Laure Prouvost: Screening and Conversation

Join us at e-flux Screening Room on Tuesday, September 5 at 7pm for a retrospective screening of selected works by Laure Prouvost. The screening will be followed by a conversation between the artist and writer-curator Kathy Noble.

Language—in its broadest sense—permeates the video, sound, installation, and performance work of Laure Prouvost. Known for her immersive and mixed-media installations that weave in film in humorous and idiosyncratic ways, Prouvost’s work addresses miscommunication and ideas becoming lost in translation. Playing with language as a tool for the imagination, Prouvost is interested in confounding linear narratives and expected associations among words, images, and meaning. She combines existing and imagined personal memories with artistic and literary references to create complex works that muddy the distinction between fiction and reality. At once seductive and jarring, her approach to filmmaking employs layered storytelling, quick edits, montage, and wordplay, and is composed of a rich, tactile assortment of images, sounds, and spoken and written phrases. 

The screening at e-flux will feature a selection of recent and earlier works by the artist spanning the last decade: Finger Point Green (2010, 3 minutes), Swallow (2013, 12 minutes), Into All That Is Here (2015, 9 minutes), Lick in the Past (2016, 8 minutes), OMA JE (You, My, Omma, Mama, Shadow Does, and A Walking Story) (2023, 22 minutes), and Every Sunday, Grandma (2022, 7 minutes).

Films

Finger Point Green (2010, 3 minutes)
In Finger Point Green, the artist bats away a pesky tree branch in the way of her pointing “there, over there” to a nondescript patch of grass that may just stand for the act of pointing itself.

Swallow (2013, 12 minutes)
Inspired by the aesthetic and sensuous pleasures of Italy and referencing the genre of panoramic painting, Swallow shows fragments of footage, from birds to women bathing in waterfalls. Exploring language and translation, Prouvost plays on the historic idea of visiting the Mediterranean for inspiration.

Into All That Is Here (2015, 9 minutes)
Into All That Is Here explores the notion of lust after times of darkness. Within her film, the artist will continue the exploration of themes addressed in Wantee (2013), a story linked to her grandfather. This time, she focuses on digging into the subconscious of this character, deep into his fantasies, as an insect or bird is attracted to the pollen of a flower and when there by the flower indulge its with pleasure. The video depicts a warm and slimy atmosphere and a sensation of relief after long search of darkness, giving the impression to the visitor that they have just penetrated a slimy, sweaty flower, till the image burns and disappear…

Lick in the Past (2016, 8 minutes)
Lick In The Past was filmed around Los Angeles and cast with adolescent Angelinos. The film tracks these characters in playful, wistful conversation in and around their car. They speak of their fantasies of comfort and connection and invoke dreamlike scenarios. Lick In The Past is a partner film to Prouvost’s We Will Go Far (2015) and themes of youth, freedom, and desire are mirrored between the two. Pastoral images of farm animals and French countryside are sound tracked by a seductive French narrative, and contrasted with the urban escapism of L.A. road trips. The film is accompanied by an original hip-hop track composed by L.A. based producer WYNN.

OMA JE (You, My, Omma, Mama, Shadow Does, and A Walking Story) (2023, 22 minutes)
Shot near Marseille in a grotto overlooking the Mediterranean, the first film in the trilogy OMA JE, titled You, My, Omma, Mama, depicts a journey through space and time in search of our grandmothers and connections to our past, towards the history of the future. The world Prouvost invents here might perhaps originate with the 11 cm figurine known as the Venus of Willendorf, as great-grandmother of us all. The artist borrows the story of this stone-age sculpture, reinterpreting and interweaving contextual motifs. Among the many interpretations that fascinate Prouvost is one whereby the figurine, named Venus by her finder, might not be a fertility symbol but rather a representation of a wise grandmother. Scientific testing has established that the figurine travelled a long way to the place where she was found. This is important, as is the discovery of more than 130 similar figures across Europe. The third film in the trilogy, A Walking Story, imagines an expansive genealogy of ancestors: Who might the “130 sisters” be for us today? A sisterly group of women moves across the screen to pass on their stories and those of their ancestors, and to immortalize them. The lines continue, becoming a long list that juxtaposes various personalities in an abstracted way. Together with cross-generational, interdisciplinary intellectual, political, and artistic role models or “grandmothers” like Joan Jonas and Laurie Anderson, the artist invokes informally—by first name—personal relatives of the performers and women from within her own milieu. The second film, Shadow Does, is a shadow game that shows the world through the eyes of a little girl and tells about the objects around her in her daily life, reflecting on how rapidly our habits are changing.

Every Sunday, Grandma (2022, 7 minutes)
Grandma grows a pair of wings and transforms into a human bird. She steps out of the darkness of a tunnel into a desolate misty landscape. She is above clouds, floating into where birds soar above ground as bodies in levitation. The video tickles our senses and emotions towards losing our sense of gravity.

For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.

Accessibility                  
–Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.       
–For elevator access, please RSVP to program@e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.                
–e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the Screening Room and this bathroom.