Victoire Thierrée

In 2019 and 2020, for my postgraduate research project at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, I researched the Experiments in Art & Technology (E.A.T.) group. I now wish to pursue this research further at Villa Albertine, with support from July Martin, the widow of Billy Kluver (who co-founded E.A.T. with R. Rauschenberg), who lives a short distance from New York City. She will assist me in planning my research, which I will conduct at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, as it holds the majority of the E.A.T. archives, and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I will focus specifically on Gyorgy Kepes (1906–2001), generally acknowledged as the last disciple of modern Bauhaus, who launched the M.I.T.’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies and created innovative forms of army camouflage during WWII. His productions were at the center of the disputes around MIT’s connections to the military during the Vietnam War.  

Alongside this, I wish to make a hybrid film – both documentary and experimental – examining my own artistic practice, dealing about issues related to modern conflicts and their resulting objects, particularly the US F117 stealth attack aircraft. I will visit the USAF Museum in Ohio, and the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, to consult its archives and meet its curators. This film work will continue on from my two earlier shorts, Birds of Prey (2018) and Sans Lune (2021), which depicted the links between military technology, aesthetics, and nature in the current geopolitical, strategical and historical context.  

My artistic creation is always conducive to a great deal of research, discoveries, visits, and encounters. My sculptures, photographs, and films touch on issues related to modern conflicts and the so-called defense industry that sustains them. As part of my residency in the US, I will conduct research in such US institutions as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, and the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. These research projects will form springboards for accumulating information, forms, stories, and leads, which will later turn into works, installations, sculptures, etc. 

Modern US history has been consistently entangled in the conflicts of the past few decades. The country leads the way in the air, space and military industries; as of 2022, it remains the world’s primary arms exporter. During my residency, I will research the first-ever stealth plane, the F117, whose existence was leaked after it was shot down in 1999, during the Kosovo War. To do so, I will go to the US Air Force Museum in Ohio and the Palm Spring Air Museum in California, to meet with curators and film the only publicly exhibited F117 in the world. I will also conduct research on the Experiments in Art & Technology (E.A.T.) non-profit organization, in New York City, Los Angeles, and Brooklyn Heights, in order to build bridges between opposite worlds.