Caran d’ache, steel, plastic (2017)

The title is a reference to Robert-François Damiens, a man who attempted to assassinate Louis XV in 1757. He was the last person to be drawn and quartered in France. The execution caused a major uproar among the French population for its extreme brutality. Foucault writes about it in ‘Discipline and Punish’. Damiens is supposed to have said “La journée sera rude.” (“Today will be tough.”) as he was led out of his jail cell to be executed.

 

 

Wood, aluminium, leather,3D animation, steel, smoke (2018)

This kinetic installation with a cake-like appearance, adorned by white opium pipes produces smoke clouds in which various images appear. 18th century dungeon beds are attached to the surrounding walls. Violent mirages of dismemberment and hanging executions intermingle with sequences of a more pleasant character such as rotating flowers and pastries.

Polyurethane & glow-in-the-dark-pigment, 55 cm x 15 cm x 14 cm (2017)

“From the time on I recovered my peace of mind and something akin to happiness. Whatever our situation, it is only self-love that can make us constantly unhappy. When it is silent and we listen to the voice of reason, this can console us in the end for all the misfortunes which it was not in our power to avoid. Indeed it makes them disappear, in so far as they have no immediate effect on us, for one can be sure of avoiding their worst buffets by ceasing to take any notice of them. They are as nothing to the person who ignores them. Insults, reprisals, offences, injuries, injustices are all nothing to the man who sees in the hardships he suffers nothing but the hardships themselves and not the intention behind them, and whose place in his own self-esteem does not depend on the good-will of others. However men choose to regard me, they cannot change my essential being, and for all their power and all their secret plots I shall continue, whatever they do, to be what I am in spite of them. It is true that their attitude towards me has an influence on my material situation. The wall they have set up between us robs me of every source of subsistence or assistance in my old age, and my time of need. It makes even money useless t0 me, since money cannot buy the help I need, and there is no intercourse, no mutual aid, no communication between us. Alone in their midst, I have only myself to fall back on, and this is a feeble support at my age and in my situation. These are great misfortunes, but they are no longer so painful to me now that I have learned to endure them patiently. There are not many things that we really need. Forethought and imagination multiply their number, and it is these unceasing cares which make us anxious and unhappy, But I, even if I know that I shall suffer tomorrow, can be content as long as I am not suffering today. I am not affected by the ills I foresee, but only by those I feel, and this reduces them to very little. Solitary, sick, and left aloen in my bed, I could die there of poverty, cold and hunger without anyone caring. But what does it matter if I myself do not care and am no more affected than the rest of them by my fate, whatever it may be? Is it such a small achievement, particularly at my age, to have learned to regard life and death, sickness and health, riches and poverty, fame and slander with equal indifference? All other old men worry about everything, nothing worries me. Whatever may happen, I do not care, and this indifference is not the work of my own wisdom, it is that of my enemies and compensates me for the evils they inflict upon me. In making me insensible to adversity they have done me more good than if they had spared me its blows. If I did not experience it I might still fear it, but now that I have subdued it I have no more cause to fear. In the midst of my afflictions this disposition gives free rein to my natural nonchalance almost as completely as if I were living in the most totalt prosperity. Apart from the brief moments when the objects around me recall my most painful anxieties, all the rest of the time, following the promptings of my natural affections, my heart continues to feed on the emotions for which it was created, and I enjoy them and share them with me, just as if those beings really existed. They exist for me, their creator, and I have no fear that they will betray or abandon me; they will last as long as my misfortunes and will suffice to make me forget them. Everything brings me back to the sweet and happy life for which I was born; I spend three-quarters of my life either busy with instructive and even pleasant objects, to which it is a joy to devote my mind and my senses, or with the children of my imagination, the creatures if my heart’s desire, whose presence satisfies its yearnings, or else alone with myself, contented with myself and already enjoying the happiness which I feel I have deserved.” 

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Reveries of the Solitary Walker
Eighth Walk
Pp. 130-131
(1782)