Dépenses improductives

(Unproductive Expenses)

With François Lemieux

Performative video

Banff Centre for the Arts

2016

_{Dépenses improductives

Video (excerpts)}

A performative video made during a residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts, inspired by the links between mining, patronage and art. Through the manipulation of cobbled-together artifacts, the artists explore the notion of energy from its “cursed part” (Georges Bataille), its unproductive but necessary part in a society where power always rhymes with sacrifice: that of the amphorae of Antiquity buried under the hills of Rome; of the waste of the oil industry confined to their retention basins; of the migrants parked in containers in Calais; of the invisible art collections of the über-rich of the Middle East and Asia.