38h47 in the parallel world of DAU.
English translation from the french version published on beauxarts.com by https://www.deepl.com
==> CLIQUEZ ICI <== FRENCH VERSION
Titanic, sulphurous, mystical, total, extraordinary, pornographic, brutal… The DAU experience, which closed its doors on February 17 2019, will have attracted a lot of ink and attracted nearly 40,000 visitors. I immersed myself in this infernal machine, an immersive and personalized film laboratory where shamans, musicians and scientists meet, for 38 hours and 47 minutes. I deliver a hallucinated story, between dream and nightmare. My version of DAU : DAU_XF1_PARIS.
Taxi, plane, cloud, taxi, man. Black 15 seconds.
I am invited by Alexei Blinov to the DAU Institute, place du Châtelet, USSR. He’s a long-time friend of mine. My geek guru. He is responsible for experimental development here. The appointment is set in his office. In the courtyard of the massive, Soviet, exotic building, a Vespa rushes by. I recognize Alexei. He rushes in with, behind him, a pretty, pulpy brunette. She smiled, carried away by the energy of the car. They disappear. Missed! Missed! I’m cold, I’m here to try the Gush Machine, its latest technological creation that allows us to edit the 700 hours of rushes of the film DAU, by Ilya Khrzhanovsky, according to our emotions.
I walk through a heavy door and here I am inside, warm. Check point. A beautiful guard, short, clean and curly hair, asks to see my Visa. He asks me for my mobile phone and puts it in a locker, it’s the Berghain in airport mode. INHERITANCE*.
Behind the FUTURE door, the stairs seem infinite. Behind the guarded BODY door, I discover a large apartment with several rooms in a row. There are visitors on radar on guard. I move forward and cross paths in his kitchen, Christian. Around the table, a guitar player, a singer, a few friends of all ages. On the table, food, butter-sardine spreads, Macedonia, potatoes and white meat in a porcelain dish.
He looks at me and offers me a glass of vodka. He hides his little bottle under the table. “You’re not a capitalist, are you? “Christian is tall, wide, his voice is full of bass. Metal noise falling to the ground! Christian is contracting. A standing man, looking out the open window, hit a cup as he turned around. “That, you see, is capitalist! “he notices, with an amused eye. He’s looking at the troublemaker. A red laser crosses the sky. He says: “It is capitalist to make this kind of sudden movement! Are you stressed? Sit down.” Silence and movement. “What do you think of COMMUNISM? »
I’m not really reacting. I have time for that. I get up and invade the hallway where laundry dries on ropes. On my right, a small room with wooden furniture filled with a family in discussion. A woman in her fifties with slightly mustache on her rocking chair with two men with long beards and dark eyes. It’s the zoo. They don’t pay any attention to me, this is a serious time.
Grabbed by a melancholic song, I follow it and enter the children’s room. On the wall, a banner of two square meters, fluorescent. I find it hard to believe: it’s a child and a young girl holding hands. The first has a huge penis, with its testicles pointing down, and she has a third eye in her belly button. They look mean. The woman who sings surrounded by relatives continues to give voice. Impregnated, I am mellow-slavic. Others like me wander, absorbed by this melancholy that has become manifest. “A child is dead,” I thought to myself. Detail on the wall: a metal monkey toy. Déjà vu feeling! Black 13 seconds.
“Eternal return. Am I Schrödinger’s cat? Is there a button? Who’s making all this? Here, it’s me! “I’m surprised to hear my voice so deep. Still in the hallway, a young shaman, dark skin, black hair and eyes, invites me to read my future. I refuse. In the large living room, a couple plays chess by the window. There are slides scattered on the table on the left. Among a collection of young people in beachwear, I come across the image of a woman sticking her fist into a man’s anus, talking with another man in a field. On the right, a group discusses in Russian. Red laser. There is no one left.
I am alone with a team of researchers in the laboratory. BRAIN. I am alone in a silver plastic viewing booth. Around me, there are fifteen identical ones. HISTORY. I’m with people in a projection room. SCIENCE. The laboratory is huge. Babies in cages fall asleep. Reality. Their bodies tip over naturally. The camera follows the movement and goes up on the scientists in their work and white coats. I wonder what the best moaning could be to illustrate this horror vision. I’m coming out of the projection room. I just got out of the photo booth. I’m getting inside myself. The air is cloudy. There’s no way to tell me anything, it’s infinite. Silent. Films split, merge. The sequences are racing. I’m lost in a logical labyrinth. I feel like I’m in a bottomless perplexity. Black 16 seconds.
Alexei continues to show me images, artifacts, nature, human, animal. Black 15 seconds. A table. Black 14 seconds. A woman’s chest. Black 16 seconds. A stuffed wolf. Black 13 seconds. I open my eyes. Alexei is watching me closely. In his lab, I’m sitting in his white leather medical chair. I put on my head a helmet with wet electrodes. For hours, he just recorded my emotions and the way my desire is formulated. AMBITION. Metadata is loaded. Machine learning is in progress. Fifteen hours later, the Gush Machine is ready. He’s changing my helmet. Pinch my cheek and I don’t feel anything. “This one is God’s helmet,” Alexei says. It’s a kind of bathing cap. “It works! Scout Toujours! “Black. From now on, the editing is automatic, based on my intentions. UTOPIA.
