#5 – Janvier / January 2023

Ariane Loze

If you didn’t choose A, you will probably choose B

(Excerpt 1, 2’12’’) (Excerpt 2, 1’07’’) (Excerpt 3, 1’14’’)

 

Ariane Loze

If you didn’t choose A, you will probably choose B
2022
Duration of the entire video: 19’48’’
HD video projection, sound, colors
Courtesy of the artist and Michel Rein Paris/Brussels

Stills from the video If you didn’t choose A, you will probably choose B, Ariane Loze, 2022

 

The heroine of this new film, an active thirty-something (wearing a suit), is constantly being analysed, spied on and lured by algorithms (personified “zeros” and “ones” dressed in black and white t-shirts), whose artificial intelligence serves commercial purposes. All the protagonists, embodied by the artist herself, wander through the streets of a deserted and sciencefictional Paris. This work reveals how our data is exchanged and sold without our knowledge (by matching), according to our geolocations and preferences, by data brokers (Facebook, Google, Tinder and other dating apps, as well as Deliveroo, Spotify, Youtube and evenor Amazon). It is the result of a collaboration with sociologist Jessica Pidoux and HestiaLabs, a website specialising in transparent analysis and more ethical sharing of personal data and their benefits with those who generate them. Ariane Loze is hardly exaggerating, ridiculing a system of which we are more and more captive and which we are partly complacent about, in which the supposedly virtual has a very tangible impact on our lives.

In her video performances, Ariane Loze, born in Belgium in 1988, living and working in Brussels and Paris, sets about a methodical deconstruction of the codes of cinema to bring it back to its operative minimum. Each creation, produced in complete autonomy, is thought out in its intimate relation to the place. In them, Ariane Loze is the scriptwriter, director, editor, costume designer, sound and light director and often plays all the characters.

The incongruity of the sketches and the offbeat derision of the dialogues question the failings of our current, controlled lifestyles. The artist looks to give an account of a collective psychology characterised by schizophrenic tendencies. She arouses in the public a distanced look, both amused and critical.

Anne Dressen
(Excerpt from the presentation text of the exhibition
Les Portes du Jour, 2022.)

If you didn’t choose A, you will probably choose B is curently on view in the exhibition Modern Love curated by Katerina Gregos at EMST Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (December 15th, 2022- May 28th, 2023) .

It will be exhibited at Michel Rein Gallery, Brussels  (March 9th-April 15th, 2023) and Paris (March 25th-May 6th, 2023).

It was shown for the first time at the exhibition Les Portes du Jour, curated by Anne Dressen, Musée Carnavalet, Paris, (October 1st-October 23rd, 2022).