EXCLUSIVE: First-look image of Nicolas Blies and Stéphane Hueber-Blies’ immersive work Ceci est mon cœur
- One of the projects selected for the IDFA DocLab Forum, the experience aims to portray “a child’s magical reconciliation with his body”
Cineuropa has gained exclusive access to Ceci est mon cœur, Nicolas Blies and Stéphane Hueber-Blies’ new project, set to be presented in the DocLab Forum of this year’s IDFA, running in Amsterdam from 12-15 November.
In detail, Ceci est mon cœur is an immersive, in situ work exploring the “extraordinary love story of a child’s magical reconciliation with his body”. It promises to be “an intimate story shared in the form of an immersive tale combining haptic-connected garments and interactive video-mapping” as well as a meeting point between “the sensitive animation of Michael Dudok de Wit’s The Red Turtle [+see also:
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This 30-minute “sensory and narrative creation revealing the beauty of human fragility” is designed to accommodate 30 or more people simultaneously, and is aimed at cultural and artistic centres and venues dedicated to immersive art. By enabling visitors to interact with the haptic-connected garments they are equipped with, Ceci est mon cœur will offer a “sensory odyssey in which the audience and the narrator become one in a shared declaration of love”.
“In contrast to similar technological exhibitions, it is an avant-garde work that is whole, dynamic and alive: whether it’s the animated video-mapped tale or the haptic-connected garments adorned with lights that the audience will wear, everything seems to breathe and react to the passage of the audience. Ceci est mon cœur explores large-format immersive art in new ways, offering a visual, haptic and sonic experience never before available to the public,” Nicolas Blies and Stéphane Hueber-Blies told Cineuropa.
“Ever since we were children, we’ve built our bodies on our lack of love for them. Simultaneously inhabited by shame and anguish, we both wished to see them disappear, to see them definitively erased from the gaze of others and from our own. Today, we need to question this difficulty we’ve had in accepting our bodies since childhood, in accepting that these bodies can feel, express themselves, live. Because one day, the body wakes up and remembers. At a certain point, we could no longer ignore these signs. From now on, it’s all about letting our bodies speak for themselves, because they are undoubtedly the bearers of a story. Our stories,” they continue.
Speaking about their visual concept and the intimate subjects they are tackling, the two artists added: “Our approach to this project is to write about ourselves, to reveal ourselves. We want to engage in a kind of introspection through art. We want to present a creative form of self-representation, somewhere between auto-fiction and autobiography, and thereby work towards a kind of artistic assimilation of an image of ourselves that we have hitherto detested.
“To take things a step further, we’ve also chosen to use human matter to nourish our graphic universe, and not just any human matter: our own. We feel the need to become one with our work, and thus to commit ourselves totally to the representation and expression of the life of our bodies. So, to anchor our ‘self-portrait’, we’re going to capture and model our own bodies to establish the visual concept, but also to nourish the sound and musical concept.”
Ceci est mon cœur is being produced by a_BAHN (Luxembourg), Lucid Realities (France) and PHI Studio (Canada). The project has received backing from Film Fund Luxembourg, SODEC, the CNC, Procirep-Angoa, the Grand-Est region and the Mairie de Paris.
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