Ariane Loze

Performance
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With: Ariane Loze and Steve Argüelles
Stage direction: Ariane Loze
Text: Ariane Loze & Nina Leger
Music: Steve Argüelles
Director of photography: Enzo Addi
With the support of: the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, as part of its New Settings programme
Coproduction: Vlaamse Gemeenschap, workspacebrussels, Centre Tour à Plomb, wpZimmer, Galerie Michel Rein Paris / Brussels, Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie

This Nomadic Night event is part of a spotlight on devoted to Ariane Loze, in collaboration with the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles where she will present her performance Notre banquet on April 8, 2022.

With Bonheur Entrepreneur, videographer Ariane Loze, known for her homemade, joyously dystopian video-performances, shines with this exploration of power relations in the world of business. Dark humor guaranteed!

In her films, videographer and performer Ariane Loze excels at creating multiple personalities, and interpreting a whole gallery of characters. For Bonheur Entrepreneur, the public is invited to enjoy the jubilant spectacle of an entertaining film shoot, improvised live on set. Gathered around a table for a socialite dinner, individuals obsessed with profit allow themselves no choice but to become the willing victims of their own contradictions.

“I would say that success means getting your teams to take your objectives on board, making them their personal goal. How, but above all, why?”

Excerpt from Bonheur Entrepreneur by Ariane Loze

“Does being happy make you more productive?” This is the question asked on the front cover of a specialist magazine aimed at business managers. With this rather surprising question that resembles an injunction as the starting point, Ariane Loze explores the alienation of a panoply of fictitious male and female entrepreneurs whom she embodies by means of a video device activated live on set. The artificiality of neoliberal jargon and mantras are dissected through the cinematographic medium, generating a study of a quasi-sociological nature, both satirical and good-natured. Over the course of the dinner-table conversation and beyond the usual social conventions, the tableau of a contemporary condition is composed. It is one where the professional destroys the personal, and where the individual leads a solitary dance on a tightrope between self-control and utter distress.

Recognized in contemporary art circles, this unclassifiable artist examines a world in crisis, in which we all seek to quieten our inner cacophony.

Ariane Loze

Since 2008, Belgian videographer and performer, Ariane Loze has developed a series of short films that all follow the same economy of means: the artist is both behind and in front of the camera, performing all the roles she has written. She often accompanies these videos with a live performance, opening the shoot to the public. Her short fictions are film essays on contemporary society, its individualism and complexity, as well as the contradictions that inhabit us. Ariane Loze studied theater direction at the Royal Institute for Theater, Cinema and Sound (RITCS) in Brussels, where she participated in a.pass (Advanced Performance and Scenography Studies). She is also a graduate of HISK (Hoger Instituut voor Schone Kunsten) in Ghent. Her work has been presented in European art centers, galleries and museums, as well as various film and video art festivals. In 2018, she won the Hauts-de-Seine Departmental Council Prize at the Montrouge Salon.