The Bells Angels: Creative Archivists Turn Curators

Since 2009, the artist duo Simon Bernheim and Julien Sirjacq, known as The Bells Angels, have published a fanzine that now extends into exhibitions and editorial projects. Their approach, inspired by FBI agent Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks, blends dreamlike intuition with archival research. In 2011, they contributed to the exhibition 'Le temps de l'écoute' at Villa Arson in Nice, designing wallpapers and mediation devices that challenged formalist art history. Their catalog for the show, published 18 months later, includes additional materials and a vinyl record 'Dans le labyrinthe'. For the 2012 Biennale d'art contemporain du Havre, they set up a photocopy booth in a maritime museum warehouse, collecting dockers' testimonies to create a sensory archive of the port. Their fanzine, now in its third issue, features contributions from artists like Tristan Garcia, Brion Gysin, and Luc Ferrari, mixing music, sound, and visual techniques such as silkscreen and photocopy. The duo's work treats archives as starting points, not endpoints, echoing Jacques Derrida's idea that memory is a question of the future.