Butterfly Stories: Malaise II – 2026 – 400 35mm slides, 5 slide projectors with timers, 5 shutters with motor, 5 entomologic fabrics, photoluminescent stones, UV lights, copper tubes, rope
This multi-screen installation uses analogue slide projection to create layered, fragile images of butterflies hovering in space. The work addresses natural history museum collections, with photochemical practices and expanded cinematic arts to activate haunting memories of the forthcoming. Butterfly Stories: Malaise II engages in a process of unarchiving through the creation of speculative specimens with an imagery aiming to disturb the stability of representation’s visual, temporal and spatial logic. The work challenges conceptual binary oppositions – presence and absence, visibility and invisibility, moving and still, between memory and oblivion, real and fictional, and maybe even between life and death – suggesting instead an expanding continuity that summons the ghosts. The emulsion acts as an alter ego to the concept of memory able to record and store, but also to interpret, decay, erase and lose. It serves as a subjective living matter, a surface to create and distort dominant narratives by hijacking the normative documentary aspect of images. “Malaise” is the word for a tent-like structure made of polyester netting, used to capture insects. In French, it means unease, discomfort, awkwardness.
world premiere: Berlinale Forum Expanded exhibition, with the support of Pro Helvetia and Swissfilms.
photo credits: ©Laurence Favre except exhibition vue @ Silent Green @Leo Hugendubel – 3D visualisation: Fieldwork Architects, Paris – Flyer and poster: Szim