Louis-Cyprien Rials

Short Description:

"Polygon" is a body of work created between 2016 and 2019 in the Semipalatinsk nuclear range in Kazakhstan - a 18.000km2 range where Soviet Union tested 456 atomic bombs :

_ a 4k video - Black and white and color, sound, 12min 40sec, Shot in the Semipalatinsk Polygon

_ a 4k video - Color, sound, performance filmed in the Semipalatinsk Polygon Semipalatinsk Polygon, 3 min,

_ scientific reports, 2 black and white A4 Pdf prints,

_ a 3D plastic print,

_ sound works engraved on medical radiography, exposed on medical lightning for X-ray,

_ a photographic study and the creation of postcards of the area,

_a stochastic musical performance played live by french composer Romain Poirier

This set of works, between fiction and filmed performance, studies in several ways the fragile possibility of a humanity surviving in a radioactive zone considered as an "involuntary natural park". The idea of being and its fragility, as well as its possible guilt haunt the project, always inscribed between the real and the documentary, and the invisible or the non-perceptible as well as in the confrontation between the spiritual and the carnal.

photographic print 80x120cm B&W

Analysis of the Chagan Lake water made by CRIIRAD

The idea of scale is at the heart of the Polygon project, initiating through a coherent body of work the multiple possibilities of examining through a scientific process a forbidden radioactive zone and the information that can be drawn from it (aerial and satellite imagery, cartography, scientific analyses carried out by the CRIIRAD, creation of documents/postcards of a forbidden and abandoned zone that obviously does not emit any). The project also takes up this idea of scale through a filmed performance by the artist comparing the fragility of our biological lives to the gigantic changes operated by man in the Nuclear Age. Biological fragility reinforced by the creation of a life-size reproduction of the artist's skull made after a serious accident during the filming of the video work, but also X-rays inspired by Soviet "Ribs" ( Музыка на рёбрах ) and perpetuating both the music of the work made by musician Romain Poirier, as much as a recording of a stochastic performance imagined according to the process of nuclear decomposition applied to the sound of Polygon A detail of the different works will allow a better understanding of how "Polygon" responds in multiple ways to the call for projects by focusing on the idea of scale, of techno-political frontiers as much as on the social issues raised by this project through a biopolitical aesthetic. A 4k video - black and white and color, sound, 12min 40sec, Shot in the Semipalatinsk Polygon, it is strongly inspired by both Chris Marker and Andrei Tarkovski. A conversation between two invisible fairies haunts the steppe and comments on the presence of the artist in this forbidden polygon before launching a reflection on the nuclear future through the very words of Oppenheimer, one of the creators of the atomic bomb. The sound part of the work is fundamentally important because it must surprise and shock the spectator by the physicality of the sound it introduces. The sound has been written in order to create a quasi uneasiness on the audience and the presence of Romain Poirier, composer and sound technician is important so that the piece is experienced in the optimal conditions wanted by the artists. _ a 4k color video, sound, performance filmed in the Semipalatinsk Polygon, 3 minutes Semipalatinsk Polygon, 3 min, This is the first filmed performance of the artist, inspired by the video "I'm too sad to tell you" by Bas Jan Ader, where the artist cries in front of the camera for 3 minutes and a half. Almost 50 years later, Louis-Cyprien Rialsse films naked, looking at the camera after an improvised bath in the Chagan lake, created by an atomic bomb. He thus transforms his body into a Canvas and the radioactive water becomes the tears of the landscape itself. Beyond a sacrificial call, or a baptism of radioactive radicalism, it confirms the empirical approach of the artist by putting him on stage for the first time, for lack of anything else to say than this act which may seem desperate. _ of the scientific reports, 2 black and white A4 Pdf prints, During his immersion in the radioactive lake, the artist noticed that the civilian populations of the area, extremely poor, fished and fed on this lake. During conversations, these inhabitants explained that they were unable to measure the radioactivity of the site and that in any case their bodies were "used" to radioactivity (see the monument: Stronger than Death - Semipalatinsk. Also the artist brought back water of the lake Chagan in France and made it analyze by the antinuclear association CRIIRAD, before sending back these analyses to his various contacts in the zone. _ a 3D plastic print, Printing of the artist's skull from a medical scan. During his trip in 2016 for the creation of Polygon, the artist was the victim of a serious attack that caused him a triple fracture of the jaw. Hospitalized in Almaty and then in Paris, he recovered the 3d scans to create a life-size representation with the teeth attached by wire, a technique for immobilizing the jaw sound works engraved on medical radiography, Inspired by the Bone Music, they are a way to export the sound of this area on a support which degrades with each use to become inaudible. A photographic study and the creation of postcards of the area, A set of Polaroids and postcards of the zone, seen as an involuntary natural park. a stochastic musical performance by Romain Poirier A performance, already realized in Belgrade for an exhibition by Louis-Cyprien Rials. It follows an idea of nuclear decomposition of the sound playing on the chance as much as on the degradation of the signal.

installation views and 3 X-Ray 33rpm

listen to the X-Ray discs on Archive Gamma

Romain Poirier & Louis-Cyprien Rials
полиго́н – Polygon X-ray, 2019
33rpm, projet en cours
1 – As far as the maps 7.30
2 – Plunderphonics, stochastic decayed 3.30
Voix additionnelle Apollinaria Broche, Nina Salamova
Extrait de la performance stochastique à Hestia, Belgrade 2018
Composée et interprétée par Romain Poirier
Mixée par Jean-Charles Bastion, Studio Mer-Noir, Paris
X-Ray gravés par Marco Pellegrino, Analogcut Mastering, Berlin
Co-production : Aurélie Faure, Paris
Avec le soutien de HESTIA – Art residency and exhibition bureau, Adrian Thomas (Londres), René Van Tiggelen