Sandrine Deumier
Could the digital imaginary amplify our humanist unconscious? Sandrine Deumier’s work investigates post-futurist themes created in phantasmagoric tableau-vivants to ignite our human emotions.
MiMi Lamine | Ed. Peter Traynor | 17 November 2021
Sandrine Deumier (they/them) (b. 1978, France) are an author, video artist and performer based in Toulouse, France. With their dual philosophical and artistic training, Deumier’s practice spans text, digital poetry, multimedia installation and audio-visual performance in collaboration with composers.
The performative narrative is a poetic hymn conceived through new technologies. Using material from the written word and transposing that material as a word vector, Deumier blur the lines between video and sound poetry, considering these as sensitive devices to express a new form of unconscious material itself.
Deumier hold a Master’s degree in Philosophy from Toulouse II University and a DNAP (Diplôme National des Arts Plastiques) from National Institute of Fine Arts, Tarbes. Deumier have exhibited and performed internationally.
Current Event
27.08.2021- 9.1.2022: “WELCOME TO PARADISE”, Group exhibition at NRW Forum Düsseldorf
Sandrine Deumier, Realness – Cloud and Dust (2019) © Courtesy of the artist.
What’s next?
On view during October 2021, L’alter-Monde by duo Sandrine Deumier and Myriam Bleau can be experienced in a full-dome projection during the opening of Akousma / connecte 2021 : Montreal Digital Week and FUTURE VISION LAB 2021 (Taipei, Taïwan). This video was supported by Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie ,CALQ and Canada Council for the Arts.
L'Alter-monde from Myriam Bleau on Vimeo.
Sandrine Deumier and Myriam Bleau, excerpt L’alter-Monde (2019) video projection 2 min © Courtesy of the artists
Did you know?
Deumier’s artworks and titles are often calling upon the viewer’s wildest dreams to wander around luscious natural landscapes and settings. However, Deumier select a monochrome colour tone for each project. This willingness to strip any disruptive colour elements represents a search for deeper immersion and a focus on the figures in their surroundings, all enhanced by virtual reality.
Featured Projects
Realness – Intimate Garden (2019)
Sandrine Deumier, Realness – Intimate Garden (2019), 360 video 09:15 min. @ Courtesy of the artist
This installation consists of two parallel scenes presented in two distinct formats: Realness – Cloud and Dust (a spherical video projection) and Realness – Intimate Garden (a 360° video animation, to be experienced with a VR headset). The installation is fully immersive from the outside as a projection, and also from within through the use of a VR headset. Both the projection and the VR experience reinforce the willingness of the artist to make us merge with and into a bio-synthesis of flesh and cable, a prediction of the future of humanity.
Like the simultaneous projection of the work, the video Realness – Intimate Garden presents also some dichotomy and multiple layers of narrative. On one side, the tangled wires, in the dreamy setting, invite us to explore our subconscious and inner desires of bio-sensitivity between an artificial technological nature and our denatured humanity. On the other side, some figures are pre-mutated or mutilated – marking the huge influence of the “technological rhizome” over the other humanoids. To be highlighted, the scene – that uses the acheiropoieta technique (made without hand) – admirably expresses our status of being stuck, holding back from our search for the divine, and for love and acceptance.
The resulting aesthetic is lyrical, blending shapes and forms – neither as human or as non-human, neither as organic or as machine – to create a poetic and intricate real garden that induces intimacy.
Sandrine Deumier, Falling (2019) 360° video animation 09:15 min. © Courtesy of the artist
Falling (2019)
In this 360° animation, Deumier successfully capture our attention to generate emotional states centred on empathy, mindfulness, disembodiment and collapsology, but also hope: the opportunity to reinvent ourselves through animistic thoughts.
The task is to make kin in lines of inventive connection as a practice of learning to live and die well with each other in a thick present. — Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble
At the beginning, the main character kills herself to be reborn a few seconds later. This symbolizes instant renewal. Possibly a radical change into the perspective of the world we live in – even the prospect of being reborn through new technologies like a cyborg. After all, are we not already merging with our electronic devices?
Designed in multiple scenes, several stories develop on themes that currently raise concerns, such as issues around identity, self-esteem, technological consumerism, and the environment. In this utopian/dystopian film, the viewer can observe strange doppelgangers acting simultaneously. Those doubles question the ambivalence of what would be our dream life and the reality of it. Is the protagonist trapped in a falling spiral? Can we empathize with her behaviour? Wait until the end for a surprising reality check.
Also part of Gate22 x thewrong Ambassy
Sandrine Deumier, excerpt DELTA (2020) via Disartive @ Courtesy of the artist
Delta (2020)
This project attempts to anticipate processes of technological witchcraft. By imagining future technological tools centred on phenomena of empathy and interconnectivity between species, it proposes to invent forms of multi-consciousness and strategies for reappropriating animist imaginaries.
An incredible storyteller, Deumier project us into a futuristic world in which optical effects and illusions are abundant. However, we should keep in mind that if everything is connected, everything is vulnerable – including us.
Key achievements
2021 Winners of the Festival Platform Awards (Dome Theater Category) at the Japan Media Arts Festival with the immersive 360° audiovisual project L’alter-Monde in collaboration between Deumier and the composer Myriam Bleau.
Finalist at the V-Art first exhibition Space, and in October 2021 finalist for the IAM The Alternative Formats Festival.
Deumier received multiple awards and joined many distinguished residencies around the world, the most recent are:
2022, AIR Taipei (Taïwan)
2021, Festival Platform Award (Dome Theater Category) Japan Media Arts Festival 2021, Copper Leg Art residency (Tallinn, Estonia)
2021, Casa d’Artistes (Minorca, Spain)
2020, Planétarium de la Cité des sciences et de l’industrie Residency (Paris, France)
Exhibitions
Very active and popular, Deumier participated in numerous prestigious exhibitions, art fairs and festivals around the world. Agora only refers here to the last five for each category.
Solo shows
2020, Realness – Intimate Garden, Synthesis Gallery, Berlin, Germany
Group shows
2021, The Sublime 3.0: Fear and Awe, Agora Digital Art x thewrong biennale nr5, London, UK
2021, CADAF Crypto and Digital Art Fair
2020, Meta.Morf X – Digital Wild, Trondheim Electronic Arts Centre (Norway)
2020, Online Contemporary Art Exhibition, Ecology and new functionality, Paris Peace Forum
2019, Sur la page, abandonnés, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France
Museum Shows / Festivals
2021, Festival Platform Award (Dome Theater Category) Japan Media Arts Festival, Mirakain, Japan
2021, Welcome to Paradise, NRW-Forum Museum, Dusseldorf, Germany
2021, FUTURE VISION LAB, Taipei, Taïwan
2021, Akousma Festival, MTL-Connecte, SAT, Montreal, Canada
2019, Cube Fest, Moss Arts Center and The Institute for Creativity, Arts and Technology, Blacksburg, USA)
