Pierre Paulin (FR, 1982)
Residency period: July-September 2020
The work of Pierre Paulin is rooted in contemporary visual culture and is based on poetry, essays, translation, publishing and off-the-peg clothing. The term “look”, which qualifies his poetry and the clothes he produces, is the common denominator of an approach based on combining and translating cultural formats and signs. His work has been exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo, Ricard Foundation and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Paris. Paulin is also the joint founder of an independent publishing workshop with Alex Balgiu, Clémentine Rougier and Roman Seban, which publishes poetry, essays on art and translations.
At La Becque, Paulin worked on the script of a new film entitled ACCESS: A Chanel Copy – Enactment of a Stairway Story, set on the staircase of the Maison Chanel, 31, rue Cambon in Paris. Tiled with mirrors, this architectural device apparently enabled Gabrielle Chanel, when she ran the house, to see without being seen the parades that left the first floor garment workshop to arrive in the shop on the ground floor. The Chanel staircase is seen as primitive technology that improves circulation between production and consumers, while fragmenting the bodies of the models parading. This diffracting mirror, in which anyone can look at themselves and get what they want, prefigures the web and social networks through which one builds an identity through a kaleidoscope of images. For his residence, Paulin took advantage of the quiet shores of Lake Geneva to retrace the steps of the designer who had settled in the heights of Lausanne during the post-war period.