veins
| 2023 | Ateliers Vortex, Dijon |
Antoine Renard is interested in processes of repair and care, both physical and psychological, intimate and collective. His work is strongly influenced by multiple research trips he has undertaken in the Peruvian Amazon since 2018, during which he became initiated into the ritual practices of Perfumeros, Ayahuasceros, and Washumeros healers. For several years, the artist has developed a practice marked by the architectural, olfactory, and sonic dimensions, using space and senses as catalysts and emotional vehicles. Exploring the question of adolescence and the transitioning body, the artist works with stories, news items, and monuments from Western culture, deconstructing them, spatially and sculpturally transposing them, creating immersive environments where new technologies, pop culture, and ritual practices intersect.
«Veins» is the title of a song by the rapper Lil Peep, who died of a xanax overdose in 2017 at the age of 21. The song portrays a melancholic and brutal heartbreak, as one might experience at the age of 20. Between drugs, sexism, and self-destruction, «Veins» transports us into an allegory of love as a toxic substance circulating in the veins, addressing, in Lil Peep’s unique way, the issues of abandonment, sorrow, and healing.
Using the song as raw material, the installation «Veins» is a physical, psychological, and mystical deconstruction of this iconic title from the subculture of the 2010s. The different elements that make up the installation approach the problematics of pain and love in a neo-gothic ritual manner. It is a «EMO» drift into the vibratory materiality of experiences, fantasies, and emotions that compose and decompose bodies and identities. «Veins» is an installation composed of a large metal grid behind which a series of speakers diffuse a soundtrack with heavy and mesmerising frequencies, derived from the original Lil Peep track.
The song is deeply worked, stretched, altered, and reversed, becoming a wave, an almost physiological vibration calling for contemplation and meditation. The grid, cutting off and prohibiting a portion of space, is embedded with large heart-shaped motifs made of scented wax, all corroded, melted, and pierced, dripping onto the room’s floor like an offering, a series of ex-votos embodying materials, emotions, fluids, and symbols.
The third work of the installation is a series of texts, reproducing the lyrics of the song «Veins.»
Antoine Renard asked the chatGPT Ai program to rewrite the song by interpreting each phrase as a smell. The program, feeding on the overall accessible online content, then produces responses that remove the text from the subjectivity of the author and bring it into the territory of collective memory. Each phrase then becomes a new story generated by the machine, offering possibilities for regeneration, interpretation, and exploration of the work, both in a lyrical, olfactory, and emotional sense.