Thursday, November 10, 6:00 pm | Nicolas Provost in person!
- Image from LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH (Nicolas Provost, 2009). Courtesy the artist and the Video Data Bank.
With digital prowess and deft editing, Belgian filmmaker Nicolas Provost transforms clichéd Hollywood scenes into something altogether more alluring, mysterious, and occasionally, more grotesque. Long Live the New Flesh (2009) takes this notion to extremes, melting the pixels of canonical horror films (The Shining, The Exorcist, and others) into new forms, effectively creating new kinds of monsters. Gravity (2007) considers the trope of romance fulfilled in a strobe-like succession of seemingly endless Hollywood kissing scenes. Provost based two of his latest works, Stardust and Storyteller (both 2010), in Las Vegas, imbuing banal shots of life on the strip and inside its casinos with a sense of the uncanny. On the whole, Provost’s art attests to the malleability of the cinematic images that remain ingrained in our memory, but also just out of reach. Nicolas Provost, 2007-2010, Belgium, multiple formats, ca. 75 min plus discussion.
Co-presented by the Video Data Bank.
NICOLAS PROVOST (b. 1969, Ronse, Belgium) is a filmmaker and visual artist working in Brussels, Belgium. His work has been broadcast, screened and exhibited worldwide on visual art platforms and film festivals, and has earned a long list of awards and screenings at prestigious festivals including The Sundance Film Festival, Park City, Utah; The San Francisco International, Film Festival, San Francisco, CA; Cinevegas, Henderson, NV; The International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; The Viennale, Vienna, Austria; and The Locarno Film Festival, Locarno, Switzerland. Solo exhibitions include The Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, Strasbourg, France; De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium; C-Space Gallery, Beijing, China; The International Media Art Biennale, Wroclaw, Poland; Solar Galeria de Arte Cinematica, Vila do Conde, Portugal. Provost’s first feature The Invader, a thriller about an anti-heroic immigrant and his struggle for economic and emotional survival in the new world, will premiere at the 2011 Venice Film Festival.
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