HISTORY RELOADED - 1 May – 24 May
“History reloaded” is an art narration by CHTO. Since his 2002 book L’Adieu au XXe siècle, artist-writer CHTO (Camille de Toledo) has been looking to understand the foundations of the delayed historical order we live in. How do we embody these political, economical, and philosophical times in which each of us must come up against the insurmountable horizon of the end of History? How do we represent an endless history, a history re-begun? In 2008, CHTO began to write an opera; the End of History and the return of violence at the dawn of the 21st century were its central themes. After five years of work, The Fall of Fukuyama, an opera-video for four soloists, chorus, and orchestraco-written with the composer G. Hetzel, was premiered at the Salle Pleyel in Paris. This was for CHTO the birth of a “totem of endings”: an avatar of the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama was created with J. Olender, T. Jorion and A. Fradier. Conceived for the opera, this imperfect, pixelated avatar made with an old computer game software became a migrant doll in CHTO’s work. It moves from medium to medium – video to sculpture to installation. It is a totem through which CHTO stages, continuously, “the death of a spirit, of an obsession.” This figure became for him the sign of the passing from one century to the next, between the century of last men, constantly producing the science of apocalypse, endings, impossibilities – and a new affirmation of possible futures.
