The book LWTUA gathers found materials from the Internet: videos-stills from teenagers’ covers of the famous Joy Division song, photographs of fans on the Ian Curtis's memorial stone at Macclesfield graveyard and comments of this song on forums. The book aims at enriching the iconographic relations between Pop-Rock music, Romantism and Youth.
Video of the book All Beauty Must Die. 2nd Edition. 2011. Anonimous messages and b/w photographs
Artist book All Beauty Must Die. 2nd Edition. 2011. Anonimous messages and b/w photographs
Exhibition view All Beauty Must Die II. 2011.
Excerpt of a sequence of video stills from the CNN news on Kurt Cobain's death in april 1994
Still from the video 'The River' (2010). 5 min on loop
Exhibition view All Beauty Must Die II. 2011.
Artist book All Beauty Must Die. 1st Edition of 50 copies. 2011. Anonimous messages and b/w photos
Artist book All Beauty Must Die. 1st Edition of 50 copies. 2011. Anonimous messages and b/w photos
Installation view from the exhibition All Beauty Must Die (2010).
Stills from the double projection video LWTUA (Love Will Tear Us Appart)
Installation view from the exhibition All Beauty Must Die (2011). Double screening of the video LWTUA
Installation view from the exhibition All Beauty Must Die (2010). Video projection 'The river'
Still from the video 'The Caligraphist' (2010)
Installation view from the exhibition All Beauty Must Die (2010)
ALL BEAUTY MUST DIE
2009-2011
Together with David-Alexandre Guéniot;
Photographs: Patrícia Almeida
Installation, photographs, posters, book pages, videos, found footage,
With All Beauty Must Die, we wanted to explore an idyllic and romantic atmosphere, by mixing references of the English literary romanticism of the XIX century and the pop culture of rock music. The title comes either from the song ‘Where the Wild Roses Grow’ by Nick Cave and from the poem ‘Ode on Melancholy’ by John Keats: “She dwells with Beauty - Beauty That must die.” In both imageries we find a worldview centered on youth as the height of human life (the “Forever Young” and “Live Fast and Die Young”), valuing the emotion, experimentation, attraction towards death and tragic love and the melancholy of modern and utopian ideals associated with the desire of escape.
This project has been taking different shapes as an installation. It incluedes photographs, videos (‘The caligraphist’ , ‘The river’ and a double screening named after Ian Curtis song (Love wil tear us appart)), two artist books (‘All Beauty Must Die’ and LWTUA) and sets of objects and prints made from appropriated images and text (anonymous messages left by visitors of one of the exhibitions, stills from the CNN news on Kurt Cobain death in 1994, pages of John Keats books or guitar tabs of pop songs).
The photographs in these project were made at rock festivals. During the 3 or 4 days that a festival lasts, its site turns into a sort of time capsule. Time is suspended. Young people live at the rhythm of the festival, free from their daily routines with family, with school. Nothing else exists but these hours peacefully stretching towards the evening concerts, the alcoholic haze of a summer afternoon, lying on the grass, the skin hot from the sun. Like the classical or romantic representations of Eden, the Golden Age or the Land of Cockaigne they live to the rhythm of a permanent party.