Félicité
interactive video, 2001-2002

Félicité is a documentary on a society which does not exist. An ideal society which borrows from other, virtual or real, mythical or utopian. It is a universe of abundance, pleasure and game, made possible by necessary abolitions: those of the servitude, the property, the religion, the work, the family, etc. It is a film whose pages we can turn one after the other. The reader meets a happy time there, indeterminate. And he is free to take his own, or not, he can stretch the duration or interrupt it. At first sight our time seems absent in these bucolic images. But in reality it's sub-consious, hidden, inverted.

Félicité est un documentaire sur une société qui n'existe pas. Une société idéale qui emprunte à d'autres, fictives ou réelles, mythiques ou utopiques. C'est un univers d'abondance, de plaisir et de jeu, rendu possible par de nécessaires abolitions: celles de la servitude, de la propriété, de la religion, du travail, de la famille, etc. C'est un film dont on tourne les pages. Le lecteur y rencontre un temps heureux, indéterminé. Et il est libre de prendre le sien, ou non; il peut dilater les durées ou les briser. De prime abord notre époque semble absente de ces images bucoliques. En réalité elle est sous-jacente, en creux, inversée.

Bliss (Félicité)

An interactive video by Martin Le Chevallier

With Olivier Bardin, Annabel Vergne and Trudi Mastrocesare
Cameraman : Nicolas Chesnais
Interactive programmation : Alexis Amen
Commentary translated in italian by Giovanni-Marco Piemontese and Chiara Parisi and in english by Simon Pleasance

Thanks
to Claude Levy-Strauss, to the Tupi-guarani, the Pygmies, to Cervantes, to Don Quichotte, to Robert Owen, to Montaigne, to the cannibals, the father Henri Habib Ayrout, the egyptian peasant, to Jacques Weulersse, to Françoise Girard, to the New-guineans, to Bengt Danielsson, to the Polynésians, to Henri Lhote, to the Mozabites, the Indians of the North America des plains, to Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, to Bougainville, to the Tahitians, to Jean Malaurie, to the Esquimos, the Mbaya, to James Jarves, to all the hunters-gatherers and in particular the Bushmen, to Marshall Sahlins, to Karl Marx, to Wilhelm Reich, to Voltaire and to Pangloss.

Thanks
to the Académie de France à Rome, to its residents, to all its members and to Flora and Sabrina.

And special thanks
to Tiphaine Samoyault.

Exhibitions of Félicité / Expositions présentant Félicité

Tutto Casino, exhibition organized by Jérôme Sans, from June 21 to august 20 2002, in the Villa Medici in Rome.
Northern Fundamentalism, exhibition organized by Charlottenborg Exhibition Building, Copenhagen and NIFCA (Nordic Institute of Contemporary Art, Helsinki). Curators: Lars Bang Larsen, Cristina Ricupero and Charlotte Brandt. From October 31 to December 8 2002.