I feel a presence on the left. It’s Alexei. His eyes follow me, robotics. Mirror. A charming woman asks me to relax. She shaves me, cuts my hair, does my hair, does my makeup. I notice that I am in a pink-grey suit and I have a black tie. Red laser. A effeminate man perched on metal stilts tries to jump off a terrace. Black. He plays industrial music in an arena and plays the cat. Black. She whispered to me: “From now on, you have to behave as if you were in 1968. The Internet does not exist, nor does digital technology, no microwaves, no techno. »
Black. One man sodomizes another, leaning on a bunk bed. Black. A woman and a man make love. Black. Alexei advances with an impressive white Star Treck jacket, followed by very serious people. Deep black. Alexei shakes me up. “Don’t set me up ! Don’t fall asleep. Let’s keep going. “Rave on. The image jumps. I get up from my guinea pig chair. ANIMAL. I’m going down the hall. Hear Christian. “That’s capitalist, you see. You’re a capitalist, aren’t you? Sit down, sit down! “Stick me with two, straight up. ADDICTION. It is pure. I toast. The bearded people greet me. A shaman winked at me. In the living room, young people are wondering where the nerve centre of the experience is. They wonder if they are in the right place. They ask me if I get paid to be there. TRAHISON. “I’m just dreaming! This is where it happens! You know quantum theories? “I feel superfluous. Free, safe, I dream clear-headed. I know that I know that I know. I know I’m an outsider, just passing through. I know I’m having an experience.
A door opens, so do my eyes. Finally, Dr. Alexei Blinov welcomes me to his office. PERFORMANCE. I’m invited to dinner. “It took a long time to see you! “Strangely, there are portholes where people sometimes look at us. It is hot. It’s stimulating. There are some traces of propaganda, but nothing alienating. A portable gramophone, a piano, Professor Dau’s ashtray in the shape of a staircase, déjà vu. I talk to him about the student REVOLUTION in France, in Paris, the baby boom, sexual liberation. His assistant is joining us. She was the one on the Vespa. She smiles and lies on the bed. Electrifies us. On the blackboard, Alexei explains to me how a neuron, a network of neurons, works. Perceptron too. A supervised learning algorithm for binary classifiers. He explains to me that it is thanks to this that, in the future, he will be able to make me, by thinking, an empathic and automatic editing: the dream film driven by a helmet.
Alina takes up a vertical position and tells me about this dream that all Russians have… A meat story. “If you still see it edible, that’s a good sign…” I wonder how a people can share the same dream. How to impose the reality of a dream on everyone. There is a knock on the office door. My friend is joining us. She brings wine from 1947 offered by her father. Divine. Striking alcoholic rise. ORGY.
Underground, under REJECTION and LIGHT, we are in darkness. The sound is deafening. It’s a sound of WAR, frenetic, industrial. We are in the heart of the city, the nightmare. I was afraid, lost in space-time, in a black hole. Vision of Alexei dead, lying bleeding in his office. Hopefully, people making music with their brains on the ground, a milky path of candles begins to illuminate us. We take an even more arched passage on the right. My guide is pushing me forward. Straight ahead. I approach and fall in front of the demon. A scary face made of heavy metal. Forged by scruple, time and the machine itself. “The truth! “do I do without an echo. ANXIETY. LIGHT.
In a corner of the wall, a guard growls a litanic song, as if bewitched, almost prostrate. To his right, three armchairs equipped with loudspeakers broadcast the sound of a woman’s moaning indefinitely. He’s completely cracking up. SADISM. After the MORALE, I find the “SEX bar”. The bass is heavy. There are pornographic movies being shown behind the bar. A few girls stuck. On the screen in front of me, a man gets defecated in his mouth. INTIMITY. Horror. I hide my eyes, a man, who until then had been sleeping in a chair to my left, approaches me: “If you really want to see, come with me to a cabin”. PRIVACY. I close my eyes as if to wake up. On my right, a red metal butcher’s slicer with a new blade. Mirror. Black.
On the screen in front of me scrolls a series of keywords: LEGACY. FUTURE. BODY. COMMUNISM. BRAIN. SCIENCE. HISTORY. AMBITION. UTOPIA. ANIMAL. ADDICTION. TRAHISON. PERFORMANCE. REVOLUTION. REJECTION. LIGHT. WAR. FEAR. ANXIETY. MORAL. SEX. PRIVACY. SUCCESS. INTIMITY. Black.
I dance with my arms outside to an acid-techno sound. It’s a celebration in the huge theatre in front of me. I regain consciousness of my body. Black. Theatre, terrace, people, smile, red laser, taxi, plane, clouds, mountain, airport, taxi, city, crows, city, raven, red light, green light, car, car, tree, woman, blackbird, face, taxi, strips, buildings, bus, bench, shop, wind, wind, sun, nose, sidewalk, digicode, finger, door, staircase, toothbrush, hands, pants, bed. A warm body moves by my side. I wake up at home. I’m pinching myself. I got home okay. Next to the bed, on the carpet, the slide of the rural “fist” scene.
- The capitalized words correspond to the wall signes
