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Screenings

LAURE PROUVOST | LANGUAGE LESSONS

An instal­la­tion of two mov­ing image works by Lau­re Prouvost

What I like about words is that they are so questionable. I struggled as a child with very bad French and English. Each word can have so many meanings depending on where it is. Many times in my films I use the same image in different places and that change of context completely changes what it says. It’s the same with words. They are used constantly, but it’s nice if we can question them a bit.

Laure Prouvost in conversation with Jarrett Earnest, Brooklyn Rail

Language – in its broadest sense – permeates the work of Laure Prouvost. Known for her immersive and mixed-media installations that combine film and installation in humorous and idiosyncratic ways, Prouvost addresses miscommunication and ideas becoming lost in translation.

Prouvost’s selection of works for this presentation – DIT LEARN (2017) and Re-dit-en-un-in-learning (2020) – was influenced by the CAST building’s past life as a school. Both works instruct the viewer to unlearn and relearn language, with emotive words and concepts replaced by anthropomorphised objects, which are then transcribed and translated into progressively more complex lexical and linguistic tests and eventually entire narratives.

Film still, Laure Prouvost, DIT LEARN, 2017. HD video, dimensions variable, 15 minutes 22 seconds © Laure Prouvost; courtesy Lisson Gallery.
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CREDIT