, ses formes mêlent des documents très divers, qui coexistent dans l’histoire culturelle mais ne s’y associent que rarement. Ses sujets d’investigation le poussent à observer la circulation des images et des productions culturelles, les échos et les récurrences, la formation des imaginaires, les interactions entre les actions personnelles et les histoires souvent nationales, sous un angle tant esthétique qu’anthropologique. La transmission de ces récits s’interroge elle-même, restant toujours sur une ligne incertaine, entre subjectivité détachée et lyrisme documentaire, et participant de l’indétermination des objets investis. Ses recherches sont faites d’analogies, d’associations d’idées, s’intéressent aussi à la paranoïa comme méthode. Plus récemment, il cherche à mettre en perspective ses projets avec des « affaires », partant du constat que l’accident, la catastrophe et leur violence reviennent avec insistance. Les processus d'enquête et de montage semblent aussi témoigner d’un même rapport au corps, comme s’il s’agissait de recoller ensemble des morceaux découpés dans plusieurs histoires ou sources.