dOCUMENTA (13) presented Pierre Huyghe’s new film The Host and the Cloud on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2011, in Kassel
The Host and the Cloud was a real experiment that occurred in a shut-down museum at the far end of an amusement park. It was witnessed live by an audience and partially filmed on three days - Halloween, Valentine’s Day and May Day between 2009 and 2010.
A group of actors, who appear to be the personnel of the old museum, were subjected - under specific conditions - to influences which they could alter and metabolize. Their roles and behaviors changed as they encountered a collection of live situations, displays and fragmented narratives.
As the ritual unfolded in the live situation, and now unfolds once again in the film, both audiences witness the formation of ideas and the appearance of thought.
In this tale of the present, the subject is no longer the protagonist. The collection of the subject’s imaginary characters, their changing configurations, real or fictional, forms the situation which progressively replaces the subject.
The Host and the Cloud is a tale, a journey in the mind of an absent subject.
The fictional character that appears in the film is the alter ego in the mental landscape of this absent subject... A white rabbit now wanders in the film of his imaginary world…
The Host and the Cloud (2009-10) at the Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires in Paris, as well as two other recent projects by the artist, La Saison des Fêtes in the Palacio de Cristal in Madrid (2010) and A Forest of Lines at the Opera House in Sydney (2008), each present subjects in a particular environment – simultaneously living entities and characters in a fiction. While the conditions within which they co-exist are scripted in narratives, the relationships between these subjects are ‘real’ and not scripted. They are no longer protagonists of a narrative, but characters who ‘exist’ within it.
The Gloria Cinema, where the film will be screened on Valentine’s Day, opened in Kassel in 1955 as part of the post-World War II era of reconstruction and recovery in Germany. With its green velvet seats and 1980s interior design, it seats 342 people and is a silent witness to our stories and images.
Born in Paris in 1962, Pierre Huyghe is a member of the Advisory Committee of dOCUMENTA (13). He lives and works in New York and Paris.
4–6 pm: Screening
6–8 pm: Artist Pierre Huyghe in conversation with dOCUMENTA (13) Artistic Director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev
8–10 pm: Screening
Gloria Cinema
Friedrich-Ebert-Str. 3
34117 Kassel
+49 561 7667950
Please note that certain scenes of the film are inappropriate for minors.
The presentation of The Host and the Cloud by Pierre Huyghe at dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel is an event in cooperation with Forum Expanded / 61. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin.
