L’héritage de Bentham

“L’héritage de Bentham” (Bentham’s Legacy) is a video installation consisting of sculptures and a short film. The latter is based on an innovative approach combining traditional takes and cutting-edge audiovisual techniques (filming in a virtual production studio, computer-generated images and AI). The exhibition explores Jeremy Bentham’s legacy from various perspectives, revealing the unforeseen consequences of his 18th-century utilitarianism for our contemporary world. Utilitarianism, the first attempt to organise pleasures institutionally, led to paradoxical outcomes: Bentham is better known for designing the panopticon, a type of circular prison, than for the liberating vision of his ideas. While modern nation-states regularly relied on utilitarianism to devise their legislation, how does this doctrine shape the way we relate to pleasures today? In a similar vein, how does the digital industry reconcile its ideals of freedom with the isolation inherent to using its services?

Today, we are encouraged to be liberated in our recreational activities while, paradoxically, the scope for freedom is shrinking. In a society of abundance, the multiplicity of pleasures tends to annihilate them. Now largely emancipated from work (compared to the industrial era), other demands dictate our actions, and we lose ourselves in distractions that, sadly, turn out to be more alienating than emancipating.   How much do we still depend on the models of social organisation devised in the 18th century? To help us better understand the extent to which Bentham’s ideas still shape our imagination, the short film retraces this narrative through three sections, the first of which is historical, the second horrific and the last satirical.