Lauren Huret

The Creature, 2021

Lauren Huret’s own statement on her work The Creature (2021):

“Since the dawn of social media, I have been fascinated by people’s online behaviour. How people share parts of their lives, how they deal with self-promotion, how they promote themselves, etc. Every time I put something online, I can’t help but think I’m doing something wrong. This is partly from distrust of surveillance capitalism and a fear being judged, but mostly because I feel that sharing selected aspects of my life can be misleading (sometimes deliberately), risky and or totally boring. Nonetheless, I continue to share and post, and often feel obliged to do so as an artist. Despite my scepticism, I find this phenomenon extremely fascinating, especially the sheer amount of information and images that people willingly feed into the public space (or rather, to the trickster of public space) that is the internet. As a patron of the arts, I’m offering you the easy option of commissioning me to create an artwork on your online presence, a portrait of the digital age during the time of mass sharing. It is a record of an investigation I will make about you, a temporal archive of your online self. No private information from our correspondence or previous exchanges (e.g. your contact information) will appear in the artwork, only what is found online. It’s as if we are complete strangers. As an artist, I will try to figure out who you are by following your trails, and rely on my instinct to create your video portrait. The final work therefore reflects the person I imagine you to be as well as my own subjectivity. It will be influenced by my mood – sometimes prophetic and dramatic, sometimes light and funny, sometimes strange and absurd. You are the model, I am the painter.”

If you would like to commission your own video work, contact Lauren Huret: http://laurenhuret.com/the-creature.

Lauren Huret (*1984 in Paris) lives in Geneva. Her work, mainly comprising videos, installations, performances and collages, is based on an ongoing investigation of how our media and technology cultures influence our belief systems. She has exhibited at Kunsthaus Langenthal, Hard Hat Gallery in Geneva, La Panacée in Montpellier, Copenhagen Contemporary, Centre d’art contemporain de Genève, Centre Culturel Suisse in Paris, Haus der Elektronischen Kunste in Basel and Jeu de Paume in Paris, among others. Her performances have taken place at the Kunstverein Göttingen in Germany, the Swiss Performance Prize at the Museum of Art Lucerne, the Schinkel Pavilion in Berlin, the Théâtre de l’Usine Geneva, the Festival Les Urbaines à l'Arsenic in Lausanne, for the international organisation ICRC in Turkey and in London, among others. Recent publications include: Artificial fear, Intelligence of Death, co-published by Link Editions and Kunsthaus Langenthal (2016); L’âge des techniciens, with Pacôme Thiellement, published by Clinamen (2017); and Praying for my haters, published by CCS Paris (2019).

Year: 2021
Type: Video
Link to the artwork: https://vimeo.com/504812630
Artist website: http://www.laurenhuret.com

Net Encounters was generously supported by the Swiss cultural foundation Pro Helvetia.