Roi Soleil Albert Serra

Roi Soleil
Albert Serra
23 MAR 2023 - 04 JUN 2023
Curaduted by: Lena Solà Nogué
→ Rooms 1 y 2
¡HOY!

Roi Soleil (Sun King) is the first solo exhibition in Mexico of self-taught director, screenwriter and producer Albert Serra (Banyoles, Spain, 1975). Influenced by literary characters and the aesthetics of film in the 1960s and 1970s, Serra’s cinematographic practice captures the fantasy of the early days of this art with solemn themes and characters—delirious and absurd—more closely related to fiction than to realistic representations of everyday life. 

For this exhibition, Serra stages the agony of Louis XIV—an allegorical figure of decadence—through a performance cast by a non-professional actor in period costume, which results in a post-conceptual production entitled Roi Soleil. By means of a unique visual language and a non-linear narrative, the work addresses complex themes such as death and decrepitude in a foreign place—in this case, an empty museum gallery—where the evidence of an encounter of sorts between the representation of power and its vanity remains.

 


What motivated you to keep exploring the figure of Louis XIV as an archetype of decadence even after you completed the film La muerte de Luis XIV (2016)? How did you conceptualize Roi Soleil?

I was a little uneasy with the film’s essence. Despite having a clear political scope, I believe death to be a much more abstract subject that transcends time periods, ways of thinking, sensitivities, spaces and social strata. I wanted to revisit the subject in a way that was lighthearted but more violent: same physical configuration but altogether different.

How did variations develop between one representation and the other? For instance, the shift from Jean-Pierre Léaud to Lluis Serrat as lead actor, or that from a soundstage to a room in a museum.

Working with the dramaturgy of presence—as in performance—or the dramaturgy of action—as in film—is in fact the same thing. Both actors, in both spaces, set in action a natural drama: telling a story through their presence alone. There is nothing else. In the museum the concept is taken to the extreme—the suffering, the stretching of time—so it can be disturbing and exciting.

Far from having a conventional narrative structure, Roi Soleil plunges the audience in a constant anticlimax where the dying character finds himself in a foreign space (the museum’s empty room). Do you think this new anachronistic construction generates empathy or discomfort through the contact with an animalistic or monstrous dimension?

I don’t know about animalistic, although it’s true that the character resembles a dying rat at certain points. Death brings humans closer to their animal condition in the moment of complete physical annihilation. I do think the anticlimax of death as the end result of physical degradation generates both empathy and discomfort. There is no truce or heroism; there is, rather, the advent of nothingness, which more closely resembles the aesthetic of a museum than a movie set.

In Roi Soleil, the audience is an active part of the performance. Would you say this position is the same as that of a cinema audience?

In a performance, the audience’s perceptions of the physical and of time are more intense, even if they have no confidence in what they are watching. I believe the experience is different when compared to cinema in that the audience might feel more compassion, not for the character but for the actor, and this is because in the museum setting the division between character and actor is blurred. The audience might better comprehend the mechanism behind the craft of the performance piece, maybe because of the display or device being used, or because of their own mindset. In the museum setting there is a tenderness that cannot take place in film, since the perception of the internal nature of the spectacle is sharper. For me, this can be exciting, so long as the artist isn’t aware of it.

Can you tell us more about your work methodology? What is the significance of the moment before shooting begins? And in that spirit, what is the screenplay to you?

The screenplay is nothing. I work with “acting material” as Heine Müller would say; that is, real people that become instruments of war in a direct, material struggle for the final victory of art. My methodology hinges on being insensitive to everything, on remaining indifferent to the future and having no memory of the past, as well as disregarding the the communicative aspect. This is why the period before shooting is sacred, because there is no memory, like a matador before a bullfight for whom only the present is useful. One has to accept fatality and risk as part of the party, otherwise it’d be very boring. The actors are exposed to an extreme vulnerability, as am I, since I am ultimately responsible. We both lose control, which is why no one is owed anything. Having no debt is the only way to be free, and this applies to art and its process as well.

Roi Soleil showcases your flexible work persona: far from remaining still, you stay open and constantly creating. Could you describe the production and postproduction processes? What discussions arise in each, and how are they related on set and in the editing room?

Postproduction is the discovery of a life that we didn’t live on-set, where things invisible to the naked eye are revealed and that only the camera can catch. It is like reliving something you think you lived through, or that you think you know but in reality never existed, not even in your imagination. And so you have to live through it again, to create it from scratch. This is done in the film’s montage. However, for this life to be authentic and innocent, free from manipulation, one has to take arbitrary and irresponsible decisions, especially in the selection of images following the first viewing. Afterwards, one must seek to give this life a coherent narrative, as opposed to a confusing, poetic, impressionistic amalgam. This is the most painstaking part of the work, since innocence must be structured, which is not easy. But it is possible, even if it requires time and effort, which aren’t available to all. Destruction is a useful tool in this process, that is, one has to destroy everything that seemed good in the previous phase so life can appear fresh and virgin. It is like genetic selection in bull breeding: every new specimen is unpredictable, but it has a structure.