2018-19

“As Quiet Romantic In Its Dilapidation”

Is a phrase coming from the book of Anatole France “The Gods Will Have Blood”, a novel published in 1912. Anatole France tells the story of Gamelin, a young painter that transforms from an idealistic artist to a ruthless judge during the French Revolution. Gamelin’s ideals led him to the cruel mass murder of his fellow citizens, a madness that cut off the heads even of his nearest and dearest. The book recreates the violence and disaster during the dark years of the Terror and evolves as a pervert love story above the ruins. What triggered me while reading this book is that in my endeavor to understand, I mainly projected my own experiences and images, while during this process the mechanisms of memory played the most important role. With these thoughts as a starting point together with the myriad of subtle ironies of the novel, I tried to re-create the spirit of the story but this time with the use of my own experiences and memories. The work was presented at Hyle[matter] & SPACE52 in 2019.