Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain

At first glance, the pairing of veteran American saxophonist Archie Shepp and German pianist Joachim Kuhn seems an unlikely one. Performance at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain - May 2011.

While it was long thought that his filmography had concluded with the film Life in 1993, Peleshian has now returned with a new film, simply titled La Nature, through which he once again observes the delicate cohabitation of human communities with their environment. Gathered from the internet, most of the images that compose the film are fragile, amateur-shot traces from within nature and its tremors that regularly rock these communities. Volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and tsunamis form the film’s visual fabric, and are set against images of grandiose natural landscapes. A visual elegy, the film resolutely acknowledges the superiority of nature, with its unrelenting force, capable of transcending all human ambition. With this, the filmmaker seems to remind us that humankind will not emerge victorious from the ecological havoc that it has created.

In the immediate aftermath of the 11 September Paul Virilio suffered from a malaise found very seldom among philosophers, which was caused by an excessive degree of confirmation on the part of reality. He broke off work on his book "L'accident Intégral" to put together an exhibition that was designed to illustrate the concept of the global accident in all its topicality. The outcome was the much-vaunted Ce qui arrive, which was housed in the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Paris from 29 November 2002 to 30 March 2003. The cinematic installation, Unknown Quantity, which was a key part of the exhibition, features the staging of a discussion between Paul Virilio and Svetlana Alexiyevich, the author of the book "Chernobyl. Chronicle of the Future", the essential witness's statement on the conversion of history in catastrophe.