Born in May 68, Martin Le Chevallier has been developing a substantial body of work since the end of the 1990s, one in which he brings his critical eye to bear on contemporary myths and ideologies.

His first work, Gageure 1.0 (Wager 1.0,1999), takes the “spectator-cum-guinea pig” through the world of corporate discourse in the form of a labyrinthine arborescence on CD-ROM. After this project, he produced a series of games (Flirt 1.0, 2000, a game of seduction made from American film noir movie excerpts; then Vigilance 1.0, 2001, a game of video surveillance) and interactive videos. During his artist residency at the French Academy in Rome in 2000-2001, he made Félicité (Bliss), an evocation of an idle utopian society, and Oblomov, a minimalist adaptation of the novel by Ivan Gontcharov. This cycle of interactive videos came to an end in 2005 with Le Papillon (The Butterfly), the story of a character whose life is upset by the impatience of viewers.

Le Chevallier often uses the very instruments and processes that characterize our times as constituent elements in his representations of them. Witness the way in which consumerist pathologies are conjured by a vocal telephone server (Doro bibloc, 2003) and the security utopia by a “coming attractions”-type trailer (Safe Society, 2003). In 2007, the artist created a “fair” piece for the Fiac, in the form of a painted wood polyptych, in an ironic tribute to the policies of Nicolas Sarkozy (NS).

Le Chevallier’s recent pieces work on the basis of an interference with reality. In this vein, he asked a consulting firm to propose a strategy for him to attain glory (The Audit, 2008); he traveled in procession to Brussels with a miraculous European flag (The Holy Flag, 2009); he secured a Tuileries Gardens pool with remote-controlled, toy police boats (Ocean Shield, 2009); and he set up viewpoint binoculars overlooking a hypermarket (“Slowing Your Blinking” exhibition, 2010).

As a counterpoint to these contextual projects, the artist has pursued his film work. A case in point is “2008” (2010), at once a film and an installation, which presents a picaresque narrative of globalisation.

Oblomov
2001
Interactive video
The character is alone and still. As long as the spectator doesn’t do anything, he stays indefinitely motionless, thinking or sleeping. When the spectator acts on the film (“clicks”), the character does something. He gets up, answers the phone, smokes a cigarette, etc. As soon as he has finished his task, he goes back to his contemplative mood, until the spectator clicks again.
This project has been realized by using a technical process able to last a brief moment of a video sequence as long as the spectator doesn’t act on it. An indefinitely moving foliage, an always spouting fountain, a still sleeping character, etc. Life seems going on. The intervention (the “click”) of the spectator is like that of the videogame player who leads his character. The main difference, which is essential, is that here the spectator doesn’t act on a artificially multidimensional “reality” but on a reality captured by the photography. That way, he feels that he really acts on the reality : he really wakes up the sleeping character or pressures the inactive man.
This film is freely inspired by the character created by Ivan Goncharov. The viewer has to cope with someone whose natural inclination is to do nothing. His/her only choice is then to respect or not the character’s tranquility. Unaware of the action he/she triggered, the impulse isn’t, as in video games “do this, do that” but only “do something!”. The character then moves, as if moved by guilt or just a simple “why not?”. After a while he inevitably finds himself in a meditative or sleepy mood, as is relieved by the inner question: “what’s the point?” The viewer is thus sent back to other questions: “what’s the point to click?” or “what’s the point of my action?” or “what’s the point of interactivity?”