UNE VIDEOTHEQUE EPHEMERE

Jeu de Paume

Paris

2014-15

In 2010, the Jeu de Paume presented "Faux Amis”, first in the "Ephemeral Video Library" series, which was devoted to the representation of history in contemporary art, through the prism of memory, identity, and loss. Titled "Inventing the Possible”, this second in the series is oriented towards what happens afterwards, examining the invention of a possible future or a utopian future. "We dreamed of utopia and we woke up screaming,” declared the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño, in his “infrarealist manifesto”.

The selected videos explore, with varying degrees of humour or feeling for tragedy, our perplexity in the face of the failure of the modernist utopias and the attempts at re-evaluation that have been made since the end of the 20th century. This second "Video Library" also invites us to reflect, within this context, on the possibility of finding models of change. Conceived as a mixed, open installation, it enables the public to watch videos freely on individual screens, and also to discover these same works projected on a large screen.