The video installation “Mass” is based on the legendary substance. This original substance , called Æther, has served as a backdrop for many creation myths, before finding an echo in the recent discoveries of quantum physics.

June Balthazard and Pierre Pauze weave a story, between reality and science fiction, in which scientists from the Cern laboratory discuss the existence of an original and omnipresent substance. In a context of ecological upheaval, this fabric of the universe appears as the link that connects humans to nature.

The narration is put in dialogue with a sculpture that gives body to this mysterious substance. This biomimetic setting is a kind of Cosmos, of a surreal world, in which the protagonists of the video seem to be alive.
 

June Balthazard, Pierre Pauze

Since their meeting at Le Fresnoy in 2018, June Balthazard and Pierre Pauze have been working together regularly.

June Balthazard creates hybrid films that confronts documentary with forms more distant from reality. In this sense, her movies are imbued with magical realism. Her work has been shown in museums such as the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, art centers such as Les Tanneries and La Ferme du Buisson, as well as in international festivals: the Melbourne International Film Festival in Australia, the Busan International Film Festival in South Korea, Go Short in the Netherlands, the RIDM in Canada, and Visions du Réel in Switzerland, where she received the Opening Scenes Award in 2018.

Pierre Pauze develops installation and video protocols close to film culture. He won the ADAGP’s Revelation Prize for Digital Art Video Art in 2019, the Agnes B Prize in 2016, and the Artagon Prize in 2015. His work has been exhibited in institutions such as the Grande Halle de la Villette, the Brownstone Foundation, the Carreau du Temple and the Magasins Généraux in Paris, and internationally in the Es Baluard Museum in Palma de Mallorca and the K Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul.