Girlfriend Experience
Girlfriend Experience
Ugo Arsac
CHRONIQUES CRÉATION 2024
Immersive / interactive video installation
They ask me to kiss, to be in my arms, tightly, because they have this urge to feel loved, to feel touched.”
Girlfriend Experience is an immersive video installation about emotional distress in our hyper-connected society.
In the age of social networking and instant communication, where we might think that friendships and love relationships are more accessible than ever, many people suffer from a profound sense of loneliness.
Ugo Arsac focuses on the Girlfriend Experience (GFE), in which sex workers offer more than just sex, but also tenderness and intimacy.
A multi-screen installation made up of smartphones becomes the medium for a film shot using volumetric capture. By dialing a number on their own phone, visitors have access to the voices of the documentary: the testimonies of sex workers and their clients, recounting their quest for affection and authenticity. The smartphone, the new intermediary in our social relations, becomes the point of entry between the public and the work, shaking up our position as spectators and questioning our own emotional fragilities.
Artists
Ugo Arsac
Ugo Arsac is a French artist and documentarian. He studied at the Beaux-Arts de Paris and the École des Arts Décoratifs de Paris, where he displayed his videographic approach by producing his first films: Neuf Cordes (Nine Strings), filmed between Italy and Ukraine, a mix of performance and spoken poetry; and Jouons à la Guerre (Let’s Play War), filmed in the ranks of a re-enactment society in Taiwan, a documentary imbued with derision towards the global and local conflicts the island has faced. He later won the La Scam Emerging Artist Prize before joining the Le Fresnoy National Studio of the Contemporary Arts. There, he produced En Contrebas (Underneath), a documentary portrayal of and a Dantean journey through the entrails of Paris, and In Urbe, an interactive installation allowing the audience to conduct their own subterranean journey.
He has completed several residencies, at Centquatre, Ardenôme and the Fruitière Numérique, and has featured in numerous exhibitions (100% l’Expo, Orpheo, Panorama22, Mulhouse021, Tout s’éclaire, the Institut Français in Ukraine’s Digital November). He is conducting new XR projects thanks to support from CHRONIQUES and C2L3play, an Interreg programme promoting artistic innovation. He also works with the Galerie Robert Dantec, where his drawings and serigraphs have been shown at exhibitions such as Points of View and DDessin.
Credits & mentions
Concept and writing – Ugo Arsac
Director – Ugo Arsac
Co-writer – Gala Hernández López
Creative technologist – Antoine Vanel
Sound designer and composer – Antoine Boucherikha
Sound engineer – Antoine Boucherikha
Shader Dev – Léon Denise
Editor – Guillaume Guerry
Scientific and historical consultant – Samantha Pratali (Faculté Libre de Droit de l’Université Catholique de Lille)
TDS Intermediary – Walter Guido
Set design – Nicolas Guichard
Production | Dark Euphoria
Mathieu Rozières – Founder and producer
Marie Point – Director and producer
William Board – Production manager
Céline Delatte – Communications Officer
Production: Dark Euphoria
In coproduction with Chroniques, Biennale des Imaginaires Numériques as part of the CHRONIQUES CRÉATIONS platform, supported by DRAC Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Région Sud Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur and Ville de Marseille.
Developed with the support of the Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC), PICTANOVO as part of the Fonds Nouveaux Médias with the support of the Région Hauts-de-France, and in partnership with the CNC, La Région Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, in partnership with the CNC, the DRAC Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and the Région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.
