Léa Colombier

In our view, talking about perennial topicality means talking about our perception of time, history, and human interactions. As we considered this project a collective debate, we’d like to hear more about your ideas as well. What is your perception of perennial topicality? And which element of this idea do you think that the artwork that you presented wants to portray?

Perennial topicality is a thing delivered to infinity, from which there is no escape, always identical in its elements and laws, which creates, destroys, renews inexhaustibly, without beginning, without end, and, consequently, without a goal. Love’s Alternation, introduces an imaginary trip from our present to the close future. It is not a space launch, we move in time not to another planet. It presents two dimensions in time, that of memory, of nostalgia, and that of new possibilities for a future. The video shows a post-apocalyptic scenario where the Earth landscape is desolated. There is an unknown figure that allows us to become aware of the disasters of the Anthropocene and Capitalocene. This work offers a poetic and nostalgic experience that resonates with contemporary preoccupations such as loneliness as a social phenomenon, and resilience, survival, in relation to our relationship with nature. How to deal with loneliness on a ravaged land is one of the issues that the video aims to show. The work was conceived during a period of confinement when we were forced to stay in a close environment dealing with new problems, deprivation of experiences that define what it is to be human, such as hanging out, touching others, being touched. Because we are tactile, physical, and social beings, new alternatives have to be found as in my sci-fi work.

We are all the sum of our experiences, which shape our personality and perception. How did your personal history affect the creation of your artworks and in what way did you bring it into your project?

I always had a curiosity for unexplained things, seductive disorders of human behavior, such as paraphilia, that surprise the mind, the senses, and the sensate. I have great admiration for the science fiction cinema of New Hollywood, where the films offer a poetic vision of our species, in pessimistic, oppressive climates, where the concept and the narrative of the film have an aspect of beauty and philosophy. Hence the big question: what will remain of our human civilization in the distant future? This is what I try to represent in my work, by studying what will be the archaeology of the future.

Due to the centrality of technology as well as the redefinition of our personal space, in these pandemic times the intimacy and the lack of it are now not only lived but conceived differently. How would you describe your perception of intimacy, relationships, and connection today ?

I would say that today there are two parallel worlds, the physical world of the real, and the digital world. It’s a new way of life, it’s a new world that is announced, it generates fiction, with digital, we start from a reality that doesn’t exist, and that leads to confusion. If we think about researchers in the future, it will be difficult to see what part of our civilization will remain, these “techno-fossils” as we might call them. Via virtual reality, where the viewer is guided, follows the evolution of a form of a memory, he can see and see again, and engage with the concept of that something that is constantly renewed, and that he goes through endlessly. I think the most important thing for artists at the moment is that in this digital world, it is important to open a breach with always beauty, sensitivity, and intelligence.

What do you expect from the audience’s experience after viewing your work in this digital environment? How do you think that our endless consumption of digital contents is affecting the production and the fruition of artworks? Do you think the virtual exhibition experience will continue to be a possible tool for presenting your research?

I want them to reflect on the encounters between personal desires and natural forces. The possibilities of communication between worlds and the means by which knowledge is generated, in the absence of evidence or through the impossibility of reaching the object of investigation, giving them a hypothesis of what a new and unknown life form might be. Virtual exhibitions are present, they are now alive, and part of our environment, as one of the great mutations of our contemporary society. A model created for the audience can be experienced in a new way, whether it is visual, sensory, sound, electronic, virtual, and immersive, its diffusion can extend from the live performance to the large digital space. By embracing technology for the exhibitions of the future and especially by hijacking it, our perceptions of space, time, and ourselves influence our relationships in this new and changing world.