https://vimeo.com/78189583
Whitewall‘s Creative Director Guillaume Wolf will be screening two short films at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles this Friday from 5:30-8PM. We spoke with Wolf (in the midst of closing our winter issue) about his foray into film.
WHITEWALL: This Friday, you’re presenting two short films at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles: “Prelude” and “The Circle Experiment.” Are you excited?
GUILLAUME WOLF: Yes! Super-excited and grateful. This screening is part of a series of events called Arts ReSTORE LA, a really smart initiative to enliven the neighborhood surrounding the Hammer with the help of LA’s creative community. I’m really grateful that Jennifer Parry Dodge (one of the curators for the event) contacted me to show my work. It’s a dream come true to be part of this experience.
WW: Your new short film “Prelude” is quite provocative. What’s the concept behind it?
GW: I’ve been thinking a lot about identity—how we are constructing this thing we call our “self.” I find it fascinating. I’ve observed that the creation of our identity is a mix of our memories and how we project our persona onto the outside world. It’s a very curious evolutive process. Recently, I’ve been interested in the social media space and how in this field, we are all invited to become “fakers” by carefully selecting positive aspects of our self for the world to see. This mechanism, I find really absurd.
WW: You mean, these ever-happy photos we see all-over Facebook?
GW: Exactly! The digital space is full of these over the top ecstatic moments. So as a social commentary, I decided to push this idea to the extreme, and show portraits of women—in full physical ecstatic mode—and display them publicly, as video projections on houses or buildings. The most intimate/private moments suddenly become public.
WW: The images are quite haunting.
GW: Yes, almost hypnotic. I find that, in the end, they show something very beautiful. An ideal moment, like a precious memory. But of course, in this case, it never happened—the performances are pure acting, everything is fabricated. And there’s something interesting there. To fake a physical or spiritual ecstasy and create a moving image that seems to bring more truth and beauty than reality itself (whatever that is) . . . I find this, fascinating.
The Hammer Museum and ERMIE present a screening of Britt Browne’s short film, Jean de Oro, followed by a performance by the Golden Peacocks, and finally a screening of GuillaumeWolf’s Prelude (Imaginary Memory #1) and The Circle Experiment, followed by a Q&A.
