Exposition
Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz have been working together for more than ten years, making films, and producing installations and sculptures. They describe their research as “queer archaeology”, a way of identifying in history and bringing back to life figures and bodies which have entitled themselves to offer self-descriptions.
40mcube presents the video installation I Want (2015). The film opens with a protagonist wearing tinted glasses. She speaks: “You should feel as comfortable as possible because these art shows can be deadly”. She uses the first person singular, but we swiftly realize that her identity is a multiple one, and that her “I” is, at the very least, that of the New York punk poet Kathy Acker and the whistle-blower Chelsea Manning. Before shifting to her identity as a woman, this latter was a US army soldier who was sent to Iraq, best known for having downloaded and distributed a certain number of secret military reports, which led to his imprisonment. In the words spoken by the protagonist to the camera, there is thus a mixture of snippets of texts and words uttered by K. Acker and C. Manning, which gravitate around several subjects: anti-militarism, sex, identity and subversion. Through the stances and roles she incarnates, what is involved is both transforming society and waging a personal revolution.
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