A WORLD OF OBJECTS

For Jean Baudrillard, consumption, rather than production, is the main drive in capitalist society and, drawing from Roland Barthes, he argues that the objects always say something about their users. In this respect, A world of objects follows Baudrillard's considerations about functional, exchange, symbolic and sign values of an objects and assembles a selection of videos that put object(s) in the foreground. The program features works like Cinema by Deridder & Vandenberghe, Landbouwsalon by Thys or Situation (1) by Op de Beeck where consumerism stands between absurdity and realism. On the one hand, in works like Chute d'une chaise, where Michel François shows us a chair falling down a staircase, or Tabourets, in which Cattelain undertakes several attempts to build a globelike shape with straight stools, spectators are almost faced to a tautology. On the other hand, Jacques Lennep and Messieurs Delmotte re-contextualize the chosen object in minimal performing actions or Bernard Gigounon and Edith Dekyndt evoke in a poetical way how an ordinary object and phenomenon lead us to think about our contingent world. Finally in L'objet, an archaeologist of the future, namely Jacques-Louis Nyst, discovers that a small blue metallic coffee pot can lead him to a complete dreamy enigma.

Schedule
The program is screened in loop.

Michel François - Chute d'une chaise
1993, 1'43'', colour, sound.
Jacques Lennep - Un fer à repasser à la mer du Nord
2006, 5'55'', colour, French spoken.
Harald Thys - Landbouwsalon
1990, 3'50'', colour, Dutch running text.
Hans Op de Beeck - Situation (1)
2000, 1'31'', colour, silent.
Jacques-Louis Nyst – L'objet
1974, 10'43'', b&w, French spoken, English subtitles.
Jean-Paul Deridder & Peter Vandenberghe – Cinema
1999, 3'53'', b&w, sound.
Gigounon, Bernard – Interlude
2001, 56'', colour, sound.
Edith Dekyndt - Slow Object 04
1998, 6'19'', colour, silent.
Claude Cattelain – Tabourets
2003, 1', colour, sound.
Messieurs Delmotte – Umbrella
2000, 3'06'', colour, sound.

This event is part of Silver Bliss #1: DCA Screenings