The Bride Eats the Soul of her Bachelors, Even, 2005
video projection on opal glass, audio, 270 x 170 cm


 

I insisted on interpreting the notes Duchamp himself left on his artwork in order to look for traces of alien messages. I read these notes with a magnifying glass, enabling me to reveal information previously hidden from view by our customary viewing habits. I was looking for an alien subtext. Imagine how happy I felt when I read the way in which Duchamp had conceived the title of his masterpiece: the artist used homophonic double interpretation to entitle his artwork. In other words, he used a sentence that when pronounced can have two different meanings. 

The original French title, “LA Mariée Mise à Nu Par Ses Célibataires, Même” [The bride stripped bare by her bachelors, even], contains a second homophonic meaning, namely “LA Marie est Mise à Nue Per ses Céli- batteurs.” [Mary is laid bare by her celestial threshers]. Those threshers in the sky were the alien reference I was interested in. Thus, I gave the title of “trebbiatori celesti” (Celestial Threshers) to the work pictured above. In my view, Duchamp was referring to extra-terrestrial threshers who had left strange traces impressed in that abandoned field, which in our day are referred to as crop circles. Although there are people who want to read an esoteric allusion to the cult of agriculture into this reference, to my eyes the content was different.

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And the discoveries did not end there. In his notes, Duchamp spoke of “handler-trainers of gravity,” “controls arbor type” and “oculist witnesses.” These are all elements that often recur on websites and blogs devoted to UFO sightings. Inspired by this new interpretation of Duchamp’s work, I created an animation of the Large Glass, projecting a new and personal interpretation onto it. I think my attempt is germane to Duchamp’s drive, as it is motivated by the desire to open up to additional analytical levels, to add a layer of interpretation that goes beyond the one ingrained in traditional artistic investigation. The animation narrates, in an equally mysterious form, how the bride cultivates humans here on earth in order to process their energy through various passages from one material state to another, in order to draw nourishment from humankind. These aliens (or space gods) feed on our soul. One characteristic of my artistic production is the desire to place content coming from pop culture (the alien invasion theme) on the same plane as content coming from high culture (Duchamp’s art). In my poetic universe there are no hierarchies between high culture, academia and pop culture, the latter spread first and foremost through websites and social networks. In fact, popular culture on the Internet has become crucial to anticipate and interpret the grand themes of our era, no matter its (often tenuous) relationship to truth and reality.