Still from The Host and the Cloud, 2010
Courtesy of the American Art Museum and the Marian Goodman Gallery

–

Situated somewhere between reality and fiction, and steeped in the cinematographic world (casting, acting, production, editing), the work of French artist PIERRE HUYGHE leads the viewer to question his own vision of the things surrounding him, and his relation to collective memory.

The Host and The Cloud (2010) is a live experiment that become a two-hour film. PIERRE HUYGHE organized a series of events at the Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires in Paris, which has been closed for three years, so it was quite empty and placed 15 actors in specific conditions. In the beginning they took on the functions of the museum staff. Then HUYGHE got them involved in different situations and performances that comprised fragments of culture and recent history. Additionally he invited an audience of around 50 guest, or witnesses, to watch them. They did it on three different days: Halloween, Valentine’s Day and May Day.

The entire building was filled and many events took place simultaneously. As a guest/witness, you experienced the fragments randomly, according to how you moved around the museum, seeing actors in different situations: a immersive laboratory which explores the idea of representation and presentation and which triggers the question of how an exhibition is imagined and conceived.

Maybe we’re all captives in someone else’s movie. – ROBERTA SMITH