Régis Michel's 'L'Oeil-écran' Catalogue Explores Video Art and Politics

Régis Michel's book 'L'Oeil-écran ou la nouvelle image' accompanies the eponymous exhibition held in spring 2007 at Casino Luxembourg. Rather than an inventory, Michel highlights idiosyncrasies such as the avant-garde archaism of Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin and Taiwanese artist Chen Chieh-jen's reenactment of a Chinese torture magnified by Georges Bataille in 'Les Larmes d'Éros'. The title derives from a phrase by Gilles Deleuze: 'The eye is not the camera, it is the screen.' Michel deftly folds and unfolds key concepts from Deleuze's 'Cinéma I: L'Image-mouvement' and 'Cinéma II: L'Image-temps' to create new assemblages at the intersection of aesthetics and politics. Chen's 'archive-fiction' of the 'torture of history' resonates with Michel Foucault's project. The world 'rethought' by some forty artists reveals new modes of resistance and desire. The 'image-corps' (body-image) gives unity to Michel's cartography, notably in Artur Żmijewski's 'An Eye for an Eye', a poignant pas de deux on three legs where an amputee attaches to a healthy man, ending with a smile without suturing radical otherness. The book is a reference work on contemporary video art, with an English edition forthcoming in autumn. The exhibition itself is hoped to be seen again in Paris, perhaps at the Grand Palais.