Neïl Beloufa. Global Agreement

About

For “Global Agree­ment” (2018) Beloufa will create walk­able sculp­tural instal­la­tions in the Schirn Rotunda, which is freely acces­sible to the public, as well as in an adjoining exhi­bi­tion space. An inter­view collage on film will be visible on various moni­tors in parts of the sculp­tures. The inter­view collage is dedi­cated to the human body and its discur­sive and polit­ical impor­tance. It shows Neïl Beloufa’s latest interest in the army, weapons, fitness, beauty, and the body cult as well as in the staging of power. Power is a central, recur­ring theme in his work—the social conflict between majority and minority, between domi­nance and oppres­sion, as well as the power of images for our percep­tion of reality. The video is based on inter­views that the artist conducted with male and female soldiers from different coun­tries via the video chat service Skype. The film as an artistic medium consti­tutes the focus and point of depar­ture in Beloufa’s oeuvre. Fiction and reality fuse in Beloufa’s videos. Viewers become irri­tated by their own percep­tion and even­tu­ally can no longer distin­guish between truth and false­hood. In “Global Agree­ment” the artist raises ques­tions concerning phys­ical presen­ta­tion as well as the recep­tion and involve­ment and/or posi­tioning of the viewer. Like the film narra­tive in “Global Agree­ment,” ulti­mately the video is not completed yet. Beloufa leaves the ques­tion regarding a contin­u­a­tion of the work open—it repre­sents the begin­ning of an inves­ti­ga­tion instead.